• Spotify held its second Stream On event yesterday, announcing a handful of new features, some of which will be landing in South Africa.
• These new features are part of a reimagined interface, which is be launching in waves to the platform’s 500 million-plus monthly active users.
• Many of the features are designed to create greater engagement with artists/creators, and listening for longer.

Yesterday Spotify held its second-ever Stream On event, highlighting some of the key changes coming to the music streaming platform in the coming months.

Here the company started things off by showcasing a newly imagined interface, which places an emphasis on discovery. This includes a new design, which Spotify says is aimed at allowing users to engage more with artists and creators, as well as listen to the content they enjoy for longer.

“And that’s what we’ve been doing for almost 17 years: building, improving and reimagining this home to better meet creator needs and help them chart new pathways to success. As we look to the future, we are excited to expand that ambition to even more creators across new formats. We’re enabling more creativity, discovery and personalization than ever before by providing the best resources, support, and interactivity,” added founder & CEO Daniel Ek, during the event.

While the company could not provide a specific date on the release of this new experience, it has said that it will roll out in waves to its more than 500 million-plus monthly active users.

To that end, it has highlighted some of the features that are earmarked for those in South Africa:

• “With Smart Shuffle, we’re introducing a new way to inject new music that perfectly complements an existing playlist with just the tap of a button.
• Building on the success of podcast previews, creators can choose or have Spotify automatically generate Previews of their music and podcasts for users to sample before they play or save.
• Spotify is also bringing a new playlist feature to popular playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, New Music Friday and RapCaviar, where users can explore each playlist track-by-track. 
• Just like with music, Spotify will now serve Autoplay for Podcasts — when a podcast ends, another episode will automatically start playing that fits the user’s tastes and is relevant.”

Content creators are also getting more ways of generating revenue via Spotify, including merchandise and the ability to send notifications to listeners.

• “New Concert and Merch Discovery tools will help make sure concert-goers never miss another show. Listeners will begin to see merch offers and concert listings in far more places across the app.  If a show catches a fan’s eye, they can tap a new ‘interested’ button to save the listing to their own calendar in the Live Events Feed. Users can adjust their location and browse concerts worldwide, all personalised to their taste. 
• Spotify is also expanding its Fans First program to include more artists, ensuring top listeners receive emails and notifications that give them special access to concert pre-sales and merch exclusives.”

Lastly, podcasts are getting some attention too, with more exclusives and originals set to land on the platform. The most notable involves Hasan Minhaj, who will star in a new DC Comics podcast series called The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark. There’s an exclusive video partnership with Markiplier to produce exclusive video episodes of Distractible and Go! My Favorite Sports Team for Spotify beginning this week.

There may not be a specific date for all these new features, but there is certainly more on the way for local Spotify users. You can watch a recap of Stream On 2023 in the video below.