Music streaming services have become a large part of how we discover new music, how we listen to music and allows us to curate our music into playlists. From Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Pandora, Ra.dio, mix radio and even SoundCloud, millions of users all over the world are trooping to these services to savour their music tastes. We here at Techweez unanimously settled on Spotify as our office favorite and even created our first official playlist and our holiday playlists for you.
Spotify has been able to amass 75 million users globally, including 20 million subscribers paying the premium package. According to Wallstreet Journal, the streaming service plans to begin roll-out of its video offering on its Android app starting this week, followed by the iOS app by the end of next week in the U.S., the U.K, Germany and Sweden. The roll-out will also include podcasts and will carry content from providers including ESPN, Comedy Central, the BBC, Vice Media and Maker Studios. The content will initially include video snippets with plans to have the first original, music-themed series specifically for Spotify.
Spotify plans on presenting contextually relevant videos—based on the kind of music people listen to or Web videos that are simply tied to music aimed at getting users interested. The service still wants to remain a music streaming service at core which means they will be compartmentalizing video content and creating programming packages, like “News of the Week” according to WSJ. The service which is yet to become profitable spends 70% of its revenues in payouts to music right holders such as record labels, publishers, artists and distributors, pays artists for their music based on per stream metrics with artists earning between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream. It will be interesting to see how the service loops in the content provider regards to content licensing.
