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Spotify Ubuntu

Introduction to Spotify

Spotify is a Swedish audio media and streaming service provider detected on 23 April 2006 by Martin Lorentzon and Daniel Ek. As of December 2021, it is one of the biggest music streaming software with 406 million+ active users monthly including 180 million+ paying subscribers. It is listed in the New York Stock Exchange in the American depository receipts form.

Spotify provides digital copyright restricted and podcasts including 82 million+ songs from media companies and record labels. As the premium service, common aspects are free with limited control and advertisements, while extra features, like commercial-free listening and offline listening, are provided by paid subscriptions.

Some key points about Spotify are mentioned below:

  • As of October 2021, Spotify is now available in more than 180 countries.
  • Users can find music based on album, genre, or artists, and can share, edit, and create playlists.
  • This service provider is available in almost all Europe, the Americas, and Oceania, with a presence in 184 markets. It is also available on almost all the latest devices including Linux, macOS, and Windows computers, Android and iOS tablets and smartphones, AI-enabled smart speakers like Google Home, Amazon Echo, and digital media players such as Roku.
  • Unlike download or physical sales, which pay an artist a price per album or song sold, Spotify gives royalties based on the count of artist’s streams as the total song proportion streamed.
  • Approximately, it distributes 70% of its whole revenue to several rights holders, who pay artists based on separate agreements.

History of Spotify

In 2006, Spotify was detected in Sweden, Stockholm, by Daniel Ek (Stardoll former’s CTO) and Martin Lorentzon (Tradedoubler’s co-founder). According to Daniel Ek, the title of the company was initially wrongly heard from a name told by Lorentzon. Then, they thought out a derivation of an aggregation of the “spot” and “identify” terms.

Initial international launches

In the United Kingdom, Spotify started public registration at no cost service tier in February 2009. Registrations surged below the publication of the mobile service, prominent Spotify to halt registration at no cost service in September, returning the United Kingdom to an invitation-only policy.

Spotify was released in July 2011 in the United States and provided six months, an ad-supported trial time during which fresh users can listen to an endless amount of songs at no cost. The free trial time started to expire and restricted users to 10 hours of streaming every month and five plays/songs in January 2012. Spotify indefinitely deleted every limit in March on at no cost service tier.

Spotify disclosed expansion of its operations in the United States in lower Manhattan, approximately adding 1000 new jobs and 832 existing positions. The US headquarters of the company is positioned in the Flatiron District of New York City.

The company declared a total of 13 fresh retails in the MENA region on 14 November 2018, including the constitution of a new Arabic hub and various playlists.

Developments of Spotify

There are several features of Spotify. Some of them are listed and mentioned below:

Spotify Ubuntu

Streaming records

The “Thinking Out Loud” song by Ed Sheeran became the initial song for passing 500 million streams in October 2015. Spotify declared that the “Lean On” song by DJ Snake and Major Lazer featuring MO was the most-streamed song of every time with 525 million+ streams worldwide a month later. On 19 June 2018, a hit single “Sad!” of XXXTentacion broke the single-day streaming record of Swift, assembling 10.4 million streams a day after he was shot in Florida fatally.

User growth

Spotify declared a customer base of one million paid subscribers around Europe in March 2011, and by September 2011, the count of paid subscribers had doubled to 2 million. Time announced that 15 million users are active and 4 million are paid subscribers of Spotify in August 2012.

The growth of the user continued, reaching twenty million active users, 5 million globally paid customers, and one million paid customers in the US in December 2012. Spotify captured 133 million premium users in April 2020. In late February, Spotify announced a fall in several users, but it has found recovery in countries distressed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Premium-exclusive albums

In March 2017, the Financial Times announced that as a part of its efforts for re-negotiating the deals of new licensing with music labels, Spotify and other major record labels had granted that Spotify will restrict a few newly launched albums to its Premium tier, with Spotify getting a reduction in the fees of royalty to do so.
Choose albums will be available on the Premium tier only for a time before basic release.

In April, new reports ensured that Universal Music Group and Spotify had reached compliance to permit artists segment of Universal to restrict their new album publishes to the Premium service tier for a max of two weeks. Later in April, it was disclosed that this type of compliance will be enhanced to indie artists signed to an agency of Merlin Network.

Direct public offering

In April 2018, Spotify went public over the stock market with a direct public offering instead of an initial public offering. This method isn’t intended for raising fresh capital, but for letting investors receive their returns. Morgan Stanley is the slated advisor of the company on the matter.

2020 hacking incident

vpnMentor (a cyber security firm) found a database including 380 million records including the passwords and logins of Spotify users on 3 July 2020. The database was assumed to be evidence of the cyberattack of credential stuffing targeting Spotify because it included several credentials of up to 3,50,000 agreed user accounts. In November 2020, Spotify circulated the password rolling reset for distressed accounts in response to the attack.

Exclusivity and acquisition deals

Spotify inherited Tunigo (a music discovery app) in May 2013. They inherited a music intelligence company ‘The Echo Nest’ in March 2014. Spotify announced that they had inherited an analytics company and data science consulting firm ‘Seed Scientific’ in June 2015.

Spotify inherited Loudr (the music licensing platform) on 12 April 2018. Spotify inherited the Anchor FM and Gimlet Media (the podcast networks) on 6 February 2019 with the aim of making itself as a leading model in podcasting. Spotify stated that they will inherit Parcast (another network of the podcast) on 26 March. Spotify inherited a music production marketplace, i.e., SoundBetter for people in the industry of music for collaborating on projects and sharing music tracks to license on 12 September.

Spotify released plans for acquiring Megaphone for 235 US million dollars from the Slate Group in November 2020. Spotify inherited Betty Labs app developer and Locker Room (their live social audio application) in March 2021. In June 2021, Locker Room was re-titled as Spotify Greenroom and transformed into a Clubhouse competitor. Spotify inherited a podcast discovery startup, i.e., ‘Podz’ in June. Spotify inherited Findaway (an audiobook company) including its releasing imprint OrangeSky Audio in November.

Company partnerships

Sony published a new music service, i.e., “PlayStation Music” with Spotify as its absolute partner in January 2015. PlayStation Music consolidates with the Spotify service into the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles of Sony and Sony Xperia mobile devices.

Spotify released the partnership with the SXSW (South by Southwest) conference, presenting particular content in unique playlists from an SXSW hub in the applications of Spotify in March 2017. Also, the integration enabled Spotify in the SXSW GO application for helping users explore and discover artists singing at the conference.

Spotify teamed up with Netflix and ESPN for curating podcasts around The Last Dance (Michael Jordan documentary) in May 2020 and Spotify agreed on a deal with Chernin Entertainment for producing TV shows and movies in September.

Challenge with Apple

Spotify published the first Apple watch application version in November 2018, permitting playback control of an iPhone by the watch. Also, users can select which devices for playing music on by Bluetooth. Spotify reported an antitrust complaint with European Commission on unfair app store practices in a further acceleration of the challenge with Apple. It also stated that Apple admitted the users of Spotify on the app store were the customers of Apple and not Spotify’s.

Challenge with Kakao Entertainment Corp.

Spotify ensures that its platform will no longer have a connection to music from artists by Kakao Entertainment on 1 March 2021. After renewing the contracts and taking it out between the two. Later, Spotify disclosed that they had reached compliance with Kakao Entertainment, permitting their content to be present once again in the environment around the globe.

Features of Spotify

Spotify contains 406 million users around the world who enjoy a huge variety of musical artists and a large selection of video and audio podcasts. If we have only listened to podcasts on music in the mobile application of Spotify and never modified the settings, we are missing out on many features that can develop our listening experience.

Here are some features of Spotify on the mobile application for getting the most of the service:

Spotify Ubuntu

Use data saver

The Data Saver of Spotify is one way we can save our money while enjoying the application. We need to open the application, i.e., “Spotify”, tap the icon, i.e., “gear”, and tab the “Data Saver” option for turning Data Saver on.

We can select to set our audio quality to the low level or stream audio using video podcasts when we are not on Wi-Fi. Also, there is an option for only downloading the audio using video podcasts for saving memory on our phones.
Find the radio page of an artist

To open the album or page of an artist, we need to tap the three dots button of settings that is next to the button, i.e., Follow. We need to tap the “Go to radio” option on the next page and we will be taken to the radio playlist of that artist.

Offline mode

It is good if we have less data on our mobile plan or if we only wish to listen to what we have downloaded. To turn on the offline mode, we need to open our Spotify application, press the gear icon, press the Playback option, and offline would be an option at the top side of the menu. All premium members can listen to downloaded podcasts and songs and free users can listen to downloaded songs once enabled.

Gapless playback

Several gaps between songs could be annoying. Enabling Gapless Playback can establish the songs on the album or playlist overlap so that it seems like a continuous music flow from our favorite DJ. For turning it on, we need to open the Spotify application, press the gear icon, press the Playback button, and press the Gapless Playback option.

Manage autoplay for the same songs

If the playlist or album we are listening to comes to an end the Autoplay option will play the same songs to the playlist or album that is completed. This aspect is automatically on, but for turning it off or backing on, we need to open the Spotify application, press the gear icon, press the Playback option, and scroll down to the Autoplay option. We will see the “On other devices” and “On this device” options under Autoplay.

Turn on voice commands

Alexa or Siri voice commands are the easiest way for getting things done smoothly, and we can utilize them in Spotify. We need to open the Spotify application, select the gear icon, select the Voice Interactions option, and select the “Hey Spotify” option to enable the voice commands feature.

Manage our app notifications

Spotify can send us email notifications or push alerts for things such as new music from artists we follow, in-person or virtual concerts from our favorite acts, or other news of Spotify. Automatically, these are on, but if we wish to turn them off, we need to open the Spotify application, select the gear icon, and select the Notifications near the bottom side of the menu.

We will see some options like New Music and Recommend Music in the next menu. Select the options we wish to turn off and we will be able to turn off an email or/and push notification.

Reorder our playlists

If we keep creating and losing playlists, the Spotify app makes it convenient for organizing and reordering our playlists. The application enables us to sort playlists by Recently added, Recently played, Creator, and Alphabetical. Also, we can make a Custom Order, but we have to do that on a computer system. We can check out the article of CNET on how to modify the order of our Spotify playlists.

Adjust our audio quality

Spotify also enables us to adjust our audio quality, base volume, and even access the equalizers. Modifying the settings can develop our audio quality for any case. We can check out the article of CNET detailing how to modify these settings.

Is the Spotify app free?

The basic and ad-supported release of Spotify is fully free. It provides unlimited access to the complete catalog of podcasts and music but with comes some drawbacks.

The most nosy are continuous ad breaks. They can kill our groove if we are listening to any party. Also, we have limited to only some song skips, and the audio quality is lower at 160kbit/s.

Upgrading to Spotify Premium

It’s a great way to subscribe to Spotify Premium for getting rid of ads, but there’s more to the paying release of the service than we might expect. Here’s why Spotify Premium may be worth it for us.

Spotify Ubuntu

  • Audio quality: The upgrade of Spotify Premium from 160kbit/s to 320kbit/s can be worth it if we are an audiophile.
  • No advertisements: It includes both banner and audio ads.
  • Download songs: Spotify Premium permits us to download songs that we can listen to offline. However, we will no longer have any access to the downloaded songs if we cancel our subscription.
  • No forced shuffling and unlimited skipping on the mobile application. The free release of Spotify can shuffle every playlist, add individual tracks to the shuffled playlists, and just offer us six skips/hour. It only happens to several mobile applications, but it is regardless frustrating. However, we can skip to the content of our hearts with Spotify Premium.
  • Hulu access: We can have this feature if we live in the United States.

Working of Spotify app

There’s no better time than today if we are yet to try Spotify. All we require is a Spotify account and an internet connection. Here’s how to make one:

  • We need to open the Sign-up page of Spotify on our mobile or PC browser. We will be prompted to type an email address, make a password, and select a username. Also, we will be needed to type our gender and date of birth. Once we have done it, we need to press the green sign-up
  • Then, we can select a subscription level. We can test the Spotify Premium service at no cost for three months trial if we aren’t familiar with it.
  • All that’s remaining is to download and install the free version of the Spotify application. There is an Android application and desktop program. We can begin listening on the device of our choice once we have installed this application. Our listening playlist and history will be synced and available across devices. If we do not wish to use applications, we can enjoy Spotify inside a browser tab from the Spotify web player as well.

Be alerted that the audio quality falls down a bit for both subscription and paid versions of the application when using the Spotify application versus the web player. Spotify premium will Max out at 256kbit/k, with free only reaching 128kbit/s.

Installing Spotify in Ubuntu

Spotify is one of the most famous platforms of audio music streaming around the world such as Apple Music and others. From where we can listen to a number of songs as well as music. The team of Spotify has worked hard for making it a great music platform by including the oldest libraries of music to the latest playlists of songs.

Installing Spotify using the Snapcraft Store

The quickest and best way for installing Spotify on a Linux-based operating systems is by Snap Store. Snap Store permits installing any software or application in a single command. Snap Store can download and install every necessary dependent library for any application such as Spotify.

Update the APT repository

We need to first update the APT package repository of the system for installing the current packages present:

Spotify Ubuntu

Installing Snap

By default, the snap comes in the 20.04 version of Ubuntu, but if it’s not installed, we can install the Snap by entering the below command in the terminal window:

Spotify Ubuntu

Installing Spotify

We need to enter the following command for installing Spotify client in Ubuntu after the installation process of Snap is completed:

Spotify Ubuntu

The above command will download and install Spotify in a few minutes.

Run Spotify

  • Once the Spotify Desktop Client is installed, we need to find “Spotify” within the application menu.
  • Press the “Spotify” icon in the search results.
    Spotify Ubuntu
  • Here we have the elegant and clean look of Spotify on our Ubuntu system.
    Spotify Ubuntu
  • We need to log in with our Spotify account and have a great musical experience.
    Spotify Ubuntu
  • One of the best things about installing Spotify from the Snap Store is that it would be automatically upgraded if a new Spotify version enters the market.

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