Here we are ….. Let’s go! 😃

A quick zigzag across the announcements, made at the company’s “Stream On” conference.

One of the key highlights was the news the audio behemoth is refreshing its home page with a vertical feed that is meant to better integrate Spotify’s offerings across music, podcasts, videos and audiobooks.

"This marks the biggest change Spotify has undergone since we introduced mobile 10 years ago," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said at the event.

⭐️ A brand new version of Spotify is being unveiled to millions of subscribers on Wednesday, marking the largest change to the platform since it became available on phones more than a decade ago.

⭐️ Spotify Technology said on Wednesday it would roll out new features like smart shuffle and previews of podcasts and music playlists on its audio streaming platform, as it crossed 500 million in monthly active listeners.

⭐️ Spotify announced Wednesday that its all-time payouts to music-rights holders are approaching $40 billion.

The company said it pays out nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music back to the industry, the announcement continues. It generates its music revenue from two sources: subscription fees from its Premium platform paying subscribers, and fees from advertisings on music on its Free tier. (Variety)

⭐️ The TikTokification of Spotify has begun.

The audio giant is refreshing its home page with a vertical feed that is meant to better integrate Spotify’s offerings across music, podcasts, videos and audiobooks.

“This marks the biggest change Spotify has undergone since we introduced mobile 10 years ago,” Spotify CEO Daniel Eksaid at the company’s Stream On event on Wednesday. “This evolution is really about bringing Spotify to life.” (THR)

⭐️ At Spotify’s Stream On event today in L.A., the company introduced a significant redesign of its app, which capitalizes on its investments in personalization technology while also adopting a similar short-form video feed as the one popularized by TikTok.

In the updated Spotify mobile app, users and subscribers will gain access to a handful of new features, including the vertically scrolling “discovery” feeds, a new “Smart Shuffle” mode for playlist recommendations, a new podcast autoplay feature, and more. (TechCrunch)

⭐️ Our users love creating playlists to reflect key moments in their lives or soundtrack moments that matter. These often become a listener’s most-streamed playlist for the first several months after creation. But over time they stream these playlists less frequently in favor of new music or mixes.

Today at Stream On, we announced Spotify’s new play mode: Smart Shuffle. This new experience keeps listening sessions fresh with personalized recommendations that perfectly match the vibe of an original playlist. It breathes new life into carefully curated playlists, shuffling tracks and adding new, perfectly tailored suggestions. As a bonus, Smart Shuffle is also available for your Liked Songs playlist.

⭐️ Spotify has gone through updates and iterations throughout the years, but today, during Stream On, we unveiled our biggest evolution yet: a new, dynamic mobile interface built for deeper discovery and more meaningful connections between artists and fans. It gives listeners a more active role in the audio discovery process and gives creators more space to share their work. 

We’ve found that the next generation of listeners craves better ways to sample audio before fully diving in. So get ready for a more active experience with advanced recommendations, a spotlight on visual canvases, and a completely new and interactive design—all to make discovering new audio easier than ever before and help introduce users to their next favorite artist, podcast, or book. Together, these updates work to bring creators and fans closer than ever, and help each build lasting connections. 

⭐️ 15% of tracks uploaded to Spotify generate 95% of its royalties

Spotify has updated its ‘Loud & Clear’ website with some new figures on its payouts to rightsholders, as well as the amount of royalties being generated by musicians on its service. The site originally launched in March 2021, before being updated in March 2022, so this is its second annual refresh. (MA)

⭐️ How artists can get more listeners and increase their reach with Discovery Mode

One-third of all new artist discoveries on Spotify happen thanks to personalized recommendations. With Discovery Mode, artists and their teams can identify priority songs, and Spotify will add a signal to the algorithms that shape personalized listening sessions, helping to increase the likelihood that the song is recommended to listeners on Radio and Autoplay.

Every month, artists receive reporting on how many new listeners their selected songs reached, how many added them to playlists, and how often the songs were saved.

⭐️ Countdown Pages and Spotify Clips Create Ways for Artists To Engage Their Fans With Video

Building buzz for an album release requires artists and their teams to work across multiple platforms and services, resulting in a disconnect between where music is being teased and where music is actually being streamed.

The most powerful time to reach fans is when they’ve chosen to engage with music, ahem, on Spotify. That’s why we’ve built a new tool called Countdown Pages.

We could not be more excited to bring Countdown Pages to life—but we don’t want to limit artists’ video options to Countdown Pages. So, we’re making them available in more places where music lives on Spotify. 

Artists can add under-30-second videos to their album pages or their artist profiles. That way, new listeners and existing fans can go deeper into an artist’s stories while they’re listening. We call these videos Spotify Clips.

⭐️ Behind the Scenes of Spotify’s New AI DJ

Since launching Spotify’s brand-new AI DJ in beta a few weeks back, Premium listeners across the U.S. and Canada have had the chance to experience our personalization capabilities in a whole new way. We’ve already seen so much love for DJ—both on-platform and across social media—and we’re not even out to 100% of users yet. On days when users tune in, fans spend 25% of their listening time with DJ, and they keep coming back for more, with more than half of first-time listeners coming back to listen to DJ the very next day

⭐️ Video is one of the fastest-growing areas of podcasting, with more than 70,000 video creators on the platform. We expect that growth to continue. With innovative partnerships on the way from Collab, Creative Juice, Get Engaged Media, Golden Child, and Karat to bring their creators’ videos to Spotify, as well as limited video series exclusively available on Spotify from Mindset Mentor, we’re looking forward to introducing millions of new listeners to video podcasts. 

⭐️ Making features available to all podcasters

Previously, our most innovative features were limited to Anchor users exclusively. But we’re building the new Spotify for Podcasters in a way that offers more open access to innovation. As a result, all Spotify for Podcasters users—including those not hosting their content with us—will find access to Q&A and Poll functionality in their dashboards.

⭐️ The streaming service has struck a deal with creator Markiplier to exclusively host the video episodes of his Distractibleand Go! My Favorite Sports Team podcasts.

The move comes as the Daniel Ek-led company has been growing its video content, launching video podcasts in 180 markets last year. Popular video podcasts on the service include Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy and Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain. (Deadline)

⭐️ Five Fast Facts About Podcast Creator Monetization on Spotify

1. The number of podcasters taking part in the Spotify Audience Network has grown eightfold in the last two years. And since we launched the Spotify Audience Network in 2021, monthly payout to opted-in publishers has grown by nearly 50% while advertiser participation has increased by 500%. So as we continue to scale the Spotify Audience Network, our intent is to make this kind of growth available to all creators.

2. We’re pleased to welcome NPR to the Spotify Audience Network marketplace. 

3. Recent additions to Megaphone’s roster of publishers include Netflix and Australia’s Schwartz Media. 

4. In the future, Megaphone will be uniquely integrated into Spotify for Podcasters. And as of today, all Megaphone publishers have everything they need to create a successful podcast business across the new Spotify for Podcastersand Megaphone.

5. Through our partnership with Patreon, powered by Spotify Open Access, podcasters will be able to publish patron-only content on Spotify. Patrons will be able to link their Patreon account to their Spotify account to access their Patreon-exclusive podcasts right where they’re already listening to all their audio content.

⭐️ Another interesting piece of news was the announcement of a new partnership with Patreon, which the company said will enable creators to expand their creative business through direct payments from fans, and allow fans to listen to their Patreon content on Spotify. (TechCrunch)