In May 2018, Spotify attracted criticism for its "Hate Content & Hateful Conduct policy" that removed the music of R. The free service tier has led to a variety of major album releases being delayed or withdrawn from the service. Worldwide, 30,000 musicians have joined the organization UnionOfMusicians (UMAW). Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it temporarily closed its office in Russia and indefinitely suspended all of its services in the country. The company is incorporated in Luxembourg as Spotify Technology S.A., and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with offices in 16 countries around the world. Among them is an increased lack of non-online social spaces, an increased lack of privacy from strangers, and a source of unbridled expression particularly with its media-related podcasts.
It combines short-form podcast news updates from The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and PRI with a mix of a user's favorite songs and artists interspersed with tracks the listener has yet to discover. In 2016, Spotify introduced its Daily Mix feature, which creates playlists of music that a user has previously listened to on the platform.In 2017, Spotify introduced RapCaviar, a hip-hop playlist. In August 2016, Spotify launched Release Radar, a personalized playlist that allows users to stay up-to-date on new music released by the artists they listen to the most.
Spotify does not sell user data but did begin selling broader trend data, often coined "streaming intelligence" to marketing firms in 2016, allowing for the data to be available directly to clients. Helsing is an AI defense software company that also engages in military strike drone manufacturing. Spotify promised to add content advisories for anything containing discussions related to COVID-19 and posted additional rules.
If a song is "loved", a custom radio channel will be created based on it, and when there are at least 15 of these songs, a "My Favourites" channel is unlocked. At launch, the skipping feature was not featured to "reinforce the feel of radio", but it was quietly added later and with no limits. In October 2017, Spotify launched "Rise", a program aimed at promoting emerging artists. Additional features include the ability to get "verified" status with a blue checkmark on an artist's profile, receiving artist support from Spotify, customising the profile page with photos and promoting a certain song as their "pick". In April 2017, the panel was upgraded to leave beta status, renamed as "Spotify for Artists", and opened to all artists and managers. In March 2009, Spotify began offering music downloads in the United Kingdom, France, and Spain.
Spotify provides access to over 100 million songs, 5 million podcasts, and 4 billion playlists. In Spotify's apps, music can be browsed or searched for via various parameters, such as artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label. Unlike the apps, the web player does not have the ability to download music for offline listening. The standalone app was made available to all iOS and Android users in the United States since 4 June 2019. On 31 January 2018, Spotify started testing a new Pandora-styled standalone app called Stations by Spotify for Australian Android users.

Features

In March 2023, Spotify announced a partnership with Patreon, which Spotify claimed would "enable creators to expand their creative business through direct payments from fans, and allow fans to listen to their Patreon content on Spotify". In May 2022, Spotify announced a partnership with the online game platform and game creation system Roblox, the partnership saw Spotify as the first streaming brand to have a presence within the game with the launch of "Spotify Island". In February 2018, Spotify integrated with the gaming-oriented voice chat service Discord on desktop clients, allowing users to display their currently playing song as a rich presence on their profile, and invite other users with Spotify Premium to group "listening parties".
This was followed in May 2017 with the acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Niland, which uses technology to improve personalisation and recommendation features for users. In April 2017, they acquired Mediachain, a blockchain startup that had been developing a decentralized database system for managing attribution, and other metadata for media. In a comment to TechCrunch, Spotify said that Seed Scientific's team would lead an advanced analytics unit within the company, focused on developing data services.

Premium-exclusive albums

• As of 2022, Spotify is the current sponsor of Spanish football club FC Barcelona, with music artists like Drake, Travis Scott and Ed Sheeran collaborating with the club by changing their shirts into their artist logo, sometimes used for album promotions.
• In March 2016, Spotify launched six playlists branded as Fresh Finds, including the main playlist and Fire Emoji, Basement, Hiptronix, Six Strings, and Cyclone (hip-hop, electronic, pop, guitar-driven, and experimental music respectively).
• Spotify released the first version of its Apple Watch app in November 2018, allowing playback control of the iPhone via the watch.
• In September 2025, Lossless audio, which allows Spotify users to listen to songs in very high quality, became available through Spotify premium.
• User growth continued, reaching 20 million total active users, including five million paying customers globally and one million paying customers in the United States, in December 2012.

Spotify has been criticised by artists and producers including Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke, who have argued that Spotify does not fairly compensate musicians, and both withdrew their music from the service. However, there has been some concern about the music streaming platform's social media features. Before May 2020, all service users were limited to 10,000 songs in their library, after which they would receive an "Epic collection, friend" notification and would not be able to save more music to their library. Also in January 2019, Spotify beta-tested its Canvas feature, where artists or labels can upload looping 3 to 8-second moving visuals to their tracks, replacing album covers in the "Now Playing" view; users have the option to turn off this feature. The features were announced by CEO Daniel Ek at a press conference, with Ek saying that a common user complaint about the service was that "Spotify is great when you know what music you want to listen to, but not when you don't".

Unionization

Of that amount, about 58.5% of its total revenue goes to the owners of sound recording copyrights, and the other 12% goes to the owners of musical compositions. In December 2013, the company launched a new website, "Spotify for Artists", explaining its business model and revenue data. There was no provision regarding worker ownership of content created, one of the initial demands. In February 2020, Spotify announced it was acquiring The Ringer, and inheriting the previously established union. One month after Spotify acquired Gimlet Media in February 2019, 75% of staff at Gimlet Media went public, signing union cards and seeking voluntary recognition.
In March 2016, Spotify launched six playlists branded as Fresh Finds, including the main playlist and Fire Emoji, Basement, Hiptronix, Six Strings, and Cyclone (hip-hop, electronic, pop, guitar-driven, and experimental music respectively). In September 2025, Lossless audio, which allows Spotify users to listen to songs in very high quality, became available through Spotify premium. Months later, Spotify tested its own version of stories (the sharing format popularized by social apps) known as "Storyline", and the focus is on allowing artists to share their own insights, inspiration, details about their creative process or other meanings behind the music. A camera icon in the apps' search fields lets other users point their device's camera at the code, which takes them to the same content. In January 2016, Spotify and music annotation service Genius formed a partnership, bringing annotation information from Genius into infocards presented while songs are playing in Spotify.

• Spotify provides access to over 100 million songs, 5 million podcasts, and 4 billion playlists.
• Spotify does not sell user data but did begin selling broader trend data, often coined “streaming intelligence” to marketing firms in 2016, allowing for the data to be available directly to clients.
• Ahead of Spotify Wrapped 2024, Spotify changed its API so that modded versions of the client would not work.
• In 2008, just after launch, the company made a loss of 31.8 million Swedish kronor (US$4.4 million).
• In March 2021, David Dayen argued in The American Prospect that musicians were in peril due to monopolies in streaming services like Spotify.
• Today, royalties on all streaming services, including Spotify are paid on a per user basis not per stream as this allows the artists who users listen to the most to receive the largest percentage of the payouts.
• In Spotify’s apps, music can be browsed or searched for via various parameters, such as artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label.

In 2008, just after launch, the company made a loss of 31.8 million Swedish kronor (US$4.4 million). The company reported that the tier conditions may change before its full launch. The subscription costs $0.99 and is supposed to be a combination of the free and premium tiers.

Artificial streams

The tool allows users to generate personalized playlists from text prompts describing genres, moods, artists, activities, or creative ideas like animals, movie characters, colors, or emojis. Discovery Mode allows artists who meet certain criteria and have a Spotify For Artists account to submit qualifying songs for Spotify's in-house promotion services. In 2023, Spotify launched additional features to help independent artists distributing their music on the platform reach a wider array of potential fans. This feature allows two or more Premium users in the same location to share control over the music that is being played.

On 3 July 2020, cybersecurity firm VPNMentor discovered a database containing 380 million individual records, including the logins and passwords of Spotify users. It was announced later in April that this type of agreement would be extended to indie artists signed to the Merlin Network agency. New reports in April confirmed that Spotify and Universal Music Group had reached an agreement to allow artists part of Universal to limit their new album releases to the Premium service tier for a maximum of two weeks.

Fake artists

Though all three applications support real-time stem separation and mixing, this functionality is disabled on music streamed from Spotify. In December 2024, Harper’s Magazine released a report stating that Spotify was padding out playlists with ghost artists created by production companies in order to minimise royalty costs and increase profits. In May 2022, Spotify began testing a feature that playjohnny casino registration would allow select artists to promote their NFTs via their profiles. However, after talking it out and renewing the contracts between the two, Spotify later announced that they had reached an agreement with Kakao Entertainment, allowing their content to be available once again on the platform across the globe. On 1 March 2021, Spotify confirmed that its platform would no longer have access to music from artists represented by Kakao Entertainment. It also said that Apple believed Spotify users on the app store were Apple's customers and not Spotify's.