I think the starting point for this news should be wonder if you know Spotify Greenroom. And don’t feel guilty or ignorant if you don’t. I myself must admit that I learned of his existence only a few minutes ago and, after consulting several people (a mini emergency poll), out of fifteen people, do you know how many knew him? If you said zero then you have hit completely. And to be a Spotify service, the fact that it has gone so unnoticed is, to say the least, striking.
If you don’t know him, which is most likely, Spotify Greenroom is, to put it very succinctly, Spotify’s answer to Clubhouse. As we already remembered a few days ago, when talking about the audio clips of the Twitter Spaces, during the first half of last year, when the popularity of Clubhouse grew like foam, many online services rushed to start offering a similar function within of them, to try to attract users interested in this new format of live audio talks.
The curious thing is that, while most of the services sought to integrate their “adaptation” of Clubhouse within them, the reference company for streaming audio preferred to offer it independently and, consequently, they did not integrate it in the apps or in the web interface to access the service. Instead, they published a standalone app that, moreover, isn’t even called Spotify Greenroom (although it shows up when you do a search for that name). At least in the iOS App Store for Spain, its name is Sports Radio App – Locker Room. No reference to Spotify.
This, in my opinion, already puts us on the trail of reason (or at least one of them) why the service is so little known. Spotify could have capitalized on the huge install base it already has. However, perhaps looking for a smoother deployment, they chose to segregate Greenroom. However, either because the numbers don’t add up, or because that was Spotify’s initial intention, and now the company wants to grow it, this is about to change.
And it is that, as we can read in Bloomberg, Greenroom will no longer be a stand-alone service and will instead be integrated into Spotify. In addition, also we will see change its name, which will become Spotify Live, a much clearer reference to what this function offers. The change is planned for sometime this year. And let’s remember that the company usually takes any change quite calmly, so we may still have to wait a few months.
Be that as it may, seems like a smart move on the part of the company, at least when it comes to giving the service more visibility. Now, of course, we will have to see how it is received by users and, furthermore, what will happen to the user accounts of the service. And it is that to use Greenroom it is necessary to create an account, which can then be connected to that of Spotify, a model that will cease to make sense when both services are integrated.
And it is that, another point, but very important, Greenroom does not require a Spotify user account, in addition to being completely free. It is understood that these users (those who do not have an account in the “parent” service) will have to migrate the accounts to Spotify. Now, will it still be a free service? Hopefully yes, including it exclusively in the paid plans would be like shooting yourself in the foot, or both feet, really. And no, it definitely doesn’t seem like a good option.
