Spotify is shutting down its live-audio app Spotify Live, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. The company says it will continue to explore live features on its main platform. The news was first reported by Music Ally.
“After a period of experimentation and learnings around how Spotify users interact with live audio, we’ve made the decision to sunset the Spotify Live app,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch in an email. “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. We have seen promising results in the artist-focused use case of ‘listening parties,’ which we will continue to explore moving forward to facilitate live interactions between artists and fans.”
In April 2022, Spotify integrated the live audio capabilities from its companion app, Spotify Greenroom, within the main Spotify streaming app and rebranded Greenroom as “Spotify Live.”
At the time, Spotify noted that Spotify Live would continue to work as Greenroom did by allowing creators to interact with their audience in real time and serve as a creation mechanism for hosts, but live listening in the main Spotify app would not support the interactive features and would instead offer the ability for creators to reach a broader audience of Spotify’s 406 million global listeners.
Spotify acquired the app that would become Greenroom in March 2021 with its $62 million purchase of the startup Betty Labs. Originally known as Locker Room, the app had focused on live audio’s intersection with sports content. Spotify quickly rebranded the app and introduced it as Greenroom in June 2021. The company then rolled out live weekly shows in the hopes of driving consumer adoption of its live audio service. However, Greenroom failed to gain traction in a market that was already moving on from the live audio trend.
Last December, Spotify seemed to be scaling back its live audio ambitions, as the company ended production of several of its live audio shows, including “Deux Me After Dark,” “Doughboys: Snack Pack,” “The Movie Buff” and “A Gay in the Life.”
Spotify’s foray into the live audio market had initially seemed like a natural fit for the company as it had been heavily investing in podcasts and related technology in recent years. Although podcasts have been a hit for Spotify, the company seems to have struggled with live audio.
It’s worth noting that Spotify isn’t the only company to pull back from live audio. Last year, Facebook integrated its Live Audio Rooms offering, which is its Clubhouse clone, into its Facebook Live experience. The social media giant also discontinued its short-form audio Soundbites feature and its Audio hub.
