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The success of streaming services

April 12, 2016

10 years after the founding of music streaming service Spotify, streaming has gone mainstream. The video and music platforms try to set themselves apart from their competitors by offering the best playlists.

https://p.dw.com/p/1ITbg
Screenshot of a Spotify playlist
Image: Spotify

The Success of Streaming Services

Instead of buying CDs or DVDs, millions of users now subscribe to services like Apple Music, Spotify and Netflix. One advantage is that they offer custom playlists of music and videos. They're designed to offer users what's really of interest to them. Such playlists are generated using computer algorithms. But the best ones are then fine-tuned by humans.