Spotify Shutters Clubhouse Competitor ‘Spotify Live’

Spotify is closing down its live-audio app Spotify Live, the streamer said Monday (April 3).

“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,” a spokesperson for the platform said in a statement. “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. We have seen promising results in the artist-focused use case of ‘listening parties,’ which we will continue to explore moving forward to facilitate live interactions between artists and fans.”

Spotify Live started as the sports-focused live-audio app Locker Room, which Spotify acquired in March 2021 when the streaming service purchased its developer, Betty Labs, for more than $65 million. At the time, the Clubhouse app was popular, and Locker Room was widely viewed as a competitor.

At the time of the acquisition, Spotify said it aimed to “evolve and expand Locker Room into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans… We’ll give professional athletes, writers, musicians, songwriters, podcasters, and other global voices opportunities to host real-time discussions, debates, ask me anything (AMA) sessions, and more.”

Locker Room was relaunched as Spotify Greenroom in the summer of 2021. The following April, it was renamed Spotify Live and incorporated as a livestream function in the main Spotify app. To celebrate that iteration, Spotify Live streamed Swedish House Mafia’s Paradise Again album release party. But in a round of programming cuts in December, some of the live shows were shut down.

Spotify unveiled a host of new features in March — including a swipe-able vertical feed that will play previews of music and podcasts, a pre-save feature with “countdown pages” for upcoming releases, and “Clips,” which allows acts to post 30-second videos on their artist pages — that were widely viewed as an attempt to contend with a different competitor: TikTok. CEO Daniel Ek called these updates “the biggest” transformation Spotify has undergone in a decade.