The race to create a competitor or a likeness to the wildly successful Clubhouse app has just sort of faded into obscurity. It is not because Clubhouse is not doing well, it still is doing good enough. There are still plenty who remained on the platform and there are still plenty of good conversations happening on the platform. The hype for that sort of thing has died down quite quickly though.
The rush to create a completing platform has spawned a few unsuccessful projects from the likes of Twitter and Facebook. But it also has spawned a successful one from Spotify, the Greenroom. Perhaps that should have come as less of a shock that it is. Spotify, after all, is one of the largest platforms for podcasts from all over the globe. It is not hard to see why a conversation based social media platform will not work in Spotify’s favour.
Greenroom, however, was in some ways an experiment for Spotify. It was a test platform to see if such things could work and if anyone that is already on their platform was open to the idea of Spotify themselves being a social media company. It was also especially telling that Spotify themselves are ready to become more of a social media platform than anything else. In that sense, the move to open Greenroom is sort of a natural progression for Spotify anyway, especially with all the new social features they have been introducing on their main app.
However, in the dawn of the Super App (a do-everything app), multiple apps from a single developer could be seen as clunky. People want to be able to access a single app and have access to all the services available from that developer from that one touch. Spotify had to adapt to that.
It was less than a month ago that Spotify expressed their interest in integrating Spotify and Greenroom in a single Spotify app. We thought that it would be inevitable, just not this soon. They have also changed the Greenroom name to Spotify Live now. That does not mean that Greenroom is not an app on its own though, it is still an independent app that you can use separate from the main Spotify App. That has also been rebranded to Spotify Live.
The Spotify Live app itself will retain all the qualities of the old Greenroom app. It is still an audio based social media platform. Anyone of the platform can create chat rooms and host the chats in those rooms. Any user on the platform will have access to all listed shows on Spotify Live platform. Users will have the ability to also interact within the show in Spotify Live app.
The function of Spotify Live on the main app is completely different. Spotify Live on the main app will only feature select Spotify Live shows on the main app. Of course, the show must be on-air at the moment of feature. If you are accessing the Spotify Live chatrooms on the main Spotify app, you also do not get to interact with the creator or hosts of the room. You are just a plain audience; you do not even get to raise your hands.
That also means that Spotify Live has now become a Live Podcast show that can be featured on Spotify. Spotify Live creators now gets access to the full range of Spotify’s global user base that numbers at 406 million people currently.
For now, only Spotify’s own original shows will get airtime in the Spotify Live section on their app. Obviously as Spotify Live makes progress, more shows will be added to the featured section in the main app. There are also planned events already for the rest of April and May for you to discover the new section on Spotify.