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Spotify cuts off third party DJ software, but welcomes podcast app developers
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 24 March 2020
Spotify giveth and Spotify taketh away. The streaming firm has launched a new API for third party podcast apps, but is cutting off third party DJ apps at the same time.
In a statement on its website, Algoriddim – maker of leading DJ software djay, which also allows people to mix with music pulled from streaming services – says that Spotify is cutting it and other similar apps off later this summer.
“Back in 2014, we introduced streaming integration to the djay community, a feature that has had a profound impact on DJing as a whole”, the company writes. “Today, streaming has become an integral part of almost every DJ product with new streaming service providers innovating in the space for aspiring and professional DJs alike. As far as Spotify in djay is concerned, it’s been a great journey, but soon it will be time to say farewell”.
It continues: “As of 1 Jul 2020 Spotify will no longer be playable through third party DJ apps. You’ll still be able to use Spotify in djay until the end of June 2020. In the meantime, we’ve introduced new streaming services that will enable you to continue mixing all of the great music you love, plus give you extended access to new content and features”.
The company is also offering the ability to migrate existing mixes that use Spotify to SoundCloud or Tidal. So if you were planning to perfect your DJing skills on lockdown and then launch a new career for yourself when the clubs re-open, you still have options. But you should probably buy some downloads too.
It’s not entirely clear why Spotify is pulling its support for DJ apps – the streaming firm is staying tight lipped on the subject. It may be due to licensing issues – technically if you actually DJed using Spotify in public, the terms and conditions of a personal Spotify account would not cover that. Although you’d think it would have taken less than six years to realise that. And it doesn’t explain why SoundCloud and Tidal are seemingly allowing it.
Spotify has also experimented with auto-mixing some playlists in the past too, so it may have its own product in the works.
Maybe also Spotify wants more bandwidth for podcasts. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but podcasts are the thing right now. So, while DJ apps are being cut off, podcast apps are very much being cut in. Spotify has announced the launch of a new API for developers to build podcast apps on top of Spotify’s library. Because licensing and royalties are things mostly missing from the podcast world, so why not exploit it?
“The new podcast API will function in similar ways to our music-related APIs by empowering developers to build unique experiences for listeners that leverages all of the public – and in this case podcast-related – data on Spotify”, says the company in a blog post. “That means access to show and episode titles, description, and art. It will also allow developers to programmatically search Spotify’s catalogue of over 700,000 podcasts and fetch information about shows and episodes”.
TL;DR – DJs, boo! Podcasts, yay!
