Swedish music-streaming company Spotify announced Tuesday, March 30, 2021, that it had acquired Betty Labs. According to Reuters, the move comes as Spotify gears to expand its range of offerings to a live video format. Details surrounding the value of the acquisition have yet to be disclosed to the public.
In a statement from the Chief Research & Development Officer from the music streaming company Gustav Söderström, he said, “Creators and fans have been asking for live formats on Spotify, and we’re excited that soon, we’ll make them available to hundreds of millions of listeners and millions of creators on our platform.”
Among its targeted content include a wide range of topics from “sports, music, and cultural programming, as well as a host of interactive features that enable creators to connect with audiences in real time.”
Betty Labs is the creator behind the popular sports-focused social app Locker Room. Following the acquisition, Spotify is slated to continue to operate the mobile application as a different entity rather than incorporating it in its company, reports Bloomberg.
While Locker Room will remain separate from Spotify, The Verge states that the music-streaming firm looks to rebrand it to another name and expand its focus. In addition, Söderström said that the platform will be made more accessible to everyone and not just creators that have been initially approved.
With the purchase of Betty Labs, Tech Crunch states that the Sweden-based music company is gearing up to rival Clubhouse, especially with Locker Room being compared to the latter thanks to its live-streaming element.
Bloomberg states that the company will give users the best of both worlds similar to Clubhouse. Besides access to instant streams and making live conversations, Spotify will also provide a space to archive such content for later consumption.
Apart from planning its expansion with its live audio format with the coming of Betty Labs and Locker Room, Reuters states that Spotify has also ventured into podcasting. Today, it is home not just to music and artists, but also to an extensive podcast range.
Given this feature already available on the ecosystem of the Swedish company, Söderström told The Verge that they are looking to seamlessly integrate live audio and its relation to the podcasting system.
As of writing, Söderström mentioned that creators, who have both been posting on Clubhouse and Twitter’s Spaces, have already been leveraging Spotify’s software, Anchor, to make podcasts and host their recordings.
