NY Times teams with Spotify for music-news offering

The New York Times said Wednesday it had teamed up with the online service Spotify in bid to lure subscribers with a "news and music experience."



The companies announced that new digital subscribers to the New York Times who commit to a one-year term would get free access to Spotify Premium with its 30 million songs and two billion playlists.

The offer, which proves access to the daily's digital content for $5 a week, is for US residents who are not current subscribers of the Times or Spotify.

"At the Times we are not only dedicated to helping our readers understand the rapidly changing world around them, but also to helping them live better lives," said Meredith Kopit Levien, executive vice president and chief revenue officer of the newspaper.

"News and music have gone hand-in-hand since the early days of radio, and because personalization and curation are central to what both the Times and Spotify do so well, we created an experience for Times readers that gives them access to all the news and all the music that they want in one premier subscription."

Normally the digital "all-access" subscription to the Times is $6.25 per week, and ad-free Spotify Premium is $9.99 per month.

The Times, which has been struggling financially as it transitions to a more digital focus, announced recently it had more than three million subscribers, including two million with digital-only subscriptions.

Sweden-based Spotify has some 43 million subscribers, according to the research firm MIDiA, which is well ahead of Apple Music's 20.9 million.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Why Starbucks is teaming up with Spotify

NEW YORK - Months after ending its tradition of CD sales, coffee giant Starbucks on Monday confirmed the rapid growth of music streaming as it announced a partnership with Spotify.

The Swedish streaming leader will give accounts to its premium service to Starbucks' 150,000 employees in the United States starting this fall, allowing them to create playlists for stores.

Starbucks in turn will promote Spotify's premium service -- which costs $9.99 a month --in part by making the playlists accessible on the coffee chain's own smartphone app.

The tie-up also marks the first time that Starbucks will link its loyalty program to a third party, with Spotify users offered chances to earn "stars" that go toward free items at the coffee chain.

Through the two companies' technological capacities, "we are reinventing the way our millions of global customers discover music," Howard Schultz, the chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks, said in a statement.

"Given the evolution of the music industry and the proliferation of streaming technology, it was natural that we would partner with Spotify in offering our customers a new way to engage with their favorite music," added Kevin Johnson, president and chief operating officer of Starbucks.

The partnership will start later this year at Starbucks' 7,000 company-owned stores in the United States.

Starbucks said it would later roll out the tie-up to stores in Canada and Britain.

Starbucks was once seen by the music industry as a great hope for selling CDs, with a selection offered on racks as customers waited for their coffees.

In 2004, Starbucks also introduced in select stores a burning service, allowing customers to select tracks to make their own CDs.

But Starbucks in March stopped selling CDs, saying at the time only that it was exploring new options.

In 2014, streaming overtook CD sales in revenue generation for the first time in the United States, by far the world's largest music market.

Streaming, however, has caught on at different paces around the world. CDs remain the preferred format in Germany and Japan, while Nordic countries have rapidly embraced streaming.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com