Our favorite music streaming service, in these last couple of years, has been, without a doubt, Spotify. In the history of music listening, streaming, downloading applications, and programs, it is easy to say that Spotify has created a revolution. What Spotify has done differently is they managed to both make customers and the artists happy. Before that, either you had to pay to buy a CD or illegally download their music. But now, with Spotify, you can stream online, everywhere, and anytime. Before we dig into the history of Spotify, you might wonder when did Spotify come out. Read further to find out.
When Was Spotify Created?
Spotify launched in 2008, changing the music industry and the streaming services forever. Let’s start with what does the app good for. Spotify offers you two kinds of subscriptions, one a normal ad-supported account, which you need constant internet access to be able to stream, the other a premium subscription where you need to pay a small amount of fee to listen to music and download it without any ads or internet connection.
The founders of Spotify, two Swedish entrepreneurs, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, launched the app in October 2008. Since then, Spotify has become worth almost 7 billion euros. It has an estimated number of one hundred forty-four million paying subscribers. Including more than sixty million songs, you can also stream podcasts, make, edit, and follow playlists. It allows you to follow and like artists to be notified when they release a new song or have concerts. So needless to say, Spotify works for the artist too.
It all seemed like both the musicians and the users were happy until some of the artists like Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke from Radiohead complained that Spotify’s share for musicians was not fair. Taylor Swift states in 2014 that she did not want to be part of a company that treats the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music as an experiment and does not fairly compensate them. Spotify said they hope Taylor would be back one day to their company and not much after she added all her songs back into Spotify.
History of Spotify
Spotify was ready to come out in 2006, but the music industry at that time was not in a good state. Services before Spotify like Limewire allowed listeners to download all music illegally, leaving the producers and artists nothing. It took Spotify two years to make all the deals with the record companies, and finally, they launched in 2008 in most of Europe. It did come out but in 2009 it wasn’t available in the USA, but there were some ways to download it from Europe. After the president of Facebook Sean Parker tells Mark Zuckerberg to check Spotify out, Zuckerberg tweeted, “Spotify is so good.” And their recognition has gone even further.
In 2009 Lady Gaga’s Poker Face got a million streams on Spotify, and some rumors said that she only received a royalty check of one hundred sixty-seven dollars’ worth. Spotify later stated that the royalty contracts don’t work that way and didn’t explain any further information.
In March 2011, Spotify reached one million paying subscribers. In July the same year, they finally released Spotify for the USA too.
Even President Obama released a Spotify playlist in February 2012 for his presidential campaign. The playlist included tunes from Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé, Wilco, and James Taylor.
In March 2015, Jay-Z launched Tidal, another music streaming app, with artists like Rihanna and Kanye West. Tidal was seen as a direct attack on Spotify’s “freemium” business model.
Later that year, in May, podcasts, video streaming, and news streaming were added to the Spotify family.
In the same year, in June, Apple launched Apple Music, which is still Spotify’s biggest competition in the industry.
In 2017 Taylor Swift returned to Spotify after leaving it for three years.
Since 2019 there are ideas of Spotify working on its voice assistant and smart home speaker like Alexa.
Apple Music vs Spotify
Currently, the biggest two music streaming platforms are Apple Music and Spotify. There has been an argument since the launch of Apple Music in 2015 over which platform is better for streaming. We will compare the two under this title.
- To start with the price, both apps have a fee of 4.99$ per month for students. Apple Music has 3 months of the free trial while Spotify offers one.
- Spotify Premium offers 4 different types of subscriptions: Individual, Duo, Family, and Student.
- Apple Music offers 3 different subscription plans: Individual, Family, Student.
- You can use Spotify without paying any money, just with ads and required data. The premium version is ad-free and requires no internet connection. Apple Music is only accessible with payment after the first three months.
- Spotify is available for Apple, Windows, and Android devices.
- Apple Music, as you could guess, is only available for Apple devices.
- Spotify’s algorithm offers many different playlists created just for you, based on what you have listened to, liked, and disliked before. They are quite good at discovering new music in general.
- Apple Music also has a For You section, but you have to answer questions based on your music taste and check all the genres and artists you like. Its algorithm is not as good as Spotify’s and doesn’t go much further from what you already know.
The In-App Experience
Here are some differences between the two rival music platforms in terms of in-app experience:
- When it comes to in-app experience, Spotify’s design has a cleaner but darker theme. Apple Music has a design to show you all features at once, which makes it harder to reach your actual content.
- Spotify has more compatibility with smart home speakers. For example, if you connected your Alexa to Spotify, when you say “Alexa play…” it automatically plays from Spotify.
- Spotify has an option to create collaborative playlists, which means you can send a playlist to your friend, and they can add more songs to the playlist.
Overall, it is up to you which platform to use, but it is safe to say Spotify has a couple more tricks and features. The best is to try both of them in the free trial periods and then choose what’s best for you.
Concluding on Spotify’s Come Out
In this article, we talked about Spotify’s history and explained how and when did it come out. Hopefully, we were able to answer all your questions.