Spotify Live Audio App Shuts Down After 2 Years In Operation

Spotify has finally decided to end its live audio app after two years of unsuccessful attempts. The app, which was called Spotify Live, was a standalone app separate from the music platform that recently had Linda Ronstadt’s song “Long Long Time” streaming at the top of the charts after it was heard on The Last of Us. It was a conversational app that was popular during the pandemic, similar to Clubhouse.

Spotify has decided to end the live conversations app after trying for two years. In 2021, the live app was first released, following the success of a rival app, Clubhouse. It was supposed to be an app that let people listen to their favorite speakers lead live discussions.

When developing the spin-off app from its immensely popular music platform, Spotify did not begin from scratch. Instead, executives paid $67.7 million for the live audio app Betty Labs, renamed it Spotify Greenroom, and branded it with the lime green and black colors of Spotify. When that didn’t work, the music company changed the app’s name to Spotify Live and hired Alex Cooper, Hasan Minhaj, and Tana Mongeau to help spread the word.

Through the principal half of 2022, Spotify kept sponsorship its live application, in any event, making a three-season contract with the well known sports webcast Dream Footballers. However, by the end of 2022, when Spotify abruptly began to cancel a number of contracts it had with its creators, signs of trouble began to emerge. Deux Me After Dark, Doughboys: Snack Pack, The Movie Buff, A Gay in the Life, Taylor Talk, and Lorem Life were totally dropped, with something like two of the projects being dropped halfway through their agreements. However, Spotify is said to have fully refunded the contract at the time of cancellation.

This is not the end of Spotify’s experimentation with live content, even though the music streaming platform has discontinued its Spotify Live app. “We believe there is a future for live fan-creator interactions in the Spotify ecosystem; however, based on our learnings, it no longer makes sense as a standalone app,” a spokesperson for the music app stated, promising that the company would continue to investigate additional approaches to the production of live streaming content in the foreseeable future.

On April 30, Spotify Live will officially end. From that point forward, select shows will stay on the first Spotify platform as non-live content.