Daniel Ek, the founder and chief executive of the eight-year-old Swedish company, said that Spotify was recognizing the all-encompassing power of smartphones in modern life.
Spotify’s core mission remains music, but it wants to give users more incentives to turn to Spotify to read the news or watch videos, too, Ek said.
If successful, Spotify could not only hold strong against music rivals but also challenge video behemoth YouTube and Snapchat, the fast-growing video- and photo-sharing app.
But for all its rapid growth, Spotify has yet to turn its major investments into profit. In filings this month, the company said that its net loss tripled to 162.3 million euros ($182 million) in 2014.
Ek said that the upgraded Spotify would offer more opportunities for targeted advertising and partnerships with companies.
Spotify earlier this week announced a partnership with Starbucks, which will promote the streaming service and give accounts to baristas to choose tracks at the coffee chain’s 7,000 US stores.
The video above should give you at least a glimpse of how the new features will work. Hellman also discussed why it made sense to add new content types to Spotify. It might seem a little strange for him to describe Spotify as “a music company at heart” when it’s adding video clips from NBC, ABC, CBS Radio, Vice News, Comedy Central and many more, but Hellman said:
It turned out when we got to know our users and their patterns a little bit better, they really enjoyed co-mingling music and other types of content throughout their day. When you think about it, it’s pretty natural. Terrestrial radio has been doing this for decades, interweaving news, entertainment and music all in the same stream.
Hellman added that as Spotify introduces exclusive video content, much of it will be connected to music in some way.
