Spotify Rolls Out New Greenroom Shows Based on Playlists

Spotify is starting to ramp up its programming ambitions for its social audio app, Greenroom, with six new shows. The pop culture-focused shows include ‘playlist-inspired shows,’ as Spotify refers to them, which use popular Spotify playlists as a launching point for presentations and discussions.

Greenroom Goes Live

A bunch of new shows began this week, setting up weekly schedules. Monday evenings will see A Gay in the Life, hosted by Garrett Clayton and Blake Knight, Take a Seat, hosted by Ben Mandelker and Ronnie Karam, and The Movie Buff, hosted by Jon Gabrus at 8 p.m., 10 p.m., and 11 p.m., respectively. As for the shows based on playlists, Spotify has only mentioned a few so far. The Lorem playlist, designed around a wide range of music where artists may have a breakthrough, will be one of the first to have a Greenroom based on appealing to its nearly 885,000 fans on Spotify. The new Lorem Life Greenroom show will bring hosts and TikTok influencers Dev Lemons and Max Motley together to talk about music and culture for an hour every Wednesday at 9 p.m. On Tuesdays at 9 p.m, host B.Dot will talk about the latest in hip-hop on The Most Necessary: Live, which goes with the Most Necessary playlist on Spotify.

Spotify has other such shows in the hopper, including The Get Up LIVE based on the eponymous playlist, which offers a daily mix of music discussion by hosts. The show is pre-recorded for the playlist, but the Greenroom show will be a live show like a radio show that complements the daily playlist but doesn’t replace it. There are already several shows running on Greenroom with Spotify’s support covering music, pop culture and sports. The latest round expands the catalog in a way that demonstrates Spotify’s ongoing investment and apparent belief in the staying power of at least some forms of social audio as an adjunct to its streaming platform.

Social Audio Shine

There are plenty of competitors that Spotify and Greenroom have to contend with currently and others expected to arrive in the near future. That includes newer startups like Stationhead, a social audio app for anyone to make their own radio program. Stationhead, run by recording artist Ryan Star has published DJs with more than 200,000 concurrent listeners. On the other end of the size spectrum, Amazon has reportedly been developing its own social audio service focused on live performances. Amazon Music is arranging for the live venue for performances and concerts accessible through a user’s Amazon Music account. Podcasts and talk shows via Amazon’s $300 million purchase of Wondery last year are also likely. Amazon has already added free podcast feeds, bringing native support for podcasts to Amazon devices. More recently, the service started livestreaming from Twitch and selling merchandise directly from its app.

Discord’s Stage Channels, an outgrowth of its communication tech, are showcasing a variety of celebrity shows and events. Clubhouse has not been slacking on exploring this aspect of social audio in new partnerships with TED Talks and the NHL, among others, as well as homegrown shows produced through the expanding Creator First programs. These events are also supported by new features like spatial audio and Backchannel texting. The direct messaging service enables users to text with each other while on the app, either one-to-one or in a group chat, without interrupting the audio discussion or requiring a different communications tool. Experiments from Twitter Spaces and Facebook’s new Live Audio Rooms only make the content offered by Greenroom more crucial to the app’s success.

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