27 Intriguing Spotify Facts You Probably Haven't Heard Of

As of December 2021, Spotify has more than 400 million monthly users, which includes around 180 million paid users making it one of the largest service providers of music streaming.

Spotify is a Swedish company that provides digital music, video, and podcasts services. Spotify users have access to a vast variety of songs and other content from creators worldwide. There are more than 80 million songs on Spotify.

Spotify can be accessed over internet enabled devices such as phones, tablets, computers, speakers, cars, and televisions. Spotify connect enables a user to switch between devices with ease. Spotify supports more than 17 languages on android. In the first month of the application's launch, the Spotify app was downloaded more than 10 million times.

Spotify faced a certain amount of criticism from artists and producers. They argue that they are being paid significantly less for their work.

Physical sales or download sales pay a fixed price to the artists per song or per album, but Spotify pays the artists as per their market share.

This means they pay for the number of streams for the songs of a particular artist, versus the total number of songs streamed on Spotify. Spotify distributes around 70% of its revenue to the music rights holders who pay the artists.

Spotify partnered with Topspin and Starbucks for its marketing and sales, making it the first music application that grabbed a space in public places like cafés.

After becoming the most used app, Spotify collaborated with various social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and more to allow Spotify users to access and share songs and other content on these platforms.

Spotify has made sure to stay connected with its users by designing new playlists for all kinds of tastes which helps the users to search for new artists, songs, most listened to songs, and more.

Hipster International, Digster HIP HOP HITS, Hip-Hop Songs, and Billboard Hot 100 are some of the playlists most listened to on Spotify.

Keep reading to find out more interesting and amazing facts about this cool app!

Origin of Spotify

Spotify is a multiplatform application that first started as a web app. Daniel Ek was an entrepreneur who managed an online marketing business called Advertigo until 2006, and it was sold to Tradedoubler, owned by Martin Lorentzon, before they worked together on creating the Spotify app.

Spotify was first founded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the year 2006.

Spotify was founded by Daniel Ek, an entrepreneur, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of Tradedoubler.

Ek and Lorentzon registered the name Spotify as soon as it was chosen, and started working on the project with the help of a few designers and engineers.

A developer and creator, Ludvig Strigeus from uTorrent, also helped this duo in designing Spotify.

Though the Spotify app was completed in 2006, it was not launched until 2008 as the negotiations with the music rights holders and the licensing took two years.

Finally, the Spotify app was launched on October 7, 2008.

Streaming Records, User Growth & Spotify Acquisitions

Spotify is the most popular music platform that makes music streaming easy. Spotify was originally an online music store which was later converted into a subscription service.

Though the Spotify app is free, one can gain maximum benefits through Spotify premium. Each day several artists add new songs on Spotify. Justin Bieber is one artist who has the highest number of monthly listeners on Spotify.

Approximately 25% of the songs are not played yet on Spotify. The moment it entered the United States, Spotify started competing with other well-known music applications such as iTunes, Amazon Music, Pandora, Tidal, etc.

Spotify became a multiplatform application that also includes third party applications such as CrowdAlbum (photography), TuneWiki (letters), and Billboard (lists and charts).

Spotify also created many extensions other options in order to give a personalized impact to the users, enabling everyone to enjoy the features of the application in their own way.

Spotify also joined hands with several channels and magazines like Rolling Stone, Moi, and others to name a few, which provided a collection of playlists for all kinds of tastes.

Three years later, Spotify removed the limit on the listening hours for the free users but included short ads in between the songs that cannot be avoided if the user wants to listen to songs for free.

There are more than 80 million music tracks available for Spotify users.

Spotify provides Digital Rights Management (DRM) restricted music, favorite music, and podcasts.

There is a special feature of Spotify called 'Uniquely Yours', which offers personalized playlists to Spotify users.

The listeners can also follow their favorite artists, create their own music playlists, and stream music with high audio quality.

On Spotify, listeners can also find new artists by following the recommendations of other listeners and by analyzing the most played artists by other listeners.

There are more than 3 billion playlists on Spotify.

On Spotify, one can also listen to podcasts.

There are more than 500,000 podcasts added to the Spotify app.

Spotify acquired Tunigo, a music discovery app, in May 2o13, The Echo Nest, a music intelligence and machine learning company, in October 2014; Seed Scientific, which is a data science consulting and analytics company, in June 2015, a social and messaging startup called Cord Project and Soundwave in January 2o16 followed by CrowdAlbum in the same year April.

Spotify also bought an audio detection startup called Sonalytic in March 2017, followed by Mighty TV in the same year.

Other acquisitions were Mediachain in April 2017, Niland in May 2017, Soundtrap in November 2017, Loudr on April 12, 2018, Soundbetter on September 12, 2019, Megaphone in November 2020, and in March 2021 Locker Room which was later made Spotify Greenroom.

Ed Sheeran is known as one of the most popular artists, with over 78 million followers.

Company Partnership & A Dispute With Apple

Spotify partnered with Sony in January 2015 and announced a new music service called PlayStation Music. This service was finally launched on March 30, 2015.

Spotify integrated with the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in 2017 and helped present the special playlists SXSW hub in the Spotify app. Spotify had since signed two more partnerships in March 2017 with WNYC Studios and another one with Waze.

Spotify believed that Apple was using the App Store approval process for Spotify to harm the competitors of Apple Music.

Spotify joined with various other companies and filed a letter to the European Union's antitrust body against Apple. In July 2015, Spotify started an email campaign against Apple Inc., requesting its app store subscribers to cancel subscriptions and register again through the Spotify website to avoid the 30% fee levied for in-app purchases for the iOS application.

Several letters and appeals were exchanged between Spotify and Apple for a couple of months.

Microsoft ended its Groove Music streaming service in December 2017 after its partnership with Spotify and transferred all the local music files and playlists from users to Spotify.

Spotify joined hands with Discord, which is a gaming voice chat service, enabling Spotify premium users to invite other users with Spotify premium to group listening parties.

Amongst all the disputes and discussions with Apple, Spotify's first version of its app on the Apple Watch was released in Nov 2018.

Platforms

The Spotify platform is a very user-friendly and effortless app with a free version containing some adverts, and paid versions which have a variety of additional features and come advert free. Spotify also provides 'Spotify connect,' a proprietary protocol through which listeners can listen to music on entertainment systems that includes TVs, cars, smartwatches, speakers, and other receivers.

Spotify is supported by Android, Windows Phone, iOS, PC, Mac, and is also available as a web app.

Initially, the free accounts for Spotify were given to people only with invitations. The free version is now open to everyone.

Spotify also provides an unofficial and unsupported version of its app for its Linux users.

Geographical Availability

Spotify is now available in around 79 countries. The Spotify app supports around 17 different languages. This app is available in most of the countries in America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and New Zealand. There are more than 250 million active Spotify users across 75 countries.

Spotify was first launched in European countries which included Sweden, Norway, Finland, United Kingdom, Spain, and France, on October 7, 2008.

The Spotify app was launched in the United States in 2011, and it has become a competitor to Apple Music since then.

Spotify has its international headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, though it is said that there are multiple headquarters in different countries.

In 2016, Spotify was started in Indonesia and Japan.

Spotify jolted the entire music industry when it was launched, by offering as many songs a costumer wants all for just one single monthly payment. The company strongly opposes piracy, and it works on the freemium concept that benefits both free and premium users.

Students are given a one-month free Spotify Premium trial. Spotify premium also has a family package. Spotify users can search and browse music by album, genre, artists, playlists, and also record label.

Playlists can be created, edited, and shared, and also, tracks can be shared on social media to make playlists in collaboration with others. Overall, Spotify is a very appealing application to stream music for free or for a subscription.

FAQs

What is so special about Spotify?

Spotify users can download up to ten thousand songs so that one can listen to them even offline

Who is most played on Spotify?

Abel Tesfaye, a Grammy Award winner, is the most played artist on the digital music platform.

What is Spotify well known for?

Spotify is known as the most popular music streaming app with around 400 million users, which includes 180 million subscribers as well.

Which song is the most listened to on Spotify?

Ed Sheeran's 'Shape of you' is the most streamed song in the history of Spotify since the time it was launched.

Is Spotify music illegal?

No. Spotify music is not illegal.

How did Spotify get its name?

Lorentzon and Ek chose the name Spotify as it sounded pleasing and meaningful. Spot - place and identify - identity together has become Spotify.

What does Spotify stand for?

Spot - place and identify - identity together stands for Spotify.

Who is Spotify owned by?

Spotify is predominantly owned by its founders, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, with 52.1% and 55.9% shares, respectively.

What does the Spotify logo mean?

Spotify logo signifies Simplicity, Cleanliness, and Minimalism.