Spotify has announced a major overhaul of its homepage. The iPhone app is said to be adopting a kind of style similar to the popular social media platform TikTok.
The company revealed these changes during the “Stream On 2023” event with further information in a series of posts on the blog. The changes for the iPhone app look pretty substantial.
Spotify is now a kind of TikTok for music
It looks like the music streamer is putting a greater focus on providing previews. The goal is to make discovering new music, podcasts (and audiobooks if you live in the US, UK, or New Zealand) easier and more fluid.
At the top of Spotify’s home page on iPhone, there are buttons that let you choose between the aforementioned three options. Pressing one of these buttons opens a preview that TikTok users will surely be familiar with. The recommendation can be a single, album or playlist. Now, do you like what you hear? Then simply press the plus icon and add the recommend to your likes, playlists and/or downloads.
If you just want to continue listening to that one song on Spotify, simply press the play button (the circle with the arrow in it).
Diving deeper into what you hear can also be done by pressing the screen, then you are immediately drawn to the album. So the visuals don’t matter as much as on TikTok, but the style is similar.
But why this form for the iOS app?
At the announcement, Spotify told us that it has learned from data that people are more likely to continue listening to a particular artist or podcast if they know a bit about what to expect first.
In fairness, the fact that the company is opting for a style based heavily on TikTok is also not surprising. In this, Spotify is simply the latest in an ever-growing group, after Instagram and YouTube also introduced similar features. According to Spotify, this will create a deeper connection between artists and fans.
The update will roll out starting Monday, la it may be a few weeks before you get it. The new TikTok-like features are available on iOS and Android, for both free and Premium users.