Spotify’s 'Play Button' will transform music blogging


Spotify’s 'Play Button' will transform music blogging - Spotify’s new Play Button will put an end to broken and poor quality audio links, and crucially gain it a whole new following, writes Emma Barnett.

Spotify’s latest move, the launch of the Play Button, which will allow every writer, from the unknown music blogger to the well known critics at music bibles, such as Rolling Stone magazine, to embed any song or album within their articles online, is a clever and aggressive move by the Swedish streaming service.


Spotify on laptop computer screen

Spotify's new Play Button


All too often music blogs and articles contain links which do not work because either the rights holder has pulled them down, or audio-sharing platforms fail to support the content adequately. Or, if the link does work, the sound quality is often poor.

Now, with a simple embed code, Spotify has opened up its 16-million-song catalogue to the world.

In the same move it pulled with Facebook, Spotify has pushed its client into another popular place for music fans – editorial.

People will need to have a Spotify account to access the music (adding a layer of effort to the listening process) – but that’s the main point of Spotify doing this - to gain new users.

Despite large growth, the service still only has 10 million active users (three million of which are paying subscribers). When you compare that to Facebook’s 850 million members or even Instagram’s 30 million userbase, it’s relatively small.

Spotify’s aim is to become ‘the operating system for music’ on all digital platforms. First it tackled the mobile, then stereo systems, followed by Facebook. Now it’s trying to push its music client all over the web – wherever music is written about.

This feisty move will directly impact audio-sharing platform SoundCloud. But the fellow Swedish music start-up still has its business-to-business model in place – where people pay to store, share and edit larger files through the platform and SoundCloud simply doesn’t have the deals in place with the record labels to offer this type of legal music service.

Other music and technology fans have pointed out to me on Twitter that the Play Button experience could be quite clunky as it isn’t strictly an embed – music will not play in the browser but through the Spotify application.

However, it will still beat broken links and the poor audio experience currently offered by most music sharing platforms.

Spotify will have to really up its game of getting new music into its catalogue as quickly as possible if bloggers who focus on the latest releases are to really feel the benefit of the clever Play Button. ( telegraph.co.uk )


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