Dejá vu?
Spotify is restructuring the look and feel of its music player app, and it’s clear where their inspiration is coming from: TikTok and Instagram.
The new design emphasizes actual imagery and vertical scrolling like a social media platform. Your screen will be a feed of podcast logos and album covers, and Spotify is also hoping to make it simpler to discover new things you may like. Spotify announced the new design at their Stream On event.
Over the past couple of years, Spotify has done a lot to distance itself from being a “music only” platform by investing in podcast and audiobooks and other sound-based content. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told The Verge in 2021 that he aspired to see more than 50 million “audio creators” using the platform, which of course is a broad term that doesn’t just refer to artists.
When you open Spotify soon, there will be a clear space for your music, a clear space for your podcasts, and clear spaces for other types of media. At the top of the screen, if you tap on “Music” or “Podcasts & Shows,” you’ll be taken to a vertical slew of songs or shows in that isolated section. Like other platforms, content will be in autoplay as you navigate. It’ll be much more reliant on AI to recommend content you might like, with a lot of chances to dip your toes into a song or show that you otherwise might not have known about.
The big takeaway from the unveiling was that Spotify is no longer just where you go to stream your favorite songs. That’s still a big part of the draw, but now Spotify is more in line with other big-name apps on your phone with an interface built upon discovery of different audio content. But more importantly, the model that defines many of the popular apps out there has a new imitator, cementing further the universal success of short-form scrolling.
