In March, Spotify announced it was acquiring the company behind the sports-focused audio app Locker Room to help speed its entry into the live audio market. Today, the company is making good on that deal with the launch of Spotify Greenroom. This new mobile app allows Spotify users worldwide to join or host live audio rooms and turn those conversations into podcasts. It’s also announcing a Creator Fund that will help fuel the new app with more content in the future.
The Spotify Greenroom app itself is based on Locker Room’s existing code. Spotify tells us current Locker Room users will see their app update to become the rebranded and redesigned Greenroom experience starting today. Locker Room used a white-and-reddish-orange color scheme. The new Greenroom app looks like an offshoot of Spotify, having adopted the same color palette, font, and iconography. To join the new app, Spotify users will sign in with their current account information. They’ll then undergo an onboarding experience designed to connect them with their interests.
For the time being, finding audio programs to listen to relies primarily on users joining groups inside the app. That’s much like how Locker Room had operated, where its users would find and follow their favorite sports teams. However, Greenroom’s groups are more of general interest now, as it’s no longer only tied to sports. In time, Spotify tells us the plan is for Greenroom to leverage Spotify’s personalization technology to connect users better to the content they would want to hear. For example, it could send out notifications to users if a podcaster you already followed on Spotify went live on Spotify Greenroom. Or it could leverage its understanding of what sort of podcasts and music you listen to make targeted recommendations. These are longer-term plans, however.
As for Spotify Greenroom’s feature set, it’s essentially on par with other live audio offerings — including those from Clubhouse, Twitter (Spaces), and Facebook (Live Audio Rooms). Speakers in the room appear at the top of the screen as rounded profile icons, while listeners appear below as smaller icons. There are mute options, moderation controls, and the ability to bring listeners onstage during the live audio session. Rooms can host up to 1,000 people, and Spotify expects to scale up that number later. Listeners can also virtually applaud speakers by giving them “gems” in the app — a feature from Locker Room, too. The number of gems a speaker earned displays next to their profile image during a session. For now, there’s no monetary value associated with the rocks, but that seems an obvious next step, as Greenroom today offers no monetization.
It’s worth noting there are a few key differentiators between Spotify Greenroom and similar live audio apps. For starters, it offers a live text chat feature that the host can turn on or off whenever they choose. Hosts can also request the audio file of their live audio session after it wraps, which they can then edit to turn into a podcast episode. Perhaps most importantly is that Spotify itself is recording the live audio sessions. The company says this is for moderation purposes, which is a challenge for live audio platforms. Moderation is an area Clubhouse has struggled with. If a user reports something in a Greenroom audio room, Spotify can look into the matter to determine what actions may need to be taken.
Its users have sometimes encountered toxicity and abuse in the app in real-time, including in problematic areas like racism and misogyny. Recently, Clubhouse said it had to shut down several rooms for antisemitism and hate speech. (Clubhouse says it now records a temporary encrypted audio buffer in a room while the room is live to support incident investigations — a system that has been in place for months.) Spotify says its existing content moderation team will handle the moderation of Spotify Greenroom. Of course, how quickly Spotify will react to boot users or shut down live audio rooms that violate its Code of Conduct remains to be seen. While the app launching today is focused on user-generated live audio content, Spotify has more extensive plans for Greenroom. Later this summer, the company plans to make announcements around programmed content — something it says is a huge priority — alongside the launch of other new features. This will include programming related to music, culture, and entertainment, in addition to the sports content for which Locker Room was known.
