Tag: spotify

Messaging App Tango Launches Brand Channels

Posted on by Lab Team

Today Tango, a messaging app with over 200 million users globally, launched a plug-and-play solution for brands called Channels.  It functions similarly to a Facebook brand page– a user follows a channel and then can view content like photos and video within a news feed.  Launch partners include Spotify, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Cheezburger, Dailymotion, and OK Go.

The fact that TechCrunch, an authority on emerging tech, is betting early on Tango and messaging apps is perhaps the best indication that this is a noteworthy opportunity for media owners and brands.  As further proof: only two hours after launch, Spotify’s Tango channel already had close to 25,000 followers and over 2,000 likes and 450 comments on its morning playlist posting.

As we mentioned in our recent white paper on the messaging app space, Tango is in many ways an outlier compared to the competition.  Unlike popular millennial chat apps like Kik and Snapchat, its demographic skews heavily towards 25-50+ and proves that messaging is a phenomenon impacting all age groups.  With close to 70 million users in the US, Tango has a great audience that has already proven itself very receptive to interacting with games and music on the platform.

Tango is also arguably the most brand friendly of the messaging apps, and has found success with a native ad product leveraged by companies like Dunkin’ Donuts, eBay, Spotify and others to drive app installs.  In all likelihood these ads will also become a popular way for brands to attract subscribers to Tango Channels in the future.

Channels are currently free for brands to set up, so for companies looking to experiment with messaging app marketing there’s little risk involved in this opportunity. For now Tango houses the channels tab at the top of every user’s newsfeed. Once you click into it, you can search five primary categories: Entertainment, News, Sports, Music, and Funny & Cute.  To see the program in action for yourself, click here to download the app or watch the official Channels intro video.

 

Spotify Hits 10 Million Paid Subscribers

Posted on by Lab Team

Spotify is managing to stay ahead of the pack – that pack including the recently-purchased Beats Music – as it hit its 10 millionth paid subscriber, doubling the number of premium customers it had just a year and a half ago today. It took Spotify four years to land its first five million, so to double its paid subscriber count in just a year and a half represents a massive accomplishment, and evidence of growing support. Though profits still remain hard to come by, 10 million users is nothing to scoff at.

Spotify Purchases The Echo Nest

Posted on by Lab Team

The Echo Nest, the company that powers competing services like Twitter Music, Rdio, and others, is now owned by Spotify. It doesn’t mean that those services will cease to exist: Echo Nest’s API will remain accessible, says Spotify, and the Echo Nest headquarters will remain in Somerville, Mass., where they have always been. Thus many are confused exactly what this means for Spotify and The Echo Nest, but on speculation it seems that Spotify will likely leverage The Echo Nest’s system for recommending songs and filtering listeners into different genres – thus it will better be able to target relevant advertising and music to the listeners who want it the most. It’s a tenuous purchase though: Spotify now has control over the back end service that powers its chief rivals in a budding ecosystem that brands and marketers are keen to keep a close eye on. It bodes well for Spotify, but perhaps not for its competitors. 

Beats Music Launches

Posted on by Lab Team

The day is here: we now have a big third competitor in the streaming music market. Beats Music launched today, and its take on streaming music is a $9.99/month service. But whether it can take on Spotify – which boasts more than 24 million monthly users – and Pandora might take more than just a “better service.” To push Beats music to the fore there will have to be some meaty marketing moves; users are mostly already entrenched in the Pandora/Spotify market, not to mention other options like Rdio, Google Play, iTunes Radio, and to pry them out of it will take some serious incentives. Beats won’t have a free tier after a 7-day trial, so it’s counting on users signing up. It’s a big ask; taking on this many established players at once is a bold move. But the wide reach of the headphones and brand name might just be enough to give Beats a leg up in the initial phases of development.   

Spotify & Pandora Prepare For Imminent Beats Music

Posted on by Lab Team

The imminent launch of Beats Music is causing Spotify and Pandora to do some back peddling. Pandora’s personalized music streams, that will incorporate listener tendencies into recommendation engines, and Spotify’s International removal of free listening caps both come within a week of Beats’ launch. Beats Music claims to do both of these things – algorithmic artist discovery and custom streaming stations with unlimited play time, anywhere – which before this week Spotify and Pandora didn’t sponsor. Although Pandora is still the number one streaming service in the U.S. market, but Spotify is making rapid gains in an attempt to solidify its position in advance of the Beats Music launch. We’ll have to wait and and see how Beats Music does – or doesn’t – shake up the already competitive music streaming market. 

Free Spotify Streaming Coming To Android And iOS

Posted on by Lab Team

On the heels of Spotify’s controversy regarding royalties and artist payouts, the music streaming service has announced a new, free version of the app for mobile platforms that functions as shuffle-only. In other words, Spotify has released a direct competitor to Pandora and iTunes Radio for mobile devices – you can shuffle your own music, your own playlists, and playlists from people you follow, but you won’t be able to listen to songs in an order that you choose. It seems, at this point, like a simple volume play, as the company looks to increase its listenership across platforms so as to eventually convince them to pay for subscriptions. Whether it can compete with the already-established radio app ecosystem will, in large part, determine the success of the new system.

Spotify Artists Tries To Appease Musicians

Posted on by Lab Team

Spotify announced tools for musicians and managers to monitor their songs’ popularity, with a real-time analytics dashboard, explanations about how Spotify pays out its royalties, and how the company can help expose artists to gigs and merchandise. Though Spotify only clocks in at over 20 million users, it’s trying to get more music and users, with a goal to get to 40 million subscribers. This move, though, seems pretty transparent: the service has come under fire, most prominently from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, for its small payouts to artists, and it’s doing its best to placate the musicians that are feeling disenfranchised by the royalty rates. Whether it works, or is too little too late, will surely be seen in the near future. 

Spotify Is Now Worth $4 Billion

Posted on by Lab Team

Spotify secured $250 million in new funding, which makes the company now worth more than $4 Billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Exactly one year ago, the music streaming service raised $100 million to raise its valuation to $3 Billion. All this while Spotify continues to lose money: it’s net loss increased to $77 million this year. The extra money might continue to give the streaming service leeway to build out revenue-generating products to fend off the losses. 

Google Play Music Comes To iOS

Posted on by Lab Team

This development in Google Play Music’s development puts it squarely in competition with iTunes Radio, as well as other streaming applications like Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio, which all have iOS apps and are more deeply integrated into the Apple ecosystem. As well, Google is offering an “all access” option which would allow you to store your music in the cloud, stream music across multiple devices, and include the first month free. All access also adds a radio option. It will be important to see who emerges atop this growing heap of music streaming services. 

YouTube Plans Spotify For Music Videos

Posted on by Lab Team

YouTube, the number one destination for music is preparing a premium on-demand music video service that looks a lot like Spotify. With both free and premium models, users get access to a breadth of music that is organized by album and artist in a way that makes it a more lean back experience than YouTube currently offers. Amidst serious competition from Spotify and Pandora and a precedent of free services, can YouTube breakthrough the clutter?