952-451-4987Despite 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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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.”
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.
Research and technology
- The formation of the union is in response to persistent allegations of mistreatment of Google employees and a toxic workplace culture.
- There was no provision regarding worker ownership of content created, one of the initial demands.
- Spotifya is a Swedish audio streaming and media service provider founded in April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon.
- 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.
- 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.
- In May 2022, Google announced that the company had acquired California based, MicroLED display technology development and manufacturing Start-up company Raxium.
In April 2012, Spotify introduced a “Spotify Play Button”, an embeddable music player that can be added to blogs, websites, or social media profiles, that lets visitors listen to a specific song, playlist, or album without leaving the page. In June 2012, Soundrop became the first Spotify app to attract major funding, receiving $3 million (equivalent to $4,039,000 in 2024) from Spotify investor Northzone. If a song is “loved”, a custom radio channel will be created based on it, and when there are at least 15 of these songs, a “My Favourites” channel is unlocked. In October 2017, Spotify launched “Rise”, a program aimed at promoting emerging artists. The feature was rolled out to a small number of US-based artists by invitation only.
- In 2007, Google announced a free Internet service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, where one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet.
- This will grow their green energy profile by 40%, giving them an extra 1.6 gigawatt of clean energy, the company said.
- On November 1, 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees and contractors staged a global walk-out to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment complaints.
- Eventually, they changed the name to Google; the name of the search engine was a misspelling of the word googol, a very large number written (1 followed by 100 zeros), picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information.
- The Waze partnership allows Waze app users to view directions to destinations within the Spotify app and access their Spotify playlists through the Waze app.
- In September 2020, Spotify, Epic, and other companies founded The Coalition for App Fairness, which aims for better conditions for the inclusion of apps in app stores.
Also in January 2019, Spotify beta-tested its Canvas feature, where artists or labels can upload looping 3 to 8-second moving visuals to their tracks, replacing album covers in the “Now Playing” view; users have the option to turn off this feature. The functionality is limited to selected playlists and was only available on Spotify’s iOS app at launch, being expanded to the Android app in April 2017. In May 2015, Spotify announced a new “Home” start-page that could recommend music. The applications provided features such as synchronised lyrics, music reviews, and song recommendations. In November 2011, Spotify introduced a Spotify Apps service that made it possible for third-party developers to design applications that could be hosted within the Spotify computer software. Spotify provides access to over 100 million songs, 5 million podcasts, and 4 billion playlists.
In July 2013, Google introduced the Chromecast dongle, which allows users to stream content from their smartphones to televisions. In 2025, Google announced SynthID Detector, a tool that uses watermarking to identify whether content such as text, images, audio, or video was generated using Google products. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. Google indexes billions of web pages to allow users to search for the information they desire through the use of keywords and operators.
Listening limitations
The tool allows users to generate personalized playlists from text prompts describing genres, moods, artists, activities, or creative ideas like animals, movie characters, colors, or emojis. In August 2016, Spotify launched Release Radar, a personalized playlist that allows users to stay up-to-date on new music released by the artists they listen to the most. In March 2016, Spotify launched six playlists branded as Fresh Finds, including the main playlist and Fire Emoji, Basement, Hiptronix, Six Strings, and Cyclone (hip-hop, electronic, pop, guitar-driven, and experimental music respectively). In December 2015, Quartz reported that songs in Discover Weekly playlists had been streamed 1.7 billion times. Months later, Spotify tested its own version of stories (the sharing format popularized by social apps) known as “Storyline”, and the focus is on allowing artists to share their own insights, inspiration, details about their creative process or other meanings behind the music. In January 2016, Spotify and music annotation service Genius formed a partnership, bringing annotation information from Genius into infocards presented while songs are playing in Spotify.
Spotify
The company is incorporated in Luxembourg as Spotify Technology S.A., and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with offices in 16 countries around the world. This, in turn, made it the first time that a female solo rap artist achieved such a top spot in Spotify. For example, Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road and Doja Cat’s Say So started their popularity through Tik Tok but through Spotify playlists had their popularity accelerated. Artists through Spotify can sell tickets to their music venue, promote their merchandise, add their videos as stories through Spotify clips, and promote new releases of their work through countdown pages. Spotify had added social media-related features to its platform, especially to compete for ad revenue and to increase its media-related users. Ahead of Spotify Wrapped 2024, Spotify changed its API so that modded versions of the client would not work.
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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.
In April 2015, Spotify began another round of fundraising, with a report from The Wall Street Journal stating it was seeking $400 million (equivalent to $515,700,000 in 2024), which would value the company at $8.4 billion (equivalent to $10,831,000,000 in 2024). In February 2010, Spotify received a small investment from Founders Fund, where board member Sean Parker was recruited to assist Spotify in “winning the labels over in the world’s largest music market”. Spotify became profitable for the first time in 2024 with a net profit of €1.14 billion ($1.17 billion). Years after growth and expansion, a November 2012 report suggested strong momentum for the company. In 2008, just after launch, the company made a loss of 31.8 million Swedish kronor (US$4.4 million).
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Google’s Global Offices sum a total of 86 locations worldwide, with 32 offices in North America, three of them in Canada and 29 in the United States, California being the state with the most Google’s offices with 9 in total including the Googleplex. In May 2015, Google announced its intention to create its own campus in Hyderabad, India. Recognized as one of the biggest ever commercial property acquisitions at the time of the deal’s announcement in January, Google submitted plans for the new headquarter to the Camden Council in June 2017. It also has product research and development operations in cities around the world, namely Sydney (birthplace location of Google Maps) and London (part of Android development). In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Pittsburgh, focusing on shopping-related advertisement coding and smartphone applications and programs. Called Google Hudson Square, the new campus is projected to more than double the number of Google employees working in New York City.
In Spotify’s apps, music can be browsed or searched for via various parameters, such as artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label. Spotify also offers a proprietary protocol known as “Spotify Connect”, which lets users listen to music through a wide range of entertainment systems, including speakers, receivers, TVs, cars, and smartwatches. The company said users would be able to login into the main Spotify app with their Stations account and transfer their stations into Spotify. In November 2015, Spotify introduced a “Fan Insights” panel in limited beta form, letting artists and managers access data on monthly listeners, geographical data, demographic information, music preferences and more.
Upon discovering Ding had been in contact with Chinese state-owned companies, Google notified the FBI, who carried on the investigation of the data breach. Ding had allegedly stolen over 500 files from the company over the course of 5 years, having been hired in 2019. In March 2024, a former Google software engineer and Chinese national named Linwei Ding was accused of stealing confidential artificial intelligence information from the company and handing it to Chinese corporations. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Google had violated EU antitrust rules by “imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites” that required them to exclude search results from Google’s rivals.
In July 2021, Spotify launched the “What’s New” feed, a section felice bet 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.