It appears that Spotify is testing an emergency alert system in its home market, Sweden. The whole thing is in the very early stages, which is why there was no indication from the company.
The latest test has Spotify venturing out to a new field. This was revealed by the code references found within the Spotify app. According to this, the company is considering a system that would help distribute public announcements.
TechCrunch reached out to the company and they confirmed that they are testing such a system. TechCrunch reports that there was no explanation given as to why they are providing this kind of service to its users. Spotify is not obligated by any law to provide such a service in Sweden.
This feature was discovered by Chris Messina, who reverse-engineered the app to find the code embedded within the app. He mentions that an emergency alert system could push Spotify users to enable their app notifications. More often than not, users tend to disable notification alerts from non-essential apps, like social media apps and entertainment apps. This user behavior makes it hard for apps to reach out to their users and market new features.
This feature could also allow Spotify to be in a more commanding position than it already is. Spotify is going the route of Meta or Google as they provide emergency alerts to its users in case of any mishap happening in the world.
Here are some references found in the code of the Spotify app.
This is the comment Spotify sent to TechCrunch when they reached out to the company. “At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience while most serve only as an important learning.”
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