Inside the Black Market for Spotify Playlists

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Fascinating reporting by Austin Powell: 

There’s just one catch: King essentially paid to be added to those Spotify playlists. He’s one of countless artists who have compensated curators to check out his tracks—or in the case for some of his contemporaries, to be added to specific playlists—to gain valuable streams and attention.

[Source: Daily Dot]

Spotify is preparing a browser-based version

It’s unclear if the browser version will replace its downloadable desktop software or just augment it but either way, it will make Spotify much more accessible. Users will be able to access a massive catalogue of music plus their playlists from any computer they log in to. Removing the download from the onboarding process could also help it sign up more users. One challenge will be making sure it the web version feels just as snappy.

Nice scoop by TechCrunch. But the challenge is bigger than this. If Apple decides to enter the music streaming world, would they rather build something from scratch (well, starting with iTunes) or would they just buy Spotify?