Spotify has always claimed that it wants to be much more than a music player. Now, the streaming provider is clearly displaying its ambition through the redesign of its app.
While Spotify says that the new home screen is focused on making it easier for users to find things to listen to and watch, it’s immediately noticeable how much this new design focuses on imagery and vertical scrolling. As a result, the newly-designed home screen looks incredibly similar to the feeds you’re likely to see when you open TikTok, Instagram or even YouTube.
What does the new Spotify app look like?
Now, when you open Spotify, you’ll still see a bunch of album and playlist covers at the top. However, underneath this you may encounter an autoplaying video podcast or an Instagram-style photo that tells you more about a dedicated playlist.
Back at the top, you can choose to either tap on ‘Music’ or ‘Podcasts & Shows’. You’ll then be taken into a vertically scrolling feed that looks a lot more like Instagram Stories or TikTok than Spotify. Each of these feeds is dedicated to just that section of Spotify.
Users will find that there’s more autoplaying content than ever in the app and there are now lots of ways to quickly preview songs and playlists without fully diving in.
Until now, playlists have been Spotify’s main (and at times only) source of discovery. However, in the new design, there’s a much greater emphasis on getting users to try new things. There’s also a lot more personalised AI, such as the Smart Shuffle feature, which temporarily adds tracks to your existing playlists.
Why does this matter?
Spotify remains the biggest player in music streaming. However, it’s clear that the company wants to ‘own audio’ in an even bigger way. This new design really shows that Spotify is no longer a music app. As a result, it no longer looks like one.
It has recently become clear that Spotify is on a quest to nudge people toward content that’s more differentiated and more profitable. Now, the app’s redesign makes this point particularly apparent. After all, the new app has created a dedicated space for all those new kinds of content.
For years, Spotify has tried to find ways to put podcasts and music and everything else side by side. However, the company now appears to have realised that each type of content needs room to breathe.