Having strengthened its autonomy by investing in itself, Spotify has announced the first “spring cleaning”, envisaging the imminent “shutdown” of its lightened spin-off Spotify Stations.
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After some important executive farewells in its podcast sector, and the launch of a virtual island in the Roblox video game, the Swedish streaming Spotify has announced several news, including the closure of an experiment that perhaps has paid less than expected.
If Elon Musk is investing heavily in Twitter to gain control, Spotify is investing in itself. In the past few hours, in fact, the co-founder of the platform, Daniel Ek, announced – as a demonstration that the best days for the platform have not yet arrived – that he had invested 50 million dollars in Spotify shares, with a consequent increase 3% of its share value which, during trading, reached $ 108.98 per share. Even earlier, last August, the Swedish streaming had revealed that it would spend $ 1 billion in the coming years to buy back its shares.
The second novelty related to Spotify is more tangible, in the sense that it concerns end users. As perhaps (not) known, in 2018 Spotify launched a lightened spin-off on Android, Spotify Stations, which the following year also arrived on iOS, benefiting US users in June 2019, with the aim of allowing you to listen. your favorite music in a simplified way: specifically, as soon as Stations was started, various playlists automatically played, including some popular pre-compiled ones such as Release Radar and Discover Weekly, without the possibility that the user could choose specific artists or songs to include. On the other hand, users could exchange their favorite playlists and, if they left and re-entered the app, playback would resume where it left off previously.
As time went by, Spotify continued to invest in playlists by creating personalized radio stations based on artists and playlists for people to drive, with music and news mixes ideal for this target (albeit lacking in weather and traffic alerts). Consequently, it was no longer considered necessary to carry on the experimentation of Spotify Stations which, as communicated by the platform, will be closed on May 16th (with the app that has however already been removed from the Android Play Store and the App Store. of iOS).
The reason for this closure is that, of the many tests that Spotify conducts, some pave the way for a broader user experience, while others only serve to learn new things, as it was for Stations which, however, will not leave their own. dry-mouth fans, as they will be able to transfer their favorite playlists and benefit from a similar radio experience within the standard app.