Spotify has announced that it will scrap part of its offering. Specifically, it is about the separate live app. The offer is partly moving to the main app.
The Clubhouse app triggered a hype at the time. Suddenly apps and platforms for live audio services were booming. New providers were springing up, but well-known names were also offering their own solutions. One of them was Spotify. At that time, the Swedish music streaming service launched the Spotify Live app or, at the start, Spotify Greenroom. After apparently only moderate success, the offer is now being discontinued again. But you don’t want to do without the live function entirely.
Spotify Live will be discontinued
It wasn’t until 2021 that Spotify took over the Locker Room app for a whopping $57 million and renamed it Greenroom. At the time, the company promised to further develop and expand “Locker Room into an improved live audio experience for a broader range of developers and fans”. Several shows in the style of a radio show were commissioned for this purpose. In 2022, Spotify also introduced a corresponding live function for its main music app. In the course of this, Greenroom became Spotify Live and continued as a separate offer.
Since then, it has been possible to view and access the corresponding live events directly on the artists’ Spotify pages. So far, users have primarily been able to get in the mood for the event there. If you then wanted to participate in the chat or even join the stage, you had to switch to the live app. Spotify has gradually softened this approach over the past year. Among other things, Live was connected directly to Spotify’s mother app.
The Swedish provider has now announced that it wants to permanently discontinue the Spotify live app. After a period of experimenting and learning about how Spotify users interact with live audio, we have made the decision to retire the Spotify Live app,” a company spokesman told Music Ally. There is currently no need for a separate app, especially since the main app also offers a corresponding function. But they want to continue experimenting with the relevant formats in the future – just not in their own app.
What is Spotify Live anyway?
Spotify Live is an alternative to Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces and Co. Musicians, podcasters and other artists in particular should have a live platform in order to reach a digital audience in real time. As with the competition, organizers can have events take place in virtual rooms. The goal is to actively exchange ideas with the community, which distinguishes it from a classic live stream.
Incidentally, the discontinuation of Spotify Live does not come as a surprise. The clubhouse hype has now extremely flattened out. Other well-known providers such as Facebook, which was also at the start with its own alternative at the time, are increasingly withdrawing from the live audio sector. Another note leading up to the announcement was that Spotify was increasingly canceling several live shows for the app. In addition, as part of the large-scale adjustments, so-called countdown pages for new albums, among other things, are to be introduced, which would then be ideal starting points for live events.
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- Music Ally („Spotify shuts down its Clubhouse-style audio app Spotify Live“, aufgerufen am 4. April 2023)