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Spotify Open Up the Third Party Floodgates | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon of Spotify

Spotify CEO took Daniel Ek took the stage today in New York City in what would be the streaming music service’s first-ever major press event. Ek opened the talk with a brief history of music and the company, from CDs through Napster and into iTunes, and how Spotify’s mission is to create “access as an alternative to ownership.” 15 million songs are now in the Spotify database, with 20,000 being added each day. In Europe, the popular service has become the second biggest revenue source for labels, which have received over $150 million dollars in licensing fees. Ek then briefly highlighted the success of Spotify’s move into social, particularly its partnership with Facebook, which helped attract nearly 7.5 million new users. In his words, Spotify wants music to be like water, “available everywhere, available seamlessly.”

But the major announcement from Daniel Ek came at the end, where he described Spotify’s vision to become a “platform for music.” More specifically, they are opening up their API to 3^rd party partners to create a breed of Spotify apps, with companies like Rolling Stone, Songkick, TuneWiki and Last.fm already on board. Magazines will provide editorial direction, and mundane tasks like finding concert tickets or song lyrics will become integrated parts of the listening experience. It’s a movement that could be as profound as the release of the iOS SDK for app developers. And much like the iTunes Store, 3^rd party companies can produce an app, but the Spotify team must approve it. The major downside of the announcement so far is that these apps will only be functional within Spotfy’s desktop client, eliminating the possibility of accessing these apps via a typical website or your mobile device. Rest assured, it’s only the very beginning of an innovative new paradigm and another reason the tech world will continue to huddle around Spotify.