In response, Google threatened to close off access to its search engine in Australia. In January 2021, the Australian Government proposed legislation that would require Google and Facebook to pay media companies for the right to use their content. In 2021, the Alphabet Workers Union was founded, composed mostly of Google employees. Most employees were also working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the success of it even led to Google announcing that they would be permanently converting some of their jobs to work from home Such measures included slowing down hiring for the remainder of 2020, except for a small number of strategic areas, recalibrating the focus and pace of investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel.
Mobile listeners are now able to tap on any song or search for what they’d like to play. In September 2025, Spotify began removing restrictions preventing free users from listening to specific tracks. The company reported that the tier conditions may change before its full launch. On September 10, 2025, it was announced that Lossless would be rolling out to Premium listeners gradually to more than 50 markets through October. In February 2021, Spotify announced their plans to introduce a HiFi subscription, to offer listening in high fidelity, lossless sound quality. The changes faced a mixed reaction from the music industry, who believed that it would be detrimental to emerging musicians, but would make a larger share of total royalty payments available to musicians.
In July 2021, Spotify launched the “What’s New” feed, a section that collects all new releases and episodes from artists and podcasts that the user follows. In June 2019, Spotify launched a custom playlist titled “Your Daily Drive” that closely replicates the drive time format of many traditional radio stations. Rap Caviar had 10.9 million followers by 2019, becoming one of Spotify’s Top 5 playlists.
In January 2015, Sony announced PlayStation Music, a new music service with Spotify as its exclusive partner. In December 2021, Spotify acquired Whooshkaa, a podcast tech company that develops specialized technology that allows radio broadcasters to easily turn their existing audio content into on-demand podcast programming. In November 2021, Spotify acquired audiobook company Findaway, including its publishing imprint OrangeSky Audio. On 3 July 2020, cybersecurity firm VPNMentor discovered a database containing 380 million individual records, including the logins and passwords of Spotify users. Ek’s initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue.
The post stated that all free members would be limited to ten hours of music streaming per month, and in addition, individual tracks were limited to five plays. In April 2011, Spotify announced via a blog post that they would drastically cut the amount of music that free members could access, effective 1 May 2011. Spotify has experimented with different limitations to users’ listening on the Free service tier. Instead, a 30% commission is applied to recording royalties generated from all streams of selected songs in Discovery Mode contexts—Spotify Radio and Autoplay.
Google Labs
- In November 2013, Google announced plans for a new London headquarter, a 1 million square foot office able to accommodate 4,500 employees.
- Spotify Wrapped had generated two billion impressions worldwide, and more ninety million Spotify users share their Spotify Wrapped statistics online, especially through social media.
- These ticker symbols now refer to Alphabet Inc., Google’s holding company, since the fourth quarter of 2015.update
- Ahead of Spotify Wrapped 2024, Spotify changed its API so that modded versions of the client would not work.
- In March 2018, Google’s parent company Alphabet bought the nearby Chelsea Market building for $2.4 billion.
- The aim was to help users to listen to the music they want without information overload or spending time building their own playlists.
The doodle was designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. In 2012, the company ranked 2nd in campaign donations of technology and Internet sections. Google’s Internet business felice bet was responsible for $10.8 billion of this total, with an increase in the number of users’ clicks on advertisements.
Social Media
On 14 November 2018, the company announced 13 new markets in the MENA region, including the creation of a new Arabic hub and several playlists. While certain musicians laud the service for offering a lawful option to combat piracy and for remunerating artists each time their music is played, others have voiced objections to Spotify’s royalty structure and its effect on record sales. Israel expressed apprehension that the data transferred to the cloud services of these global corporations might be accessible to foreign law enforcement agencies. This includes sales of apps, purchases made in-app, digital content products on Google and YouTube, Android and licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. In doing so, if users chose to listen to one set of these artists’ music, it effectively reduced the number of plays for other musicians.
The “deeper” loss came as a result of the company’s tax debt to over one-third of its employees in Sweden. That September, Spotify announced that it had paid a total of over $5 billion to the music industry. In May 2016, Spotify announced “Sponsored Playlists”, a monetisation opportunity in which brands can specify the audiences they have in mind, with Spotify matching the marketer with suitable music in a playlist. This eligibility rule only applies to royalties for sound recordings, not musical compositions. In November 2023, Spotify announced a new royalty model taking effect in 2024, aiming to reduce the amount of “fraudulent” royalties collected from “functional” non-music tracks with short lengths (such as environmental sounds and white noise). In December 2013, the company launched a new website, “Spotify for Artists”, explaining its business model and revenue data.
When you sign in to your Google Account, all the Google services you use work together to help you get more done. No matter which device or Google service you’re using, your account gives you a consistent experience you can customize and manage at any time. Sign in to your Google Account, and get the most out of all the Google services you use. In April 2018, thousands of Google employees, including senior engineers, signed a letter urging Google CEO Sundar Pichai to end this controversial contract with the Pentagon. Google has been criticized for continuing to collect location data from users who had turned off location-sharing settings. The lawsuit claims Google collected data from users who had specifically opted out of tracking.
Company
- Unlike physical or download sales, which pay artists a fixed price per song or album sold, Spotify pays royalties based on the number of artist streams as a proportion of total songs streamed.
- On 1 July 2019, Spotify deprecated the program and announced plans to stop accepting direct uploads by the end of that month and eventually remove all content uploaded in this manner.
- In December 2025, over 300 terabytes of files were scraped from Spotify’s servers and uploaded to Anna’s Archive, totalling 86 million songs uploaded from 2007 to July 2025 that account for 37% of all songs and 99.6% of all listens, as well as 256 million rows of song metadata.
- Ek first had the idea for Spotify around 2002 when peer-to-peer music service Napster shut down and another illegal site Kazaa became popular.
- Your Google Account helps you save time by automatically filling in passwords, addresses, and payment details using the information you’ve saved to your account.
Like HBO Max, YouTube, and Instagram which are also running ads from the campaign, Spotify defended the advertisements by stating they were part of a government campaign, which complied with its ad policies and stated that users could provide feedback or thumbs-down such ads. Some liberal users responded by cancelling their subscriptions and calling for a boycott. In July 2025, a leak containing the listening data of several politicians, journalists, and businesspeople, titled the Panama Playlists, was released online. According to journalist and author Liz Pelly, Spotify, “under the guise of AI-powered recommendations has developed a surveillance apparatus driven by emotion profiling and pseudoscience.”
User growth continued, reaching 20 million total active users, including five million paying customers globally and one million paying customers in the United States, in December 2012. A month later, Spotify announced that “Lean On” by Major Lazer and DJ Snake featuring MØ was its most-streamed song of all time with over 525 million streams worldwide. In February 2017, Spotify announced the expansion of its United States operations in Lower Manhattan, New York City, at 4 World Trade Center, adding approximately 1,000 new jobs and retaining 832 existing positions.
On October 8, 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Google and Alphabet due to “non-public” Google+ account data being exposed as a result of a bug that allowed app developers to gain access to the private information of users. On June 27, 2017, the company received a record fine of €2.42 billion from the European Union (EU) for “promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results”. On May 1, 2023, Google placed an ad against the Brazilian Congressional Bill No. 2630, an anti-disinformation law that was about to be approved, on its search homepage in Brazil, calling on its users to ask congressional representatives to oppose the legislation. In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels on its Mountain View campus to provide up to 1.6 Megawatt of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus’ energy needs. There is no official data on the number of servers in Google data centers; however, research and advisory firm Gartner estimated in a July 2016 report that Google at the time had 2.5 million servers. Google’s services contain easter eggs, such as the Swedish Chef’s “Bork bork bork”, Pig Latin, “Hacker” or leetspeak, Elmer Fudd, Pirate, and Klingon as language selections for its search engine.
Spotify helps place songs campaigned through Discovery Mode on listeners’ personal algorithmic playlists. In 2023, Spotify launched additional features to help independent artists distributing their music on the platform reach a wider array of potential fans. This feature allows two or more Premium users in the same location to share control over the music that is being played. It combines short-form podcast news updates from The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and PRI with a mix of a user’s favorite songs and artists interspersed with tracks the listener has yet to discover. In 2016, Spotify introduced its Daily Mix feature, which creates playlists of music that a user has previously listened to on the platform.In 2017, Spotify introduced RapCaviar, a hip-hop playlist. In September 2025, Lossless audio, which allows Spotify users to listen to songs in very high quality, became available through Spotify premium.
Spotify Plans
The DoJ also sought a ban on Google re-entering the browser market for five years and restrictions on its investments in rival search or AI technologies. Google, which intended to appeal, argued that the proposals were too extreme, while also dealing with other antitrust cases involving its app store and advertising operations. On October 8, 2024, The U.S. government suggested it could request Google to divest parts of its business, such as the Chrome browser and Android, due to its alleged monopoly in online search.
Despite the extensive global coverage, the service remains unavailable in several countries and territories, including Afghanistan, British Indian Ocean Territory, Central African Republic, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Yemen. However, there has been some concern about the music streaming platform’s social media features. Spotify Wrapped had generated two billion impressions worldwide, and more ninety million Spotify users share their Spotify Wrapped statistics online, especially through social media.
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