Spotify is making the biggest changes to its app in more than 10 years, releasing a new homepage format that is supposed to make it easier to find music but more so resembles Instagram or TikTok rather than a music app.
Key Details
- As of 2023, Spotify is the largest music streaming service in the world, with 489 million active users and more than half of those being premium paid subscribers.
- Spotify holds 30.5% of the market share, followed by Apple Music with 13.7%, Tencent Music at 13.4%, and Amazon Music at 13.4%, according to Statista data.
- In 2021, Spotify began investing in more than just music putting $1 billion into podcasts but only receiving $215 in revenue.
- In the summer of 2022, the company took it a step further, investing more than $100 million in audiobooks.
Why it’s news
Music streaming service Spotify is looking to become an all-in-one app for music, audiobooks, podcasts, and videos, and its first step—launching a new home page.
Spotify recently announced at its Steam On Event that it is making the biggest change to its app in more than 10 years. The company is redesigning its homepage to make it easier for listeners to find new music and videos to watch.
The new design focuses more on images and videos, resembling an Instagram or TikTok feed rather than the app’s usual page filled with album covers and playlist suggestions.
The feed will be an endless page that users can scroll vertically through. It will be filled with videos and albums that automatically play so users can hear a bit of a playlist or video before committing fully to watching it.
Spotify’s hope for this new feature is for users to find interesting new podcasts and audiobooks more efficiently, thus expanding the number of listeners to those sectors and paying off on the company’s large investments.
The company is not only curating itself for listeners but for creators too. In 2021, Spotify CEO Daniel EK said that he hoped to have more than 50 million “audio creators” on the platform. With more creators comes more content to be pushed with this new video-centered homepage and an easier way for the creators to turn a profit.
“The world today pulls us in a million different directions,” says Co-President Gustav Söderström. “So the most important thing we, at Spotify, can do for creators is to reduce the distance between their art and the people who love it … or who would love it as soon as they discovered it.”
Spotify is excited about the new app layout and will start rolling out the new homepage in the upcoming days.