Issue 302  2nd April 2021

Happy Friday!

For this week's hot-take, a thought on Spotify's ongoing battle to unseat Apple.

Spotify’s stated mission is ‘to unlock the potential of human creativity—by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.’

However, just as Google quickly outgrew 'don't be evil', perhaps a more forthright interpretation of Spotify's mission, reflecting its ascendance as one of the dominant market forces in all things audio, could be ‘total control of the earwaves’, or even more simply _'beat Apple'.

Over the last two years Spotify has invested heavily in original podcast content, and that bet is starting to pay off. According to market forecasts Spotify’s U.S. podcast listenership will surpass Apple Podcasts for the first time this year.

Now, the company is looking at dominating the live audio conversation market made popular by apps like Clubhouse. It has announced an acquisition of Betty Labs, the company behind the live sports audio app Locker Room. As most of the content on live audio apps is user-generated, this is a relatively low -cost way to capture more listeners, and continues to tip the balance of power away from record labels and more towards Spotify-owned content.

Not exactly evil, but if you're going to take on an adversary like Apple, it pays to be ambitious.

Until next week!