Stairway to heaven
Spotify announced yesterday that it has reached half a billion monthly active listeners. That marks a 22% increase compared to the previous year, making it the company's strongest first quarter ever, sending shares in SPOT up 5%.
The company wasn't quite as successful at getting those subscribers to cough up for their music — the number of paying subscribers only rose 15% — but it nevertheless caps the end of a solid quarter for the company, which had to layoff around 600 employees in January.
AI ft. Drake
The results come after a TikTok-inspired revamp of its app and with the company currently navigating a delicate balance between the benefits and costs of AI, with the CEO, Daniel Ek, calling the technology “cool and scary”.
On the one hand, the company has recently introduced an exciting new feature, AI DJ, which provides personalized music selections introduced by a lifelike DJ voice powered by AI — a feature that already reaches millions of active users every week.
On the other hand, the company faces the challenges of AI generated songs infringing on copyright, an issue which hit the headlines last week after a song created by AI, featuring fake versions of Drake and The Weeknd, had to be pulled from the platform after Universal Music claimed an infringement. That song racked up over 600,000 plays on Spotify alone, demonstrating the viral potential of AI-generated content.
We wanted AI to do our work, so we could spend our time making art. For now, at least, it seems like the other way round is more likely.
