Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek presenting at the company’s annual Stream On event.
Spotify held its annual Stream On event in Los Angeles earlier today (March 8), and it was chock full of announcements, stars, and reveals that musicians and the industry in general are sure to take notice of.
The event serves as a platform for the company to showcase its latest updates and achievements while giving users a glimpse of what to expect in the future. It’s something of a mix between a TV network’s upfront and Apple’s
During this year’s event, Spotify announced for the first time that it has surpassed half a billion monthly average users–a significant milestone for the company and proof of its dominance in the industry.
Perhaps most notably, Spotify unveiled a new homepage layout for mobile users. MusicAlly writer Stuart Dredge noticed his app had already been updated and provided an early look at this redesign, noting that it bears some resemblance to TikTok’s discovery section. The update has been in development for some time–it was first noticed back in 2021–and will be rolled out to users in waves soon.
In addition to the homepage redesign, Spotify shared other significant updates that fit into three categories: Discovery by Listeners, Tools for Musicians, and Podcasts.
Discovery By Listeners
According to Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s Co-President and Chief Product & Technology Officer (in a release shared by the company), “Spotify recommendations drive close to half of all users’ streams,” so clearly discovery is one of the most important topics to discuss for the streamer.
Today, the company unveiled a suite of exciting updates to help users discover new music and enhance their listening experience.
- One of the most significant additions is Smart Shuffle, a brand new feature that allows users to inject previously-unknown, complementary music into their existing playlists. Something just like this already exists in a simple form at the bottom of user-made playlists, but this renewed focus also lets users explore visual and audio previews of playlists, albums, podcast episodes, and audiobooks, ensuring that they always have something new to listen to.
- Spotify’s search function has also received an upgrade with the introduction of new feeds for discovery. Users can now scroll through a collection of short Canvas visuals from their favorite genres. Canvas clips are the videos that artists use to enhance their musical content.
- Another exciting update is the ability to preview tracks on some of Spotify’s most popular playlists, such as New Music Friday, Discover Weekly, and Release Radar. This feature allows users to get a taste of the music before committing to a full listen, saving them time and helping them discover new tracks more efficiently.
Tools for Musicians
Making life–and work–easier for musicians is also important to Spotify for a variety of reasons, and there were quite a few updates and new features introduced during the Stream On event that will directly benefit the creators who power the site. Conveniently, each one has a name, which makes it easy to track (and write about).
- Marquee – According to Spotify, Marquee–a full-screen, sponsored recommendation promoted by artists to fans who have identified an interest in one artist’s work–is 10 times more efficient at getting people to stream music than the ads featured on the most popular social media platforms.
- Discovery Mode – Already available in Spotify for Artists, Discovery Mode lets artists and their teams pick which tracks they should focus on promoting. The company is sharing this to more acts, and the real benefit is that the streamer’s all-powerful algorithm takes it into account.
- Showcase – Currently still in testing, Showcase will serve as something of an advertisement that shows fans an artist’s music, whether brand new or years old. It brings these songs and albums to the redesigned home feed.
- Concert and Merch Discovery – While fans can already learn about upcoming concerts and see and link out to buy merchandise, Spotify is prioritizing this in a way it hasn’t before. This will hopefully help artists make more money through the platform, though not with an increase in streaming payout rates.
- Fans First – This marketing program is set to expand to be usable by more artists. Currently, it allows musicians to reach out to their biggest and most important listeners with emails and notifications about everything from new releases to concerts to sales on merchandise.
- Clips – Just as they currently can with Canvas videos, artists will now be able to post 30-second visuals to their profiles and album pages.
- Countdown Pages – These are all about anticipation. Countdowns hype up new releases and merch drops, allowing fans to pre-save and pre-order.
Podcasts
Having already spent hundreds of millions of dollars–including a nine-figure sum to Joe Rogan (who appeared at the Stream On event) alone–to become a serious player in the podcast industry, Spotify is continuing its commitment to the medium. Soon, Spotify and Patreon will integrate, meaning fans can support podcasters directly.
The tech and music behemoth also announced a slew of new series coming to the platform, as well as a handful of features that will impact podcasters and their teams.
- The company is focusing on further introducing exclusive features like interactive episodes and video podcasting, which will now be more widely available to users.
- Coming to Spotify for Podcasters is Megaphone, the platform’s hosting feature for its own enterprise publishing solution.
- In an effort to enhance the podcast listening experience, Spotify will be introducing Autoplay for Podcasts. Once an episode of a show concludes, the platform will automatically start playing another that is personalized to the user’s preferences and interests.
On top of new podcast-related features, Spotify also shared a number of figures and updates connected to its in-house Spotify Audience Network (SPAN), which connects podcasters and advertisers in an effort to make podcasting more of a moneymaker for creators. According to the company, it seems to be working beautifully.
- In just under a year, monthly payouts to publishers who opted into the SPAN program surged by 50%. On top of that, advertiser participation climbed by 500%.
- In the last two years, independent and enterprise podcasters joined the platform at a rate of over 700%.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2023/03/08/spotifys-stream-on-updates-event-heres-whats-coming-to-the-streaming-music-platform-in-2023/