Streaming music service Spotify has tended to launch new features in its desktop app first, rather than its mobile and tablet apps. But could that be changing in the months ahead?
“Yes, it has to. The service, at least commercially, is four and a half years old. It launched in 2008, and that was desktop, mobile and a paywall in between. That’s no longer the case, so we have to think about user behaviour,” Spotify’s Ken Parks tells our sister site Music Ally.
“It’s increasingly a mobile-first world, and it’s critical to go where your users are. Increasingly, people are finding out about our service first on their mobiles,” he says.
“They’re really engaging with our free radio product in the US, for example, so you’ll see that only get better and more customised for users, and you will see that across all markets.”
The interview also sees Parks saying that Spotify’s success in Sweden – where its growth has helped overall music sales rebound from a long slump – can be repeated elsewhere in the world.
“In a market like Sweden where piracy was so ingrained it was almost a way of life, you can actually change things around,” he says.
“That market was absolutely in freefall. It was dead. We have revived that: digital is most of the sales in that market, and we’re most of the digital market. But before that, there was no bleaker situation than existed in the Nordics.”
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