Spotify is always looking for more listeners, and just a week or so after announcing a wide-ranging mobile streaming service, is now turning to original Internet search giant Yahoo to find them. Starting with Yahoo!’s music section, and later spreading across other parts of the site, you’ll start to find the Spotify Play button, which is a built-in music player app that can stream Spotify songs from any web page (a free Spotify membership and initial app download is still required).
The partnership between the Spotify and the decidedly less trendy Yahoo! may seem like an odd one, but despite not having much buzz, Yahoo! is still a huge player online, reaching nearly 700 million users per month. Spotify, in comparison, has about 10 million active monthly users. (Meanwhile, Rhapsody, Yahoo!’s music-service partner since 2008, finds itself now on the rebound.)
As a freemium service (which means basic access is free, but you are encouraged to pay for premium features), Spotify needs to get in front of as many listeners as possible, and hope that enough will pay $5 or $10 per month for ad-free or mobile access. Yahoo!’s CEO, Ross Levinsohn says this deal is about “delivering compelling premium experiences across screens.” Translated into English, that means if you subscribe to Spotify via one of the Yahoo pages with an embedded Spotify player, the two companies will split the cash.
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Of course, if you’re interested in adding a streaming Spotify Play button to your own website or blog, no high-level biz dev deal is required. You can just hop on over to Spotify’s website and make a custom music widget that can be dropped into nearly any website.
