In late November 2011, Spotify unveiled its new app platform. Now, any Spotify user can install apps that enhance their music experience in different ways. Is it working? Well, we know that 100,000 people are using it. Songkick announced on its blog that Spotify has helped his service gain more than 100,000 users in the past three months.
“We’re both focused on changing the music industry for the better,” CEO Ian Hogarth told Forbes. “Whenever you launch something, it’s always a question of whether it’s going to catch … and this is really promising.”
Songkick is the only concert-finding service currently available on Spotify and was available at the launch of the company’s platform. It scans users playlists and compiles a calendar of possible concerts they could attend in their area. Other notable apps at launch included Billboard, Last.fm, TuneWiki (provides lyrics), Rolling Stone, Soundrop, and others.
Of course, Spotify’s platform is a bit of a chain itself. The idea was likely inspired by Facebook’s own incorporating of Spotify and other music services into its platform, which helped the music streaming company become a much more visible name in the United States, while also helping Facebook earn some music cred. Spotify hopes it will have a symbiotic relationship with its own app providers. Once it gets enough subscribers, maybe Songkick can open up its own platform and give some other service 10,000 new users, and so on.
Not everyone is happy with the Swedish start up. The Black Keys were very vocal about their distaste for the service, which they say doesn’t give nearly enough money to artists and record labels. Their anger was also fueled by the fact that Napster co-founder Sean Parker is on the Spotify board.
