Spotify has a long time been a platform that evolves faster than our personal musical tastes. He updated his iconic year-end Envelope promotion and added a AI DJ in the last few months alone. But this week, the streaming giant announced what its CEO, Daniel Ek, called the biggest change to the platform in a decade: a redesign to turn the app that started out as a place for music into one that highlights video.
At first glance, this looks like another attempt by a social app to cannibalize its competitors in the same way Instagram emulated Snapchat and then TikTok for its own gains. Spotify now offers different feeds for discovering songs, podcasts, and audiobooks, sporting a look that’s half TikTok’s endless scroll and half Instagram stories. They display videos paired with music or podcasts and also sample audio content. Some have live captions that grab attention as they float across the screen, and audiobook previews can last up to five minutes.
While Spotify may look and sound more like TikTok now, it likely has different intentions. Instead of funneling an endless stream of content to users’ phones, it’s designed with the goal of letting them preview new content they’ll want to save, or at least sit back for longer. According to Spotify announcement, it contains data showing that listeners “become engaged fans” after previewing content. Videos previously accompanied songs and podcasts on the service, but this revamp puts them faster in front of users, along with catchy audio clips.
“An audio service should get people interested in audio immediately,” says Simon Dyson, music and digital audio analyst at Omdia. “If they can get something to play audio instantly, then you’re instantly hooked. If [Spotify] has its algorithm, you will be engaged instantly.
Spotify’s playlists have long been curated for music discovery, but this new decision makes that more immediate; Scroll through the music stream and you’ll be able to hear snippets of songs. That may mean less skipping through shuffled playlists. Such a move could help Spotify stand out in the audio streaming industry, says Dyson. And it comes as the growth of streaming evolves.
The market has reached a saturation point, and Spotify has seen its market share slowly shrink, although it remains the most popular service. Still, it added 33 million monthly active users in the final months of 2022 and saw revenue grow 18% year over year, with podcasts leading its ad revenue gains.
Spotify tried to stand out by investing hundreds of millions of dollars in podcasts, including a deal with Joe Rogan would be worth more than $200 million. The company expects podcasts to have a higher profit margin than music. So designing the app in a way that could direct more people to them seems like an inevitable change. But Spotify canceled several original shows in late 2022 after making ambitious investments in companies like Gimlet and Parcast.
