The heart of the internet

User growth continued, reaching 20 million total active users, including five million paying customers globally and one million paying customers in the United States, in December 2012. In February 2017, Spotify announced the expansion of its United States operations in Lower Manhattan, New York City, at 4 World Trade Center, adding approximately 1,000 new jobs and retaining 832 existing positions. Later that same year, in March, Spotify removed all limits on the free service tier indefinitely, including mobile devices. In January 2012, the free trial periods began to expire, limiting users to ten hours of streaming each month and five plays per song. Spotify launched in the United States in July 2011, and offered a six-month, ad-supported trial period, during which new users could listen to an unlimited amount of music for free. Ek first had the idea for Spotify around 2002 when peer-to-peer music service Napster shut down and another illegal site Kazaa became popular.
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. The post stated that all free members would be limited to ten hours of music streaming per month, and in addition, individual tracks were limited to five plays. Spotify has experimented with different limitations to users’ listening on the Free service tier. Users can refine playlists with additional instructions, such as « more upbeat » or « happier songs ». The tool allows users to generate personalized playlists from text prompts describing genres, moods, artists, activities, or creative ideas like animals, movie characters, colors, or emojis. 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.

Demus: Easy Music Streaming

• The primary point of criticism centers around what artists, music creators, and the media have described as « unsustainable » compensation.
• In December 2015, Spotify debuted Spotify Wrapped, a program that creates playlists based on each user’s most listened-to songs from the year.
• 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 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 April 2017, they acquired Mediachain, a blockchain startup that had been developing a decentralized database system for managing attribution, and other metadata for media.
• Billboard estimated that the changes will pay songwriters and publishers $150 million less « from premium, duo and family plans for the first 12 months that this is in effect, compared to what they would have earned if these three subscriptions were never bundled. »

Spotify gets its content from major record labels as well as independent artists and pays copyright holders royalties for streaming music. 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. 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. 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. 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.

• In Spotify’s apps, music can be browsed or searched for via various parameters, such as artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label.
• In February 2018, Spotify integrated with the gaming-oriented voice chat service Discord on desktop clients, allowing users to display their currently playing song as a rich presence on their profile, and invite other users with Spotify Premium to group « listening parties ».
• 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.
• Spotify first announced a voice-activated music-streaming gadget for cars in May 2019.
• In February 2021, Spotify announced their plans to introduce a HiFi subscription, to offer listening in high fidelity, lossless sound quality.
• Users can add tracks to a « Collection » section of the app, rather than adding them to a specific playlist.

Telegram Web « A version »? Can’t find anything about it. Apparently identical to version Z

Additional features include the ability to get « verified » status with a blue checkmark on an artist’s profile, receiving artist support from Spotify, customising the profile page with photos and promoting a certain song as their « pick ». In April 2017, the panel was upgraded to leave beta status, renamed as « Spotify for Artists », and opened to all artists and managers. In March 2009, Spotify began offering music downloads in the United Kingdom, France, and Spain. The company was, according to TechCrunch, planning to launch on the stock market in 2017, but in 2017 it was seen as planning on doing the IPO in 2018 to « build up a better balance sheet and work on shifting its business model to improve its margins ». In April 2015, Spotify began another round of fundraising, with a report from The Wall Street Journal stating it was seeking $400 million (equivalent to $515,700,000 in 2024), which would value the company at $8.4 billion (equivalent to $10,831,000,000 in 2024). In February 2010, Spotify received a small investment from Founders Fund, where board member Sean Parker was recruited to assist Spotify in « winning the labels over in the world’s largest music market ».
Worldwide, 30,000 musicians have joined the organization UnionOfMusicians (UMAW). Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it temporarily closed its office in Russia and indefinitely suspended all of its services in the country. The company is incorporated in Luxembourg as Spotify Technology S.A., and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with offices in 16 countries around the world. For example, Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road and Doja Cat’s Say So started their popularity through Tik Tok but through Spotify playlists had their popularity accelerated.

Direct public offering

In February 2020, Spotify announced it would be featuring new songwriter pages and ‘written by’ playlists. In June 2017, Variety reported that Spotify would announce « Secret Genius », a new initiative aimed at highlighting songwriters and producers, and the effect those people have on the music industry and the artists’ careers. On 1 July 2019, Spotify deprecated the program and announced plans to stop accepting direct uploads by the end of that month and eventually remove all content uploaded in this manner. Uploading was free and artists received 100% of the revenue from songs they uploaded; artists were able to control when their release went public. The feature was rolled out to a small number of US-based artists by invitation only. In September 2018, Spotify announced « Upload Beta », allowing artists to upload directly to the platform instead of going through a distributor or record label.

Platform

On 5 February 2020, Spotify announced its intent to acquire Bill Simmons’ sports and pop culture blog and podcast network The Ringer for an undisclosed amount. 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.

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 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.
In February 2009, Spotify opened public registration for the free service tier in the United Kingdom. Privacy practices may vary based, for example, on the features you use or your age. The developer, Spotify, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below.
This approach is not intended to raise fresh capital, but to let investors get their returns. 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. A month later, Spotify announced that « Lean On » by Major Lazer and DJ Snake featuring MØ was its most-streamed song of all time with over 525 million streams worldwide. 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.
Spotify’s terms and conditions do not permit users to reverse-engineer the application. Ek stated that « We’re giving people the best free music experience in the history of the smartphone. » This limitation does frostybet casino not apply to Android and iOS tablets, or computers. In March 2013, the five-play individual track limit was removed for users in the United Kingdom, and media reports stated that users in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand never had the limit in the first place. In April 2011, Spotify announced via a blog post that they would drastically cut the amount of music that free members could access, effective 1 May 2011. In April 2025, Spotify expanded its AI Playlist beta feature to Premium listeners in over 40 new English-speaking markets, including countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. Instead, a 30% commission is applied to recording royalties generated from all streams of selected songs in Discovery Mode contexts—Spotify Radio and Autoplay.
Curate the best playlists and stream millions of free songs, albums and original podcasts on your mobile or tablet. With the Spotify app, you can explore an extensive library of music and podcasts for free. Anyone can view, but only approved users can contribute Pelly advocated for a move away from the current royalty model that says the artists who people listen to the most should make the most money toward a more generalized approach where the decision for who gets paid rests with industry or government bodies, not audiences.

Trending Music Player

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.
On 19 November 2019, Spotify announced the acquisition of the exclusive rights to The Last Podcast on the Left. Spotify intended to use MightyTV to improve its advertising efforts on the free tier of service. In March 2017, Spotify acquired Sonalytic, an audio detection startup, for an undisclosed amount of money.
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.