Spotify: ‘We have to turn ourselves into the OS of music’
Streaming music service provides stats for the first apps to launch on its desktop apps platform — Spotify users have spent 1,500 years inside apps within its desktop application since the start of December, the company has announced.
Context & Ripple Effects
Spotify opened its app platform to all users in January, after announcing the platform alongside a broader service revamp, Facebook tie-up and international expansion in late 2011. Early coverage had already begun measuring adoption; the company’s new engagement figure gives its desktop app experiment a stronger case as a distribution layer rather than a feature inside the player.
The stated ambition is to make Spotify the music interface through which listeners reach outside services. That matters because the platform’s value depends on whether third-party apps can capture meaningful listening attention inside Spotify, not merely on the size of its catalogue.
First-order effects
- Spotify can use reported time spent in desktop apps to recruit and retain third-party developers, while those developers gain access to listeners inside Spotify’s client.
- The app platform gives Spotify a new layer of control over how listeners discover music and related services within its desktop product.
Second-order effects
- Music and media partners seeking listener attention face a choice between building for Spotify’s app environment and competing for discovery outside it.
- As more services seek placement inside Spotify, the company’s rules for app access and prominence become commercially important to developers.
Third-order effects
- If listener activity continues to concentrate inside platform apps, music services may compete less on playback alone and more on control of the discovery routes surrounding playback.
- The strategy points toward a music ecosystem in which platform operators set the terms for third-party innovation, creating an SDK governance challenge as their developer base grows.
The trend: Streaming services are evolving from standalone players into platforms that seek to own the listener’s discovery route as well as playback.