Alejandro Arrieche
Today seems to be a new dawn for Spotify and its flagship mobile app as the company is introducing a brand new user interface.
The new look is a hybrid between a music streaming platform and a TikTok or Instagram-like social media site.
The new version of the app was presented by no other than its Chief Executive Officer, Daniel Ek, during a live event called “Stream On”.
The new interface, aside from its usual musical recommendations, will include a feed that can be scrolled up and down by users.
Different types of content will be included such as podcast previews, short video stories from their favorite artists, and suggested audio tracks.
This revamped UI appears to signal a change in Spotify’s focus from being solely a music streaming platform to a place where users can discover new content and engage with creators and users.
What Else is New for Spotify Users?
Spotify’s new interface seems to be focusing heavily on pushing users toward discovering new content rather than playing the same music or listening to the same podcasts.
The reason for this might be that the company found that users love to listen to new content – reflected by the popularity of its Discover Weekly feature, which presents users with a curated selection of 30 songs they have not heard before.
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The company said that the new version of the app will be progressively rolled out, starting yesterday, until it is accessible to its over 500 million monthly active users.
Apart from these changes in the interface, Spotify is launching Smart Shuffle for users. This is a feature that prompts the system to keep adding new songs to a user-created playlist.
The new recommended tracks will reportedly be similar in terms of “vibe” to the previous ones that the user handpicked.
Spotify took the time to inform users of the early success of its AI-powered DJ feature, which makes recommendations to users based on their tastes – pretty much like a smart radio station that knows what you like.
Even though the beta version of this tool has only been rolled out in the United States ad Canada for Premium users, Spotify said that fans have spent a quarter of their listening time on DJ.
Nearly half of these early testers have also kept using it after the first try.
A Summary of Everything That’s New On Spotify for Artists
Alongside the launch of this new user interface, Spotify is launching two artist-facing tools that will let creators engage better with their audience.
The first one is called Countdown Pages, which is a new space that artists can use to create awareness and keep fans in the loop about new songs, albums, and video releases.
With this feature, artists can provide access to previous of certain tracks and let fans order merchandise.
They can also keep track of a countdown until the new release is officially available within the platform.
In addition, the audio streaming platform introduced Spotify Clips, 30-second videos that look similar to Instagram Stories and that can be used by artists to promote their new content.
They could give fans a peak at what their creative process looks like, or provide updates about what they have been working on lately.
Moreover, Spotify (SPOT) is rolling out some new promotional tools for artists – the first one is called Marquee, which is a full-screen sponsored advert that can be used to target users that have shown interest in their music.
The other is Discovery Mode, which lets the artist and his creative team select the best tracks that they would like the algorithm to showcase to users.
For now, most of these features are available to a selected group of artists only as they are all being tested.
However, the company founded and headed by Ek promised to make them available to all authors on the Spotify for Artists interface very soon.
Spotify commented that the number of artists that have made more than $1 million has doubled and the same goes for those that have generated over $10,000.
The company also said that it has disbursed more than $40 billion to the music industry since the service was launched.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alejandro Arrieche.
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