Spotify introduces fitness and video features

NOT content with just dominating the music streaming market, Spotify is about to take on Netflix and the video streaming world.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek livestreamed the announcement across the world this morning.

WHILE saying that it is still a music company at heart, Spotify says it is expanding its line-up to include podcasts, news radio and video streaming.

The company says it wants to help people create a soundtrack for their day that includes not only music but videos, newscasts and other content.

CEO Daniel Ek said that the new service launches today in the US, UK, Germany and Sweden, while Australia will receive it in “the near future”.

Spotify offers free streaming music and also a premium service for a monthly fee that lets users listen to music offline and without ads.

The extra content, from partners such as Comedy Central, BBC and ESPN, will be available for both free and premium customers.

In Australia, Spotify will be entering a competitive market for video streaming that is dominated by Netflix, Foxtel Presto and Stan.

Top Gear will be one of the shows on Spotify’s video service.

But the company says its main focus will continue to be music, and in that sense it’s likely to stand apart from the services whose primary product is TV and movie streaming.

In addition to the extra content, Spotify also redesigned its site, adding the “Now start page” that aims to provide a continuous, personalised soundtrack to users all day and all night. This could be energising tunes for getting ready in the morning, songs without lyrics for concentrating at work, or dance tracks for late Saturday night.

Over time, Spotify will adapt to users’ tastes to play what they like to hear at a certain time of day.

While Spotify does not currently ask users for location, in the future it’s likely that it could use this, along with other information, to further personalise users’ music playlists.

Noticing that millions of users create playlists for running, Spotify is also adding a feature that will detect your tempo once you start running and match the music’s beat to it. This, the company says, can help people run faster, longer and even put them in a better mood.

While Aussies will be waiting for the new video streaming feature, Spotify’s new running features are available right now.

News Corp, publisher of news.com.au owns part of Foxtel.