In July 2021, Spotify launched the “What’s New” feed, a section that collects all new releases and episodes from artists and podcasts that the user follows. In June 2019, Spotify launched a custom playlist titled “Your Daily Drive” that closely replicates the drive time format of many traditional radio stations. Rap Caviar had 10.9 million followers by 2019, becoming one of Spotify’s Top 5 playlists.
Search anything, effortlessly
Also in January 2019, Spotify beta-tested its Canvas feature, where artists or labels can upload looping 3 to 8-second moving visuals to their tracks, replacing album covers in the “Now Playing” view; users have the option to turn off this feature. The functionality is limited to selected playlists and was only available on Spotify’s iOS app at launch, being expanded to the Android app in April 2017. In May 2015, Spotify announced a new “Home” start-page that could recommend music. The applications provided features such as synchronised lyrics, music reviews, and song recommendations. In November 2011, Spotify introduced a Spotify Apps service that made it possible for third-party developers to design applications that could be hosted within the Spotify computer software. Spotify provides access to over 100 million songs, 5 million podcasts, and 4 billion playlists.
- In order to balance the expense of licensing audiobooks and music together, the company started a new “bundle” royalty rate to songwriters.
- In November 2023, Spotify announced a new royalty model taking effect in 2024, aiming to reduce the amount of “fraudulent” royalties collected from “functional” non-music tracks with short lengths (such as environmental sounds and white noise).
- Spotify gets its content from major record labels as well as independent artists and pays copyright holders royalties for streaming music.
- The company’s fourth cable, named Grace Hopper, connects landing points in New York (US), Bude (UK) and Bilbao (Spain), and is expected to become operational in 2022.
- On October 9, 2018, Google confirmed that it had appealed the fine to the General Court of the EU.
- Swedish labor disputes are also happening at Tesla and Klarna as of 2024update.
Later that month, Spotify also acquired MightyTV, an app connected to television streaming services, including Netflix and HBO Go, that recommends content to users. In December 2013, CEO Daniel Ek announced that Android and iOS smartphone users with the free service tier could listen to music in Shuffle mode, a feature in which users can stream music by specific artists and playlists without being able to pick which songs to hear. Today, royalties on all streaming services, including Spotify are paid on a per user basis not per stream as this allows the artists who users listen to the most to receive the largest percentage of the payouts. In May 2017, Google enabled a new “Personal” tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in their Google accounts’ various services, including email messages from Gmail and photos from Google Photos. In October 2017, Microsoft announced that it would be ending its Groove Music streaming service by December, with all music from users transferring to Spotify as part of a new partnership. In March 2021, David Dayen argued in The American Prospect that musicians were in peril due to monopolies in streaming services like Spotify.
- The company is incorporated in Luxembourg as Spotify Technology S.A., and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with offices in 16 countries around the world.
- In 2016, Spotify was criticized for allegedly making certain artists’ music harder to find than others, as these artists would release their music to the rival streaming service Apple Music before releasing it to Spotify.
- The United Musicians and Allied Workers campaigns for a fairer redistribution and compensation system for musicians.
- Upon discovering Ding had been in contact with Chinese state-owned companies, Google notified the FBI, who carried on the investigation of the data breach.
- In December 2021, Spotify acquired Whooshkaa, a podcast tech company that develops specialized technology that allows radio broadcasters to easily turn their existing audio content into on-demand podcast programming.
- The changes faced a mixed reaction from the music industry, who believed that it would be detrimental to emerging musicians, but would make a larger share of total royalty payments available to musicians.
The most commonly perceived error is said to be caused by a lack of diverse scope within curation staff, including overlooking mainstay artists in large genres, potentially causing a categorical homogenization of musical styles; even impacting mainline artists like within hip hop with A Tribe Called Quest. Using this, users can perform various actions such as pulling playlists, launching radio stations, playing or pausing songs. Named the Car Thing, it represents the music-streaming service’s first entry into hardware devices. Spotify first announced a voice-activated music-streaming gadget for cars in May 2019. In January 2014, Spotify removed all time limits for Free users on all platforms, including on computers, which previously had a 10-hour monthly listening limit after a 6-month grace period. Users can refine playlists with additional instructions, such as “more upbeat” or “happier songs”.
Google Labs
Before May 2020, all service users were limited to 10,000 songs in their library, after which they would receive an “Epic collection, friend” notification and would not be able to save more music to their library. In April 2018, Spotify began to allow Free users to listen on-demand to whatever songs they want for an unlimited number of times, as long as the song is on one of the user’s 15 personalized discovery playlists. Discovery Mode allows artists who meet certain criteria and have a Spotify For Artists account to submit qualifying songs for Spotify’s in-house promotion services. A camera icon in the apps’ search fields lets other users point their device’s camera at the code, which takes them to the same content. In May 2017, Spotify introduced Spotify Codes for its mobile apps, a way for users to share specific artists, tracks, playlists or albums with other people. The company also introduced “Spotify Running”, a feature aimed at improving music while running with music matched to running tempo, and announced that podcasts and videos (“entertainment, news and clips”) would be coming to Spotify, along with “Spotify Originals” content.
This will grow their green energy profile by 40%, giving them an extra 1.6 gigawatt of clean energy, the company said. In September 2019, Google’s chief executive announced plans for a $2 billion wind and solar investment, the biggest renewable energy deal in corporate history. An average search uses only 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, so all global searches are only 12.5 million watts or 5% of the total electricity consumption by Google. Total carbon emissions for 2010 were just under 1.5 million metric tons, mostly due to fossil fuels that provide electricity for the data centers. The company’s fourth cable, named Grace Hopper, connects landing points in New York felice bet (US), Bude (UK) and Bilbao (Spain), and is expected to become operational in 2022.
Google around the globe
Google’s Global Offices sum a total of 86 locations worldwide, with 32 offices in North America, three of them in Canada and 29 in the United States, California being the state with the most Google’s offices with 9 in total including the Googleplex. In May 2015, Google announced its intention to create its own campus in Hyderabad, India. Recognized as one of the biggest ever commercial property acquisitions at the time of the deal’s announcement in January, Google submitted plans for the new headquarter to the Camden Council in June 2017. It also has product research and development operations in cities around the world, namely Sydney (birthplace location of Google Maps) and London (part of Android development). In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Pittsburgh, focusing on shopping-related advertisement coding and smartphone applications and programs. Called Google Hudson Square, the new campus is projected to more than double the number of Google employees working in New York City.
Enterprise services
The DoJ also sought a ban on Google re-entering the browser market for five years and restrictions on its investments in rival search or AI technologies. Google, which intended to appeal, argued that the proposals were too extreme, while also dealing with other antitrust cases involving its app store and advertising operations. On October 8, 2024, The U.S. government suggested it could request Google to divest parts of its business, such as the Chrome browser and Android, due to its alleged monopoly in online search.
In Spotify’s apps, music can be browsed or searched for via various parameters, such as artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label. Spotify also offers a proprietary protocol known as “Spotify Connect”, which lets users listen to music through a wide range of entertainment systems, including speakers, receivers, TVs, cars, and smartwatches. The company said users would be able to login into the main Spotify app with their Stations account and transfer their stations into Spotify. In November 2015, Spotify introduced a “Fan Insights” panel in limited beta form, letting artists and managers access data on monthly listeners, geographical data, demographic information, music preferences and more.
Premium-exclusive albums
In March 2017, Spotify announced a partnership with the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference for 2017, presenting specific content in special playlists through an SXSW hub in Spotify’s apps. Spotify stated that Sonalytic would be used to improve the company’s personalized playlists, better match songs with compositions, and improve the company’s publishing data system. In a comment to TechCrunch, Spotify said that Seed Scientific’s team would lead an advanced analytics unit within the company, focused on developing data services. In June 2015, Spotify announced they had acquired Seed Scientific, a data science consulting firm and analytics company.
Registrations surged following the release of the mobile service, leading Spotify to halt registration for the free service in September, returning the UK to an invitation-only policy. In February 2009, Spotify opened public registration for the free service tier in the United Kingdom. As of December 2023, Spotify was the 47th most-visited website in the world with 24.78% of its traffic coming from the United States followed by Brazil with 6.51% according to data provided by Semrush. It offers some social media features such as messaging, creating profiles, following friends, shared playlists, and creating listening parties called “Jams”. Operating as a freemium service, the basic features are free with advertisements and limited control, while additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. You can also control what data is saved in your account with easy on/off controls, and even delete your data by date, product, and topic.
The aim was to help users to listen to the music they want without information overload or spending time building their own playlists. Spotify gets its content from major record labels as well as independent artists and pays copyright holders royalties for streaming music. On October 6, 2025, Spotify announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring music and podcast recommendations inside ChatGPT, allowing Spotify users to discover and queue new music through conversations, rather than search.
Select albums would be available only on the Premium tier for a period of time, before general release. The Financial Times reported in March 2017 that, as part of its efforts to renegotiate new licensing deals with music labels, Spotify and major record labels had agreed that Spotify would restrict some newly released albums to its Premium tier, with Spotify receiving a reduction in royalty fees to do so. In countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Spotify registered a fall in users in late February, but it has seen a recovery. On 19 June 2018, XXXTentacion’s hit single “Sad!” broke Swift’s single-day streaming record, amassing 10.4 million streams the day after he was fatally shot in Florida.
On 26 March 2019, Spotify announced they would acquire another podcast network, Parcast. On 6 February 2019, Spotify acquired the podcast networks Gimlet Media and Anchor FM Inc., with the goal of establishing themselves as a leading figure in podcasting. This was followed in May 2017 with the acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Niland, which uses technology to improve personalisation and recommendation features for users.
Like HBO Max, YouTube, and Instagram which are also running ads from the campaign, Spotify defended the advertisements by stating they were part of a government campaign, which complied with its ad policies and stated that users could provide feedback or thumbs-down such ads. Some liberal users responded by cancelling their subscriptions and calling for a boycott. In July 2025, a leak containing the listening data of several politicians, journalists, and businesspeople, titled the Panama Playlists, was released online. According to journalist and author Liz Pelly, Spotify, “under the guise of AI-powered recommendations has developed a surveillance apparatus driven by emotion profiling and pseudoscience.”
In an effort to maintain the company’s unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer whose purpose was to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on. As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy known as Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Employees are split into six hierarchies based on experience and can range “from entry-level data center workers at level one to managers and experienced engineers at level six”. As of September 30, 2020,update Alphabet Inc. had 132,121 employees, of which more than 100,000 worked for Google. Its first on April 1, 2000, was Google MentalPlex which allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. From that point onward, Doodles have been organized and created by a team of employees termed “Doodlers”.
Additionally, Apple stated that they have attempted to work with Spotify to integrate the service better with Apple’s products, such as Siri and Apple Watch. Two days later, Apple responded, stating that the claim was misleading rhetoric and that Spotify wanted benefits of a free app without being a free app. In a further escalation of the dispute with Apple, on 13 March 2019, Spotify filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission over unfair app store practices. Spotify released the first version of its Apple Watch app in November 2018, allowing playback control of the iPhone via the watch. Furthermore, he stated that “There is nothing in Apple’s conduct that ‘amounts to a violation of applicable antitrust laws.’ Far from it. … I would be happy to facilitate an expeditious review and approval of your app as soon as you provide us with something that is compliant with the App Store’s rules”.