Spotify Is Collaborating With Facebook To Allow Users To Play Music, Podcasts From Facebook App
Whenever people think about music apps or music streaming services, Spotify is probably the first platform they think about. After all, considering the number of subscribers, it is the biggest music streaming service in the world. The company has reported a total of 345 million users out of whom 155 million users are subscribed to the premium subscription in 2020. In order to maintain the user base, Spotify also offers multiple plans to its users with different benefits. These plans are widespread in different regions and now Spotify is planning to increase the prices of most of these plans.
This popular music streaming service is now planning to step into live audio, hoping to capture the market on what could probably be its next big business. As of now, the company intends to hire more than 100 people to work on this initiative and has also started contacting people who can feature on exclusive shows. They want to make use of the market that has been mainstreamed by Discord and Clubhouse, which allows the users to participate in live audio chats, sort of like a 21st-century version of call-in radio shows.
Spotify had previously announced that it was buying Betty Labs, the company that owns the Locker Room app. This app is mainly used by sports journalists and fans use to discuss and analyse major games after they happen. It is notable that Spotify already runs the biggest on-demand music service in the world and they plan to control all aspects of online audio. The Swedish company has spent more than $1 billion for buying podcasting companies and adding more than 2 million podcasts to its platform in hopes of attracting new listeners and promote its advertising sales. Spotify also made the addition of audiobooks.
While Spotify is expanding on its plans, Apple recently announced that it plans on launching podcast subscriptions, that will allow the users to pay to unlock new content and also offer additional benefits like ad-free listening, marking itself as a fierce competitor for Spotify.
But there is another app that has been fighting Apple on a different issue, Facebook has also been at loggerheads with Apple. The reasons for this vary from privacy changes on iOS devices to the 30% fee levied on app developers to use the iPhone maker’s in-app purchase system.
Apple, on the other hand, claims that its App Store assisted Spotify to benefit from hundreds of millions of app downloads and eventually become Europe’s largest music streaming service. It would not have been an easy task without Apple.
Spotify officially announced recently that it has collaborated with Facebook in order to allow listeners to play music and podcasts straight from Facebook’s iOS and Android apps.
Even Facebook made an announcement last week that said that they intended to launch various audio products, including Clubhouse-style live audio rooms and a means for users to find and play podcasts.
Spotify announced that this new planned integration will be launched in 27 markets and will include countries like the U.S. and Canada. Some additional markets will also be set up in other countries in the coming month.
With this integration, Spotify’s paid users would be able to obtain full playback without advertisements while simultaneously using the Facebook app which will make it easy for them to be able to do other things while still listening to Spotify
As per the report by ‘The Verge’, along with the collaboration, Spotify will be announcing some pricing change to some countries located in Asia and South America. Indian users of Spotify will have to wait for now to know whether the company will hike the price in the Indian market as well or not.