A new partnership between Uber and Spotify will allow customers of both services to listen to music … while riding in an automobile. O brave new world!
As of November 21, Spotify customers with premium accounts can sync their playlists with Uber and stream music en route the app-based car service announced on Monday. This new service will be a godsend to anyone who just lost his or her earbuds; Uber is heralding it as a feature you won’t get with competing car services. (Unless, of course, you have your earbuds.)
See also: Why YouTube Music Key Is Coming For Spotify And Pandora
This exclusive deal with Spotify, however, isn’t about the future of technology. It’s about the past.
While Spotify is inking one-off deals like the Uber partnership, it’s also closing its App Finder and ending support for in-client desktop apps. That’s more or less a rejection of the service’s previous devotion to BizDev 2.0, a strategy outlined years ago by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake in which new services build out their ecosystem by letting third-party developers freely use their APIs (see our API explainer).
Last week, Spotify’s pull-up-the-drawbridge strategy claimed Soundrop as a victim. The service, a popular Web based music-sharing app primarily used with Spotify, announced it will close its listening rooms on December 31.
Instead, Spotify is focused on developing its mobile service—one that never featured third-party apps or an App Finder. Though Spotify has a lead in the streaming music market over rivals such as Deezer and Rhapsody, its real competition remains established providers like Apple and YouTube—the latter of which recently launched its own music subscription service.
Lead image by Johan Larsson
