Spotify Blog Post 12/7/2022

Spotify launches new "Close to Home" feature, connecting listeners with local artists

We are excited to announce to our prized customers the launch of Spotify’s newest feature, “Close To Home.” This past weekend we held an artist summit at Spotify’s headquarters in Los Angeles to celebrate the beginning of our newest feature. The “Close To Home” summit was headlined by local artists FINNEAS and Steve Lacey as well as international artists Maluma and Alesso. They performed many of their hit songs such as “Bad Habit,” and “Nobody Like You,” plus “Old Thing Back,” and “Words.” We were thrilled to give local artists and influencers a taste of our new service before releasing it for all of our customers.

Our Close To Home service helps our customers get exposed to various local artists that are popular in your area and around the world. This event was the perfect way to kick off “Close To Home” and we are so excited for what is to come in the future. We hope to do more events like the “Close To Home” summit in areas around the world to help form a deeper connection between communities and their local artists and help unknown artists gain a greater platform.

This feature uses GPS technology to connect local artists, aiming to expand their musical tastes and horizon, to you in the location of your own home. While requiring users to enable location services, the new feature prioritizes privacy and safety by encrypting any location detected through the app. Once enabled by the user, the “Close to Home” feature will appear as a tab on Spotify’s homepage. Users will then be prompted to select how they’d like to receive recommendations categorized by country. We can’t wait for our customers to experience this new feature and see all that Spotify has to offer. Happy listening!