Spotify Discovery Announcement Recap

By Jesse Kirshbaum

I just walked out of Spotify’s big announcement event in NYC. The room was set up with big screens, looking almost like an IMAX theater, showing images from some of Spotify’s classic events to date. A$AP Rocky at SXSW. Nas at Art Basel. Kendrick Lamar and the Spotify big green bus.

Walking through the room, it was clearly a “who’s who” of tech press. I chatted with Sean Glass, who chopped it up with me a bit on his label, his releases, and his strategy. “It all comes down to great songs,” he said and I believe him. Also there was Chet Gulland from ad agency boutique Droga 5. I sat right next to Ben Sisario from the NY Times, whom I’ve admired from a far but never met. It was great to see him in action covering the event.

Daniel Ek took the stage to after the highlights video with “Rock The Casbah” glaring in the background. Ek did a great job captivating the audience in his opening remarks, making statements like “the more music that gets played on Spotify, the more money that’s going back to the artists,” and “Spotify looks at ourselves as punks. Punks like anti-establishment, like The Ramones, like early rap music, but we’re not punks for the sake of it… We’re positive punks, were restless, we want things to happen, build something now that helps artists for the long term.” He also went on to announce some interesting stats from Spotify: there are over one billion playlists on Spotify, including 477,000,000 that use the word “love.”

Last year at this press conference, Spotify announced their apps program. The mission of Spotify is now getting more clear, and that is to bring all of the music ever created to every single person on the face of the planet.

Ek boasted that Spotify has proven they can break artists and that the more users that stream music directly correlates to the amount of people who buy albums. He said fans that are listening to music on Spotify are not just listening to individual songs, but full albums.

Next, Ek brought out Daniel Glass from Glassnote , who was excited to talk about two main attributes of Spotify – discovery and more music. Daniel openly admitted that he stays on the pulse of music now is via his three kids and his interns. He also talked about his next projects: Robert Dillon, Little Green Cars, The Daughter, and The Phoenix album which is now done and being released in April. He plans on using Spotify heavily for these releases.

Daniel Ek then took the stage again, talking about how 10,000-20,000 new songs are added to Spotify every day and they are at 20 million songs right now and rising. Next, he made the big announcements of the additional features like:

Discover Tab:

The Spotify Discovery tab aims to “seek out personal recommendations.”

• New single and album releases from the artists you follow.
• All the music and playlists shared by influencers you follow.
• Recommendations based on the music you listen to – including music, reviews and concerts.

Audio Preview:

Via Spotify, “With our new Audio Preview feature, you can dip into new music without moving away from the song you’re playing. If you like what you hear, you can save it for later or play it right away.”

Follow Tab:

The music graph with the ability to follow celebrities such as Obama while on the campaign trail or Bruno Mars while recording his album. You can also share your music graphs on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, or just to your Spotify following.

Also, notifications can be set up to your phone for new releases and new updates, and can be clicked through for instant access to the new music.

He then proclaimed, and I loved this, “soon, you will have the right song to every moment.”

Next up he brought out Sean Parker and Lars Ulrich from Metallica, and made the exciting announcement that Metallica is now on Spotify. It was great to hear their banter and stories from their epic battle during the Napster days and how they connected for the first time in 12 years back in April for a long night of drinking and telling war stories.

Ek then opened it up to Q&A and we heard questions from Mashable, Billboard, and a few others.

Brenna Ehrlich from MTV’s OMA’s asked a great question from the artist perspective on “could artists have access to the data and see who is streaming their tracks? Will there be an artist dashboard?” It actually stumped him a bit as he didn’t answer the question but it clearly caught his attention.

For a surprising finish, Daniel brought out Frank Ocean from a side stage before he closed the press event.

You’ve got to hand it to Spotify, the production was top-shelf, creative, and ran what seemed to be really seamlessly. I’ve seen tech events where it can turn into a real mess… This was the opposite. It felt like a show!

Hats off to a successful event and announcement! I know the users and fans will be excited with these new additions and I think the culture will be excited as Spotify continues to push the boundaries and innovate.