Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services around the world. Many people believe that the online music streaming industry is the only solution to music piracy. With the decline of physical media as a source of music to end users and a source of revenue for companies and artists, the importance of online media streaming increases even more, and Spotify has been spearheading this market for a long time, with a whopping 20 million paid subscriber base and another 55 million using the free ad-based service. As more competitors arrive on the scene, Spotify is hard-pressed to differentiate and reinvent themselves as a unique service in the face of competition from Apple Music, YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Tidal, SoundCloud, and others.
Each of these services has their unique features designed to attract and retain subscribers. YouTube Music enjoys the massive share of users who listen to music online through YouTube, and it is also the fastest growing platform for independent music production. Apple Music features premium and selected radio stations, and Tidal provides high-quality music streaming over the web. In a competitive market like this, Spotify is venturing into unknown waters to hold on to its supremacy in the music streaming segment. The Swedish music service is dabbling with new and exclusive video content, produced in-home to woo subscribers. Their latest take on it is creating ‘Deconstruct’, a new animated series developed by ATTN. Deconstruct, as the name suggests, is all about learning more about music while not letting it get monotonous. The pilot episode features the history and development of electronic dance music or, EDM.
The first video of Deconstruct features a color animation with a peppy music in the background and short snippets of information. The video is just under 2 minutes long and provides a nice sociopolitical background about the advent of EDM into mainstream music. Apart from Deconstruct, Spotify is also busy working on twelve original and exclusive shows for their subscribers. The shows will be themed on the topic of music itself, true to Spotify’s soul and they will only be accessible from Android and iOS devices for now. The exclusive video service is an addition to Spotify’s already existing video library which includes Ted Talks and part of The Daily Show. This move pits Spotify directly against competitors like Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube. Whether the move will pay off for Spotify is something only time can answer.