According to Music Ally, Spotify has decided to shut down its Spotify Live app. Currently, the app still has a few active chat rooms, but users are being notified that the service will be discontinued at the end of the month.
A Spotify spokesperson told Music Ally, “After a period of experimentation and learnings around how Spotify users interact with live audio, we’ve made the decision to sunset the Spotify Live app. We believe there is a future for live fan-creator interactions in the Spotify ecosystem; however, based on our learnings, it no longer makes sense as a standalone app.”
This app was originally known as Locker Room, a sports-focused version of the social-audio app Clubhouse. Spotify acquired the app’s creator, startup Betty Labs, in March 2021 for €57m with the intention of evolving and expanding Locker Room into a wider live audio experience for creators and fans.
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The app was rebranded as Spotify Greenroom and relaunched in June of the same year. Spotify commissioned several radio-style live shows centered around sports, music, entertainment, and lifestyle. In April 2022, it was renamed once again to Spotify Live and was integrated into the main Spotify app. However, the app will be sunsetted at the end of the month due to the company’s decision to explore live streams in other scenarios, such as artist-focused “listening parties”.
The emergence of Clubhouse in the spring of 2020 had caused live audio to thrive, but the post-pandemic period has not been kind to it. Clubhouse had peaked in mid-2021, when pandemic restrictions were still in place, and had a valuation of $4 billion. However, since then, the number of monthly active users on the app has dropped by 82 percent, as per data provided by Sensor Tower.
Apart from Clubhouse, the live audio ecosystem now consists of only Twitter and Amazon’s Amp. Twitter Spaces has emerged as the most prosperous live product, but its future is uncertain. After Elon Musk took charge, the podcasts were discarded and a large portion of the Spaces team was terminated.
