Google first announced an overhauled Spotify app for Android Auto back at I/O 2025, and 9to5Google reports that it’s now arrived. Spotify Premium users can start Jam sessions in their cars, allowing even free users to join in and add songs to a shared queue.
The app’s had a wider redesign too, with a more prominent section for downloaded tracks and proper support for Spotify’s search functionality.
If you’re still waiting for Spotify’s lossless audio offering, Chris Messina notes that the 9.0.58 update that rolled out a couple of days ago on Android has new changes hinting at the feature for settings tied to cellular downloading and checking storage space.
It’s similar to what we saw last month, but after all these years, how long will it take to turn into something everyone can use?
[bsky.app]
Drummer Greg Saunier explains the moral calculus behind leaving the biggest streaming platform.
Ek’s investment company Prima Materia dumped its first €100 million in Helsing, the German defense tech group with roots in AI software, back in 2021. Now it’s leading a €600 million round to capitalize on the shift to drone warfare. Per the Financial Times:
“The world is being tested in more ways than ever before. That has sped up the timeline” for Helsing’s financing, Ek said, pointing in particular to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, where drones and other AI-powered systems have been deployed at scale for the first time. “There’s an enormous realisation that it’s really now AI, mass and autonomy that is driving the new battlefield.”
Yesterday, a global outage on the Google Cloud platform knocked out Google Home, Spotify, Snapchat, and even some Cloudflare features, and today the company released a mini incident report as it continues to investigate.
For Cloudflare’s part, its report says the Google failure took out a central data store for one of its services.
From our initial analysis, the issue occurred due to an invalid automated quota update to our API management system which was distributed globally, causing external API requests to be rejected. To recover we bypassed the offending quota check, which allowed recovery in most regions within 2 hours. However, the quota policy database in us-central1 became overloaded, resulting in much longer recovery in that region.
The platform is globally releasing a self-service “Pre-Release” feature for Artist accounts that allows musicians to easily promote forthcoming album releases. Fans can automatically save unreleased albums to their Spotify or Apple Music libraries so that they don’t miss the album drop and can listen to them instantly upon release.
Spotify now lets iOS users pay how they want following the big ruling in Epic Games v. Apple, and per an amicus brief:
“In the two weeks since Spotify updated its iOS app in accordance with the 2025 Order, the rate of conversions from the Free- to Premium-tier service has remained relatively constant on Android, while conversion among iOS users has increased substantially. This strongly suggests that the increase is due to Apple finally complying with the Injunction thanks to the 2025 Order.”
“Spotify will move quickly to submit an app update to Apple, enhancing the experience for our consumers across the United States,” spokesperson Jeanne Moran tells The Verge following today’s major ruling in Epic Games v. Apple.
Monthly active users have increased 10 percent year-over-year to 678 million, up from 615 million, while subscribers jumped by 12 percent to 268 million. CEO Daniel Ek says “the short term may bring some noise” amid wider economic concerns, but that the platform’s freemium model will reassure customers to stick with Spotify “even when things feel more uncertain.”
On Wednesday morning at 8:45AM ET, the Spotify Status account on X acknowledged that “We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!” A check around The Verge’s Slack channel and the wider internet reveals many users in the UK and across other European countries are having issues streaming anything on Spotify, with a significant spike on Downdetector in the UK.
In the US, we spotted only a few error messages at first, but now the service has stopped working for us, too. We’re tracking the issue here and will let you know if there are any other updates.
A rumor on social media has suggested that once Spotify’s long-awaited Music Pro / Hi-Fi / Supremium tier arrives, the music streamer might pull an Amazon Prime Video and push paying subscribers to choose between living with ads at their existing price or pay more for the old, ad-free experience.
There is a rumor circulating that Spotify is putting ads into premium music listening. This rumor is false. Premium music listening is and will remain ad-free.
The company has opened submissions for short-form content “written specifically for audio.” If Spotify chooses to move forward with a submission, it will make an offer and then publish the audiobook. Spotify will also pay an advance and royalties (but doesn’t note any specifics).
[newsroom.spotify.com]
Similar to YouTube, Spotify will give bronze, silver, and gold plaques to podcasters when they reach 100 million, 250 million, and 500 million streams, respectively.
Crime Junkie and The Joe Rogan Experience are the inaugural winners of Spotify’s gold Creator Milestone Award, followed by Dateline NBC and Stuff You Should Know with silver.
Starting today, Spotify is paying creators in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada based on how much engagement their videos receive from paid subscribers, similar to platforms like YouTube.
We don’t know how much video creators will earn, but there’s plenty of interest in the program — according to Spotify, almost 60 percent of eligible shows and networks have enrolled since it was announced last month.
The music streaming service responded to Drake’s accusations that it used bots and payola to “artificially inflate” Lamar’s streaming numbers, saying Spotify “invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of artificial streaming on our platform,” Billboard reports.
