In July 2025, several artists joined a boycott of Spotify because Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek raised another $600 million in support of German defense company Helsing through his investment fund. On 26 January, Neil Young removed his music from Spotify after they refused to remove the podcast. This policy was revoked in June because the company deemed the original wording to be too “vague”; they stated that “Across all genres, our role is not to regulate artists. Therefore, we are moving away from implementing a policy around artist conduct”.
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In June 2022, Spotify acquired Sonantic, a synthetic voice and video developer. Also the same month, Spotify bought the exclusive rights to the Call Her Daddy podcast. In November 2020, Spotify announced plans to acquire Megaphone from The Slate Group for US$235 million.
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In February 2021, Spotify announced their plans to introduce a HiFi subscription, to offer listening in high fidelity, lossless sound quality. This eligibility rule only applies to royalties for sound recordings, not musical compositions. Some of the premium options users may choose from include individual, duo, family, and student.
In November 2021, Spotify launched the City and Local Pulse charts, aimed at representing the songs listened to in major cities around the world. The Group Session feature was later expanded to allow any Premium user to join/participate in a Group Session, with a special link the host can send to participants. Rap Caviar had 10.9 million followers by 2019, becoming one of Spotify’s Top 5 playlists. Spotify provides artists taking part in RADAR with resources and access to integrated marketing opportunities to help them boost their careers, in addition to expanded reach and exposure to 178 markets worldwide. In March 2021, Spotify announced an upcoming option for higher-resolution sound, Spotify Hi-Fi. Users find the relevant content to share and press a “soundwave-style barcode” on the display.
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In January 2016, Spotify and music annotation service Genius formed a partnership, bringing annotation information from Genius into infocards presented while songs are playing in Spotify. In December 2015, Spotify debuted Spotify Wrapped, a program that creates playlists based on each user’s most listened-to songs from the year. The applications provided features such as synchronised lyrics, music reviews, and song recommendations.
- Users can create, edit and share playlists, share tracks on social media, and make playlists with other users.
- Rap Caviar had 10.9 million followers by 2019, becoming one of Spotify’s Top 5 playlists.
- However, after talking it out and renewing the contracts between the two, Spotify later announced that they had reached an agreement with Kakao Entertainment, allowing their content to be available once again on the platform across the globe.
- In May 2023, Spotify removed tens of thousands of songs, roughly 7% of the tracks uploaded by the Boomy, due to suspected “artificial streaming”, the practice of using online bots to inflate the listening statistics.
- In September 2018, Spotify announced “Upload Beta”, allowing artists to upload directly to the platform instead of going through a distributor or record label.
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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”. Listeners will be able to link their Spotify to ChatGPT, asking it to find anything from a specific playlist to a podcast topic. In May 2020, Spotify teamed up with ESPN and Netflix to curate podcasts around their Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance, and in September, Spotify signed a deal with Chernin Entertainment to produce movies and TV shows.
The feature is powered by lyrics providers Musixmatch and PetitLyrics ja (only in Japan). The following November, the company began rolling out a web player, with a similar design to its computer programs, but without the requirement of any installation. In June 2012, Soundrop became the first Spotify app to attract major funding, receiving $3 million (equivalent to $4,039,000 in 2024) from Spotify investor Northzone.
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 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.
Users can add tracks to a “Collection” section of the app, rather than adding them to a specific playlist. In April 2012, Spotify introduced a “Spotify Play Button”, an embeddable music player that can be added to blogs, websites, or social media profiles, that lets visitors listen to a specific song, playlist, or album without leaving the page. 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. In Spotify’s apps, music can be browsed or searched for via various parameters, such as artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label. Offline Music listening is possible on watchOS and more recently added to Google’s WearOS for those with premium subscriptions.
- In November 2020, Spotify announced plans to acquire Megaphone from The Slate Group for US$235 million.
- In December, Spotify and Tencent’s music arm, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), agreed to swap stakes and make an investment in each other’s music businesses.
- In July 2025, a leak containing the listening data of several politicians, journalists, and businesspeople, titled the Panama Playlists, was released online.
- The feature is powered by lyrics providers Musixmatch and PetitLyrics ja (only in Japan).
- In April, Spotify announced a discounted entertainment bundle with video-on-demand provider Hulu, which included discounted rates for university students.
- The company also announced an expansion of its book catalogue to 250,000 books.
It also said that Apple believed Spotify users on the app store were Apple’s customers and not Spotify’s. In March 2023, Spotify announced a partnership with Patreon, which Spotify claimed would “enable creators to expand their creative business through direct payments from fans, and allow fans to listen to their Patreon content on Spotify”. In May 2022, Spotify announced a partnership with the online game platform and game creation system Roblox, the partnership saw Spotify as the first streaming brand to have a presence within the game with the launch of “Spotify Island”.
Is there any way to scroll to the top/start of messages of a Telegram group via the Windows desktop app? I’m not using the Telegram application for PC. 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 March 2016, Spotify launched six playlists branded as Fresh Finds, including the main playlist and Fire Emoji, Basement, Hiptronix, Six Strings, and Cyclone (hip-hop, electronic, pop, guitar-driven, and experimental music respectively). In September 2025, Lossless audio, which allows Spotify users to listen to songs in very high quality, became available through Spotify premium. Months later, Spotify tested its own version of stories (the sharing format popularized by social apps) known as “Storyline”, and the focus is on allowing artists to share their own insights, inspiration, details about their frostybet casino creative process or other meanings behind the music. 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.
Of that amount, about 58.5% of its total revenue goes to the owners of sound recording copyrights, and the other 12% goes to the owners of musical compositions. In December 2013, the company launched a new website, “Spotify for Artists”, explaining its business model and revenue data. There was no provision regarding worker ownership of content created, one of the initial demands. In February 2020, Spotify announced it was acquiring The Ringer, and inheriting the previously established union. One month after Spotify acquired Gimlet Media in February 2019, 75% of staff at Gimlet Media went public, signing union cards and seeking voluntary recognition. Moreover, they are asking for a fairer redistribution system, as smaller artists are disproportionately disadvantaged on Spotify.
In 2024, Spotify Wrapped, which has become a key marketing strategy for the company, was criticised for appearing to rely on AI-generated content and producing uninteresting insights. Other artists and podcasters, such as Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, Brené Brown, and Crosby, Stills, & Nash, also announced a boycott of Spotify. He explained, “An extension of the internet radio craze of the early 2000s, Spotify would license content from record labels, and then support artists as people listened to their music.” In March 2021, David Dayen argued in The American Prospect that musicians were in peril due to monopolies in streaming services like Spotify. 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. According to some computer science and music experts, various music communities are often ignored or overlooked by music streaming services such as Spotify.