Business News Digital

Spotify halts third party app programme

By | Published on Tuesday 25 March 2014

Spotify

Spotify has announced that is no longer accepting new submissions for apps to run within its desktop software.

Originally announced with some fanfare back in 2011, Spotify’s third party app platform allowed companies to build their own apps to complement the company’s music streaming offering. However, the makers had to host the apps themselves and were forbidden from monetising them.

In its statement yesterday, Spotify said: “Since [launching the third party apps platform] partners have been asking us for a cheaper and easier way to own a presence inside Spotify and developers would like more ways to integrate Spotify with their own applications. Pair that with the growing importance of mobile and we realised we needed to adapt”.

What this means in the short term is that no new apps, other than those which have already been approved, will go live, and Spotify will only allow critical updates to be made. In the longer term, it sounds as if Spotify is planning to integrate more data and content from key partners directly into its software, as it does with gig recommendations from Songkick, for example. As for everyone else, they will be encouraged to create standalone web apps that pull in Spotify libraries and playlists.



READ MORE ABOUT: