Spotify to shut down live audio app Spotify Live
Image Credit: Complex
Yesterday, April 3rd, Spotify announced in a statement to Music Ally that they’re shutting down Spotify Live.
Previously known as Spotify Green Room, Spotify Live came about after Spotify’s £62 million acquisition of Betty Labs in 2021.
Spotify to “sunset” Spotify Live
Spotify Live lets you listen and participate in discussions through virtual rooms. It allows you to listen and talk about topics close to you with creators and fans with the same interests. Not long after Spotify’s acquisition of Betty Labs, Spotify rebranded BL’s Locker Room app to Spotify Greenroom before renaming it again to Spotify Live.
While some of the functionality in Spotify Live can also be found in the the main Spotify app, as Music Tech notes, a spokesperson for Spotify told Music Ally that “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.”
“We believe there is a future for live fan-creator interactions in the Spotify ecosystem,” they continued. “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.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson also spoke to Tech Crunch and confirmed the shut down of Spotify Live. But Spotify wants to assure its users that it will “continue to explore live features on its main platform”.
Music Tech reports, “this is not the first time that Spotify has had to step back from live music endeavours. In December, Spotify announced that they would be ending the production of several of its live audio shows”.
In fact, a number of other tech companies have been moving away from live audio products too. Facebook, for example, has done the same as as in-person live events returned since the end of the pandemic.