Spotify Newsletter #107

Your Weekly Dose of Spotify News

Apr 29

Hello! Welcome to the latest issue of the Spotify Newsletter!

The faux outrage directed at Spotify and Joe Rogan a few weeks back - driven by ignorant, anti-free speech artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and exacerbated by morally bankrupt hucksters in the media - apparently didn't succeed in slowing Spotify's subscriber growth.

The company’s first-quarter results, while not A+ across the board, still managed to elicit many smiles across Wall Street as the audio giant exceeded forecasts.

If you recall, the latest episode of 'the world is ending' was set off by cries against Rogan for having the audacity to have guests on his show presenting their own opinions on the vaccine. This was quickly labeled 'vaccine misinformation' by a motley crew of bozo entertainers and media phonies who couldn't sleep at night knowing someone, somewhere had a differing opinion on a serious topic.

There was a lot of heated chatter about censorship, and freedom of speech, and streaming music companies from hell, but in the end Spotify wobbled slightly, yet held tough in the face of lunatic opinion-makers coast to coast.

Rogan revealed that he actually gained subscribers as a result of the controversy.

The overblown and silly 'Delete Spotify' movement didn’t last very long and clearly didn’t cause any lasting damage - save for a few less artist catalogs available to stream.

The good news about Rogan, along with another positive quarter for Spotify, proved that common sense won the day.

It's a bummer I can't stream Neil Young’s music on Spotify, but it brings a smile to my face knowing this hypocrite stomped his feet, ran off with his music and, in the end, most sane people just shrugged, shook their heads at the nonsense, and focused on more important issues of the day.

Whatever (fake) drama there was surrounding Rogan and Spotify proved to be a big waste of time - yet sadly burned weeks of media bandwidth that could have been better spent elsewhere.

Drinks all around. Another win for the good guys.

★In the SPOTlight★

⭐️ Spotify’s subscribers rise to 182M

Spotify had previously expected to hit 183 million premium subscribers this quarter but slightly missed this target as a result of withdrawing from the Russian market. “Excluding the impact of our exit from Russia, subscriber growth exceeded expectations,” the company said in its press release.

⭐️ Spotify is finally building a tips economy for artists

For the past couple of years, the music industry has been watching the emerging tips economies on platforms like Twitch and YouTube, and wondering how (or if) they might be applied to the music streaming ecosystem.

⭐️ Spotify launches new fund to support independent open source projects

The funds will provide financial support to developers and help them maintain their projects, including fixing security vulnerabilities. Spotify will target projects that are independent and actively maintained. The company also noted that nominations are informed by dependency data across its repositories. Projects selected for the fund also cannot be run by people employed at Spotify.