Spotify
Launched: April 23, 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden
Original founders: Daniel Ek, Martin Lorentzon
Current CEO: Daniel Ek
Currently owned by Spotify AB a publicly traded company
They have many many many patents available including one for their cross-fade option where users can choose to have songs fade into each other. Spotify has a patent for this feature because they are also using algorithms to beat match between songs for a smoother experience.
Patent number: 10803118
Filed March 24, 2017
Inventors: Tristan Jehan, Rachel Bittner, Nicola Montecchio, Hunter McCurry, Minwei Gu, Gandalf Hernandez
They have a patent titled “Media Content Selection Based On Physiological Attributes” and is described as a way for them to show you content based on your current psychological state.
Publication number: 20200319847
Filed June 24, 2020
Inventors: Owen Smith, Sten Garmark, Gustav Söderström
I’ll include a link that has a long list with multiple pages of patents for Spotify: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/spotify-ab
Originally the software was only available as a desktop application. It was limited in what it allowed it’s free users to do by limiting the amount of music you could listen to, the amount of times you can replay a track, and included ads. But you also could only take it as far as your computer would let you. Let’s remember, this was the time of iPods still.
Eventually Spotify made their freemium service available on mobile phones and broadened their spectrum of users. Which changed the way people were listening to music. By this time iPhones were prevalent and people were sick of downloading music all the time and were running out of storage on their devices.
A lot has changed with how we interact with Spotify. As this software develops the systems for music recommendations gets more advanced. Spotify has now leaned toward creating unlimited combinations of music so that people don’t feel like they have to go out of their way to create playlists or listen to new music.
Interesting that they have the patent for fading between songs. iTunes had this early on but I wonder if it is slightly different.
It’s interesting to see even music apps like Spotify have patents on interactions and how it has evolved from what I would call a “Napster” setup to what we see and use on all devices today.