United Airlines and Spotify today announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration that delivers an even more entertaining travel experience in the sky, with 450+ hours of content now available for free on the airline’s seatback screens.
The move marks the first time Spotify has offered audiobooks and video podcasts onboard an airline, allowing United Airlines flyers to enjoy more than 65+ pieces of content, including popular titles like Good Hang with Amy Poehler, The Dave Chang Show, and The Comment Section with Drew Afualo.
Spotify content will be available on more than 680 United aircraft and appear as a new content category – “Spotify.” This replaces “audio” under the home menu and includes ‘Podcast’, ‘Video Podcasts’, ‘Audiobooks’, and ‘Playlists’ channels. Additionally, in the coming months, a majority of aircraft will receive a dedicated ‘Spotify’ featured channel where all Spotify content will be housed together for quick and easy enjoyment.
In addition, next year, United passengers will be able to use their personal devices to log into the Spotify app on the in-flight entertainment screen. This will allow passengers to enjoy their favourite content on the seatback so they can pick up their favourite podcasts, music, and audiobooks from right where they left off.
Points too…
To celebrate the launch, MileagePlus members who are new to Premium Individual can sign up for a subscription and earn up to 1,000 bonus miles (US Customers only). More information at united.com/spotify
In Quotes
Richard Nunn, CEO of MileagePlus, United Airlines, said:
“Spotify has a huge audience and people love their content. And now our customers can enjoy it all in a simple and easy way, at 35,000 feet,”
“Together, we’re giving millions of customers an entirely new way to experience and explore premium content from the world’s most popular artists, authors and podcasters –all while flying with the latest technology in the sky.”
Ian Geller, VP of Business Development at Spotify, added:
“As a frequent United flyer myself, it’s incredibly exciting to see Spotify now available on the world’s largest airline,”
“At Spotify, we’re dedicated to being everywhere our users are, giving creators opportunities to reach new platforms and engage different audiences. I’m especially looking forward to bringing an even more personalized app streaming experience to seatbacks next year.”
A little different to the usual media deal
Normally, airlines go through various intermediaries to source content deals to support their fleets, so it’s interesting to see that United Airlines has struck out with Spotify to provide its content.
With the size of the library, the pre-loaded library will no doubt be curated to fit on an aircraft’s in-flight entertainment server. This is how Spotify’s relationships with Delta and Emirates have gone so far.
What’s new is the integration of Spotify to the seatback screen. It’ll be interesting how it appears on the aircraft (especially when delivered to the seatback) – audio data is not “large” in terms of data size, so it should be a small drop in the data ocean when connected to the sky.
Certainly, higher bandwidth solutions will help.
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