On the heels of Google wading into the music streaming waters with its Google Play Music All Access service, with a $10 fee for all-you-can-eat streamed tracks, the indie music agency Merlin has today published results of a recent survey of its 20,000-label member group, plus an analysis of 6.5 billion music streams over the last year, which spell out where the money is coming from today. → Read More
Spotify has acquired Tunigo, one of the many music apps that are powered by its API, AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka reported today. The details of the deal aren’t being made public, but the startup will move its staff to either Spotify’s Stockholm or New York offices, as the talent is folded into Spotify’s larger team, Spotify confirmed via email. → Read More
Asia’s fragmented music fanbase and subscription habits may stand between Spotify and its total domination of the region, or at least so its competitors hope. The music streaming service recently launched in the Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. When we spoke to Spotify’s head of new markets in Asia-Pacific, Sriram Krishnan, he was evasive on how extensive the… → Read More
Back in December 2012, music streaming service Spotify provided an update on how it was going to double down on social recommendations to increase music listening on its platform by launching two new features, Follow and Discover. While the Follow feature, aimed at friends, started to get rolled out in March and April, it turns out that Spotify has also been rolling out the Discover feature. → Read More
Last week, we told you about an open source alternative to music services such as Rdio and Spotify, called Napster.fm. The name alone got our attention, and after using it, there were a few features that were reminiscent of its predecessor, which made it even cooler. Today, the service is changing its name to Peer.fm to steer clear of legal issues, since Best Buy acquired the service and brand and… → Read More
Music streaming service Spotify has finally come to Asia. Today, it announced that it would be launching in the cities of Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Its premium service, priced at $9.99 per month in the US, will also be a little cheaper in the region, with Malaysians getting the lowest price. Update: after turning on Asia, Spotify posted on its blog that it now has also turned on services… → Read More
Since we have nothing much to go on other than a static landing page for Twitter #music, some folks didfurther inspection within the CSS on the login page, and certain features and integrations became apparent. We’ve reached out to Twitter to confirm what we’ve seen, and we’ll update our story once we hear back. Until then, here’s what can be taken from the styling code… → Read More
I love you Spotify, but you’re freaking me out. Today you showed off your first television commercial. It’s supposed to introduce the mainstream world to the wonder of listening to almost any song ever on demand. Yet with a useful product to sell and all the emotional resonance of music to lean on, the ad comes off vague, haunting, and devoid of soul. So much so I couldn’t help but parody it. → Read More
Spotify today confirmed to TechCrunch that it has finally completed the rollout of its new social following features that model music discovery after offline behavior — where you find songs through tuned-in friends and influencers. Here’s our hands-on demo and review of Spotify move to discovery through actual humans instead of algorithms. → Read More
Freetards rejoice. Spotify has ditched the 5 play limit imposed on UK users of the free version of its music streaming service, Spotify Free, which until today kicked in after six months usage and meant that no one track could be streamed more than 5 times — it would become greyed out after the limit had been reached. → Read More
Music streaming may not be making much money right now, but that’s not stopping music streaming hopefuls from trying. The latest development comes from Deezer, which is announcing a series of new services based around its APIs to drive more users to its service. They include an affiliate marketing program; more social and gaming integration; and the ability to port apps made for the Deezer App… → Read More
The land grab for online music streaming services continues. On the heels of reports that Spotify is planning to take its web-based music player global to complement its desktop and mobile apps, competitor Rdio is extending its own browser-based music-streaming service to seven more markets. Today, the company — founded and backed in 2010 by Skype/Kazaa/Joost co-founder Janus Friis — announced… → Read More
Fresh on the heels of a Windows Phone 8 launch, Spotify has just released a major update to its iOS app, which revamps the interface quite a bit.
The latest version is dubbed Spotify 0.6.0, and it cleans up the interface while adding easier navigation for users. There’s a new sidebar which lets users swipe left and right to access further information and an all-inclusive menu for What’s New… → Read More
7digital, the streaming music company that offers a direct-to-consumer service but also partners with the likes of Samsung and Pure to power respectively its Music Hub and radio music services on connected devices like smartphones, tablets and music players, today announced a significant international expansion into the emerging markets of India, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and South Africa, where… → Read More
Spotify has just landed on the Windows Phone 8 platform, giving Microsoft’s mobile users access to one of the world’s largest music streaming platforms.
Before today, the app was only available on iOS, Android, Symbian, and to legacy Windows Phone users, but Spotify has spread the love around to the newest version of the Windows Phone software. → Read More
Live concert notification and recommendation app Bandsintown just released a Spotify app to make it easier to query its concert database. Whenever you are listening to something interesting on Spotify, just drag the track on Bandsintown’s icon in order to get upcoming tour dates. → Read More
Deezer, the music streaming service which raised $130 million this fall to expand its business internationally, is today making good on those ambitions with launches in twenty-two new regions across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Brazil. Included in the rollout are the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, among others. The company is also touting its claim to fame as the… → Read More
Spotify today took another small step to tighten up competition in the European market today: it signed a deal with Orange to offer unlimited music services as part of “Orange Young,” a special subscription that Orange has devised specifically for the under-27 market in Switzerland. The tariff also includes unlimited calls and texts as well as mobile data allowances, with deals starting at $20 per… → Read More
ShareMyPlaylists, the Spotify community and playlist sharing site, has released an API so that developers can get access to its treasure trove of playlist data — 120,000 playlists, referencing a total of 20 million tracks — and start to build apps or integrations on top of the service. The news will be formally announced at Music Hack Day Stockholm this weekend, an event that the company is… → Read More
At this point it’s probably easier to keep count of the devices that Spotify hasn’t weaseled its way onto, but you can hardly blame the company for hustling. Today, Spotify has announced that it has brought its streaming music service to yet another hardware line — users of TiVo’s Premiere series DVRs can now get their Katy Perry fix without having to leave their television’s comforting embrace. → Read More
Last.fm, an early mover in the streaming music business, is scaling back some of its operations, and putting others behind a paywall, in a bid to cut costs and make more money out of its existing business, the company has announced. → Read More
“After I left Facebook and became an investor, I started looking at every single music service out there,” said Sean Parker today.
It was a side comment, made at the Spotify event in New York, as he shared a stage with long-time adversary, Lars Ulrich from Metallica. The two announced that the band’s music was finally coming to the platform. (More on that here.) → Read More
Spotify employees in the crowd at its New York City press event are chatting about the influencer following system its about to launch, confirming my scoop from late November. Founder Daniel Ek announced Spotify now has 20 million active users, 5 million paid subscribers, and has paid out a half billion dollars to artists’ record labels. It also launched Instant Preview which gives you a one-click… → Read More
In the post-FM era of streaming music, anyone can be a DJ. Spotify wants to provide the audience. That’s why, industry sources confirm, Spotify will launch an enhanced influencer following system at simultaneous events in New York and London on December 6th. Spotify will start recommending you follow expert listeners, celebrities, and big name artists. It’ll even have a superstar musician on… → Read More
What’s the secret to staying fresh, lean and mean when you’re a hot tech company on a fast growth trajectory? A fascinating document brought to our attention today today by Andrew Mager, hacker advocate at Spotify, answers that question in some detail by telling us how the music streaming juggernaut does it: by dividing up its business into small clusters — which it calls ‘squads’ — and running… → Read More
It’s speedy, and for a streaming music service like Spotify making the jump from desktop software to the browser, that’s of the utmost importance. This is just an early beta of what will rollout next year, so I’ll forgive the missing features and say I was impressed with the feel. But discovery still has a long way to go to unlock the potential of near infinite music. → Read More
The music streaming juggernaut that is Spotify continues to gain momentum, although today was possibly more of a gentle acceleration than a turbo charge: today the company quietly launched its service live in Ireland and Luxembourg — two markets that may not be known for being music streaming powerhouses but are significant all the same for filling out the startup’s European footprint. (And, of… → Read More
Editor’s note: Peter Arvai, founder and CEO of Prezi, is working to help people share ideas.
Just months before Twitter launched in 2006, a company launched in Helsinki, Finland — the land of Nokia, ruler of mobile phones. The company’s idea was simple: Make it easy to publish short messages via mobile phones. Ring a bell? For the Internet-savvy community in Northern Europe, it was Jaiku… → Read More
WiMP, the Norwegian music streaming service owned by Aspiro, has announced that it is expanding into Poland, stepping on the toes of European competitor Deezer, the other major player operating in the country.
The move also sees WiMP set up a local office in Warsaw, while (impressively) the company has recruited ex-Head of Digital at Universal Music Polska, Adrian Ciepichal, as Polish General… → Read More
We are still waiting for official word on when Spotify will make the move to a browser-based version, or port its App Center to its mobile app. But in the meantime, third parties continue to build out their presence on Spotify’s platform — perhaps a sign of more activity coming soon. The latest of these is Soundrop, a creator of listening rooms and social-jukebox-style services (a la… → Read More
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