Spotify New UI has arrived in the tech-town to make things even more interesting. Rated by most people as the best music streaming app, Spotify looks to consolidate its lead over its close competitors even further, as we witness the Spotify app redesign.
For your information, the Swedish audio streaming and media services provider, which started its fairytale run way back in 2006, remains one of the largest music streaming service providers in the world.
The numbers speak volumes about its astounding success — more than 489 million monthly active users, of which a staggering 205 million happen to be paying subscribers (data as of December 2022).
Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Spotify has redesigned and revamped its app, pretty recently, in order to provide users with a new experience of listening to their favorite tracks, which is not only quite refreshing but also cooler than ever.
But how does the Spotify app redesign affect the business equations out there, globally? Or what are the perks of the Spotify New UI? And most-importantly what are the new features on offer? In a nutshell, does the app look more exciting than it was before? Let’s dive into the world of the Spotify new user experience to figure out the answers to these common queries. Here we go!
Spotify New UI: Bliss for Users, Chin Music for Competitors
Founded on April 23, 2006, by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, Spotify currently enjoys a big chunk, if not the lion’s share, of the global music streaming market. Not only music, the app has become almost the go to destination for podcast lovers spread across the world. And if we take a close look at the growth graph of the business, we will be able to find that Spotify has received a renewed interest in the past few days, apart from the massive surge experienced in recent times.
During the Stream On 2023 event, the Swedish company unveiled the Spotify app’s new look, which is claimed to be the ‘biggest evolution yet’ by Spotify itself. For the ones who haven’t checked the new Spotify UI, it’s quite interesting and grabs the eyeballs at the word go.
It would be really interesting to see how significant does the Spotify new UI turn out as the company seems to leave no stone unturned to outsmart its rivals — Apple Music, Prime Music, YouTube Music, TikTok and the latest entrant to the club, Apple Music Classical. [Image Credit: Spotify]
According to the company, it’s “a new, dynamic mobile interface built for deeper discovery and more meaningful connections between artists and fans.” Spotify further claims that the revamped app is capable of giving “listeners a more active role in the audio discovery process and gives creators more space to share their work.”
Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, highlighted the fact at the launch that this move comes in a bid to “bringing Spotify to life.” However, some critics argue that the new Spotify UI has uncanny resemblances with TikTok, Instagram and even YouTube.
Co-President and Chief Product & Technology Officer at Spotify, Gustav Söderström, shed light on the importance of the app redesign, “The world today pulls us in a million different directions. So the most important thing we, at Spotify, can do for creators is to reduce the distance between their art and the people who love it . . . or who would love it as soon as they discovered it.”
However, this has also something to do with the algorithms. Incidentally, Söderström himself says in an interview with The Verge that “If you think about it from the point of “the algorithm” — as they call it, even though it’s not an algorithm, it’s a ton of different systems, but to anthropomorphize a little bit — you need a user interface that can very effectively see what a user likes.”
But from a neutral point of view, these [shocking] revelations might not go down well with many users, who have been vouching for an extra cushion of privacy. One must take note in this regard that for strong reasons related to data theft and monitoring, TikTok became the center of many controversies and also resulted in a complete ban in India (it was a massive blow to the platform) along with having a close shave in the US.
It has been claimed that Spotify’s recommendations steer nearly half of all users’ streams (which is indeed a remarkable feat) and the moment listeners choose to follow a particular creator, on average they are reported to listen to five times more of their music.
“That’s why discoveries on Spotify — unlike many other platforms — give creators so much more than just a fleeting moment of viral fame,” Söderström pointed out. “Those meaningful, long-term connections are a key part of what makes Spotify a platform for professional and aspiring artists.”
Now let’s go through the major talking points of the new Spotify UI which the company says will provide users with a “more visual, dynamic mobile experience.”
- Music, Podcasts & Shows and Audiobook previews on Home: You can just tap into the Music, Podcasts & Shows or Audiobooks feed to experience visual and audio previews of playlists, albums, podcast episodes and audiobooks personalized to you. After that with a simple tap, you can save or share, go deeper into the artist or podcast pages, play from the start, or continue listening from where the preview ended.
- New feeds for discovery in Search: By just scrolling up or down, one can explore short Canvas clips from tracks from their favorite genres of music. Then the song can be easily saved to a specific playlist, the artist can be followed easily or the work can be shared among friends and acquaintances — thus providing you a one-stop solution. Meanwhile, related genres can be also explored with the help of the hashtags within the feed for hassle-free discovery of one’s new favorites. There’s also the scope to even preview tracks on some of one’s favorite playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, New Music Friday, and RapCaviar.
- DJ: Now, thanks to the Beta launch of DJ, which happens to be a new personalized AI guide for Premium users in the U.S. and Canada, you can just sit back and relax as it can select what to play for you, courtesy of having a fair knowledge of your personal taste from your previous patterns. Spotify claims that users are spending almost “25% of their listening time with the 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.”
- Smart Shuffle: This new feature ensures that your listening sessions remain fresh thanks to personalized recommendations that perfectly match the vibe of an original user-generated playlist. Smart Shuffle is reported to instill new life into carefully curated user-generated playlists, shuffling tracks and adding new, tailor-made suggestions.
- Autoplay for Podcasts: Along the lines of music, Spotify is now serving Autoplay for Podcasts. This means, whenever a podcast comes to an end, another relevant episode that matches your taste will start playing on its own.
Spotify has recently signed a host of big deals like onboarding YouTuber Emma Chamberlain as an exclusive podcaster. Julie McNamara, the head of Spotify’s global podcast studios, said at the event that now there’s no looking back for the music and podcast streaming giant, “Video podcasting is one of the fastest growing areas of podcasting, and we expect that growth to continue. Right now we have 70,000 video creators on the platform and with a lot more on the way.”
It would be really interesting to see how significant does the Spotify new UI turn out as the company seems to leave no stone unturned to outsmart its rivals — Apple Music, Prime Music, YouTube Music, TikTok and the latest entrant to the club, Apple Music Classical.
We will keep a close tab on the development and keep you posted with exclusive updates. Stay tuned for more top tech stories across the world. Meanwhile, you can check out our curated list of Top 10 Tech Podcasts on Spotify.