Is Spotify Planning On Beefing Up Its Browser Based Offerings?
posted in: Music News
Music-streaming, runaway freight train Spotify has been on an absolute tear since its American coming out party at last year’s f8 Conference. The Sweden-based company can boast a user base of over 15 million subscribers, with over four million of those subscribers paying either $5 or $10 a month for an enhanced (read: less ads) music listening experience.
But the service isn’t without its flaws. Many critics have noted that Spotify is essentially a jack of all trades and a master of none. While they now provide an artist radio service, they face stiff competition in that field from established players such as Pandora and Rdio with another threat in Apple’s soon to debut streaming radio service looming on the horizon. Spotify’s interface has also remained relatively static over the past year, with the implementation of an app platform and slightly improved music discovery options being the only real changes. But it looks as if Spotify is finally going to shake things up with an overhaul of its browser-based experience.
Techcrunch is reporting that Spotify is working on a way for users to access the service through a browser in much the same way they currently do, via the desktop application. Currently, Spotify browser usability is limited; attempting to stream a Spotify playlist embedded on a website will launch the application, and ditto for trying to play individual tracks from search engine results.
Whether the new Spotify browser experience will supplement or supplant the application remains to be seen. Further details regarding the browser overhaul and other potential moves the company has planned – price changes for the various subscription packages, implementation of listening caps for American users, for example – are sketchy. Techcrunch cites “multiple sources” but doesn’t provide anything beyond highly educated guesses. So take everything mentioned here with a grain of salt. That said, it will be interesting to see how the next big steps Spotify takes will affect its profit margins. The company still has some big hurdles to overcome and some heavy hitters standing in its path before its position of power in the online music world can really be cemented.
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