Look inside Spotify at Mateo – Spotify’s recording studio
Image Credit: Spotify
Does Spotify have a recording studio? Yes! Here’s the lowdown on Spotify at Mateo, Spotify’s studio, situated in Los Angeles’ Art District.
The LA Spotify campus features a WSDG-designed world-class in-house recording studio, Spotify at Mateo, super-exclusive and used by visiting artists and the Spotify team.
Everything is built to a standard befitting the world’s most popular streaming company. Alongside the studios are listening rooms, greenrooms and plenty of space to relax.
The studios are used for creating original music content for Spotify like Spotify Singles – releases that consist of one cover and one new recording of an artists’ song. There’s also 18 podcast studios in a space designed like a honeycomb, and a live events stage.
The two music studios have a mix of modern and analogue technology. Whatever music genre artists play and no matter if they’re sampler-heavy music producers or part of a band, the studios are stuffed full of inspiring toys. It’s a space for artists to use as they please, filled with vintage instruments such as a 1969 Wurlitzer 200 red top electric piano, and a 1935 Rickenbacker “Frying Pan” lap steel, the first commercially available electric guitar.
A casual Spirio Steinway player piano has inbuilt software that can be linked with another piano across the globe to play in real time together. There are pristine vintage microphones, and a purpose-built echo chamber where you can create unique echo effects.
Before you get carried away drooling over the gear, you should know the studios can’t be used by just anyone.
FINNEAS was the first artist to record there; since then the likes of Lang Lang and Tom Morello have used the studio, as well as Ethel Cain and Japanese Breakfast.
