Attention, please: Spotify's feelgood vision of the future

As the app makes its latest pivot, Andrew Griffin reports from behind the scenes of a tech company with a vision to enhance the Joe Rogan effect’ and take on YouTube

- Andrew Griffin

In a hall in Los Angeles, some of the world’s most famous talkers are gathered. But now, they’re here to listen. From Made in Chelsea’s Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo – hosts of the podcast NewlyWeds – to wellness influencers such as Rich Roll and Steven Bartlett, all are being pitched on a vision of the future.

That vision is video. Spotify is not the first major tech company to argue that video is the future for it and the world, and it is not even Spotify’s first foray into the format. But the company says this time is different.

This time, it means taking on YouTube; spending an awful lot more money; gathering some of the world’s most famous podcasters and other creators. And it might mean changing what Spotify actually is.

For years after its founding in 2006, Spotify was known for music. If it was known for anything else, it was disrupting the music industry: after years of losses from piracy, record labels finally found a new way of making songs pay. But for the most part, that payment came from Spotify which, for almost all of its history, was losing money and as a result was viewed with pity.

Then, in the last few years, both things started to change. In 2015, it added podcasts but the new strategy didn’t really hit the headlines until 2020, when it signed an exclusive deal with Joe Rogan that prompted so much outrage that some of the world’s biggest musical artists left. Quietly, it added video to those podcasts, then added audiobooks too. Now it wants to take on YouTube as a rival home for videos.

At the same time, Spotify started to do something else: rapidly make lots of money. This week, it reported results showing it had an operating profit of €454m (£378m) in the last quarter, compared with €32m in the same period last year.