Spotify
All Black Everything: Spotify Celebrates Black History Month with New Playlists, Podcasts, & More
Source: Spotify / Spotify It appears that Black History Month is kicking off with a bang for Spotify listeners after the streaming platform announced the launch of new Hip-Hop podcasts and playlists as a part of the Black History Month celebration. On Monday (Feb. 1), the streaming giant announced a slew of few initiatives, including the launch of a full slate of guest-curated playlist takeovers, brand new podcasts, and more to highlight Black culture, Black music, and Black excellence. According to the press release, the new initiative will also feature new cover art from Black photographers in an effort to showcase a spectrum of Black talent, spanning across both musical and visual art, including work from photographers Shawn Theodore, Adrienne Waheed, Doug Segars, Adrian Octavious Walke...
How Davido, Wizkid, Olamide, Burna Boy broke streaming records in 2020
From all available statistics, facts and figures no other Nigerian musical artiste, male or female, was able to pull off what the quartet of Davido, Wizkid, Burna Boy and Olamide pulled off in 2020. The duopoly of Davido and Wizkid, which has been going on for years was questioned most especially by Burna Boy and the new face on the international scene, Olamide. Each one of them released an amazing album and it was a staggering success story on all streaming platforms. The figures showed Nigerian music has arrived on the international stage. Particularly of interest is Olamide, whose music has not really been able to cross the continent to the international stage. Well, thanks to his international connection, which has given wings to fly over the Atlantic. For Burna Boy, his fortunes have ...
Death Grips’ Gmail and the Restraining Orders EP, “More Than the Fairy” Finally Added to Spotify, Apple: Stream
It’s been two years and counting since we last got a proper album from Death Grips, but today’s surprise drop should keep fans preoccupied in the meantime. The group’s experimental EP Gmail and the Restraining Orders and one-off single “More Than the Fairy” have finally been added to streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple. Gmail and the Restraining Orders is a 30-minute collection of noise rock that was played prior to Death Grips’ live shows in 2015. The project was then featured in Warp Records’ WXAXRXP radio festival in 2019, before subsequently being released onto YouTube. As for “More Than the Fairy”, this track was initially put out on YouTube in 2016. It notably features bass from special (and very unexpected) guest Les Claypool of Primus. The collaboration is consider...
Streams of the Unconscionable
It’s become crystal clear this year that without touring revenue, many musicians have little hope of making a living. Streaming royalties are a pittance, and musicians have had to turn to new creative ways to stay afloat. Some sell exclusive vinyl, cassettes, and other merchandise on Bandcamp. Others have turned to the subscription service, Patreon, where fans can pay their favorite creators for access to exclusive content like B-Sides, live sessions, podcasts, and more. But their qualms seem to have fallen on deaf ears at Spotify. All year, the company and its CEO Daniel Ek, have been callous, if not downright contemptuous, towards artists that are trying to eke out a living. Complaints about Spotify revenue have been floating around for years now. Even in 2013, Radiohead’s frontman Thom ...
Spotify to Offer Exclusive Audiobooks
Sourced from Android Police Spotify has released an exclusive collection of audiobooks, causing users to believe that the streaming service is testing an audiobook offering. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the platform regularly runs tests like this to help it improve its user experience. If successful, the initiative could give Spotify “a roadmap for how to take on giants in the space, including Amazon-owned Audible”. Here’s a closer look at the audiobooks on offer: Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens and narrated by James Langton Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelly and narrated by David Dobrik Cane, written by Jean Toomer and narrated by Audra McDonald Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte and narrated by Sarah Coombs Passing, written by Nella Larsen and narrated b...
Follow Consequence’s Top Songs and New Sounds Playlists on Spotify: Stream
Since our beginning as a humble, festival-focused music publication, Consequence has always been a go-to source for the best in new music and rising artists. While we’ve grown over the years into a full-blown pop culture destination, music is still at the core of everything we do. That’s why we’ve launched two fresh, continually updating Spotify playlists to keep you up-to-date on all the latest tracks. First is Top Songs, where we’ll collect all our favorites from our ongoing Top Song of the Week feature. Each week, we’ll spotlight our pick for the best track of the week along with a handful of “runners-up.” We’ll spotlight them in our recurring feature, and then gather them all together for your listening pleasure on Spotify. Then to help expand your listening horizons, New Sounds functi...
Spotify Stock Downgraded by Citi, as Podcast Competition Heats Up
Spotify’s share price was already in retreat, dropping 12.5% from an all-time high of $370.95 reached on Wednesday (Jan. 13), however. Some experts would argue it’s still too high. The 25 analysts covering Spotify have a median price target of $298.53 with a high of $425.90 and a low of $141.30, according to Refinitiv. Key Takeaways: 1) The three leading audio streaming companies — Spotify, Apple and Amazon — are pushing hard into podcasts. If turning a music service into an all-around audio service attracts subscribers and reduces churn, record labels and publishers will benefit.2) Regardless of how its podcasts perform in the next year or two, Spotify has the resources to see its strategy through. It had €1.18 billion ($1.43 billion) on its balance sheet on Sept. 30, 2020, en...
Spotify Stock Price Hits New All-Time High
What recession? The leader in the fast-growing music streaming market, Spotify reached an all-time high of $354.60 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, and closed at $353.48, up 7% from Thursday’s closing price and up 12.2% for the week. At Friday’s high, Spotify’s enterprise value rose to roughly $66.1 billion. Why the investor enthusiasm? An obvious factor is Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich’s price target hike from $357 to $428 on Wednesday. But a number of factors have had investors excited about the stock over the past year: It is the leader in music streaming and is aggressively expanding its podcast business, most notably with the strong — although controversial — launch for the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Plus, limited pricing experiment...
Secretive White Noise Spammers are Making a Killing on Spotify—Here’s How
Popular white noise “artists” on Spotify such as White Noise Baby Sleep and Smart Baby Lullaby have cracked the code on the elusive of concept of making money from streaming. And they’re hardly doing any work for it at all. White noise soundscapes are “truly brainless to produce,” said an anonymous former sound designer for UK-based company Ameritz in a statement to OneZero. The sound designer chose to remain anonymous to avoid potential repercussions of revealing this trick, but claimed he’d spent countless hours recording white noise such as computer and desk fans. Those recordings turn into the white noise tracks released on Spotify via a myriad of virtually anonymous sources, but many are tied to a shell “record label” ...
Metallica Tally More Than 1 Billion Spotify Streams in 2020
As they enter their 40th year of existence, Metallica remain a metal powerhouse: the band tallied more than 1 billion streams on Spotify in 2020 alone. Metallica shared a graphic on their Instagram feed, which lists their 2020 Spotify statistics as 1.1 billion streams, 99.3 million hours, 53.3 million unique listeners, and 92 different countries. ‘We thought last year’s numbers were insane,” wrote the band. “You guys have outdone yourselves! 99.3M hours?! That’s like if someone started listening on October 27, 9318 B.C. and never stopped. Can anyone guess what this year’s most-played song was, clocking in at 128.6M streams?? You remain the most dedicated fans in the world – thank you for spending so much of your year with us!” The two most-played songs were likely “Nothing Else Matter...
Remixers and Bootleggers are Using a Spotify Loophole to Upload Unofficial Works to the Platform
Underground artists and producers have found somewhat of a loophole that allows them to post their unofficial works to Spotify. Rather than following the normal uploading process—which has many measures in place to detect copyright infringement and derivative works—users are now taking their bootlegs to Spotify’s Podcasts feature. While YouTube and SoundCloud are rife with bootleg remixes and mashups by bedroom producers, Spotify has always been strict about uploading unofficial content to the platform. Unofficial mashups, remixes and bootlegs have now started to slide under the radar via Spotify’s Podcast feature. With the Podcasts loophole—and some clever keyword nomenclature for the unofficial works, such as “chopped and screwed” or “slowed and r...
Here is a Sassy AI Bot That Roasts Your Taste in Music
You may think you know the best new tracks and artists, but you don’t, according to a new artificial intelligence bot that roasts your taste in music. The program, developed by digital publication The Pudding, is essentially the de facto nemesis of Spotify’s “Wrapped” programming. Once you log in, the sassy AI bot crawls your Spotify listening habits and goes on to trash them in an absolutely hysterical manner. Apparently I listen to plenty of EDM—and Louis The Child—something that the bot found cringey. The bot then invited me to play a classic game of “fuck, marry, kill,” coaxing me into a siren song that eventually led to my picks being shredded. It eventually went in for the kill with this jab, which called my taste in music “nice-guys-fi...
