Spotify is shutting down its live audio app Spotify Live, a company spokesperson confirmed to AapkaDost on Monday. The company says it will continue to explore live features on its main platform. The news was first reported by Music Ally.
“After a period of experimenting and learning about how Spotify users interact with live audio, we’ve made the decision to discontinue the Spotify Live app,” a spokesperson told AapkaDost in an email. “We believe there is a future for live fan-creator interactions in the Spotify ecosystem; however, based on our lessons, it no longer makes sense as a standalone app. We have seen promising results in the artist-centric use case of ‘listening parties’, which we will continue to explore in the future to enable live interactions between artists and fans.”
In April 2022, Spotify integrated the live audio capabilities of its companion app, Spotify Greenroom, into the main Spotify streaming app and renamed Greenroom “Spotify Live”.
At the time, Spotify noted that Spotify Live would continue to work like Greenroom did by allowing creators to interact with their audience in real time and serve as a creation mechanism for hosts, but listening live in the main Spotify app would not support the interactive features . and would instead allow creators to reach a wider audience of Spotify’s 406 million global listeners.
Spotify purchased the app that would become Greenroom in March 2021 with its $62 million purchase of the start-up Betty Labs. Originally known as Locker Room, the app had focused on the intersection of live audio with sports content. Spotify quickly rebranded the app and introduced it as Greenroom in June 2021. The company then live weekly shows rolled out hoping to drive consumer adoption of its live audio service. However, Greenroom failed to gain traction in a market that was already on the live audio trend.
Last December, Spotify appeared to be scaling back its live audio ambitions, when the company ended production of several of its live audio shows, including “Deux Me After Dark,” “Doughboys: Snack Pack,” “The Movie Buff,” and “A Homo in life.”
Spotify’s foray into the live audio market initially seemed like a natural fit for the company, as it had invested heavily in podcasts and related technology in recent years. While podcasts are a hit for Spotify, the company seems to have struggled with live audio.
It’s worth noting that Spotify isn’t the only company pulling back from live audio. Last year, Facebook integrated its Live Audio Rooms offering, its Clubhouse clone, into its Facebook Live experience. The social media giant also discontinued its short audio Soundbites feature and its audio hub.