Spotify did take the world, especially the US by storm a few months ago. While Spotify has a large catalog of music to stream to its users, there were some deficiencies. One of the largest was an ability to compete with Pandora. Pandora is the go-to music streaming service when somebody does not know precisely what they would like to listen to. Pandora allows the user to select a genre and then its engine will play music along those lines offering the user a thumbs-down option on specific tracks not being enjoyed.

Spotify, by contrast, required people to know precisely what they wanted to hear or to know the playlist to be heard. To correct this gap Spotify has introduced a Spotify radio function, which will help it combat Pandora as the industry standard for discovering music. As of now, Spotify’s recommendation engine does not seem as capable as Pandora’s. Spotify tends to play artists that seem related without measuring the actual tracks’ similarities, which is a feature of Pandora’s recommendation engine. It is reasonable, however, to expect Spotify to improve its method and that will allow it to better compete with Pandora when all a listener’s needs can be satisfied within the same application.

The digital agency needs to keep music streaming services in mind as more and more people are increasingly tuning in. The bandwidth problem is increasingly being resolved and these services’ catalog make an affordable alternative to a locally based song library. This increased growth will make the advertising on these services increasingly attractive, especially as these services improve their abilities to target ads to users.

New Spotify