Spotify announced Tuesday that it has acquired sound salon company Betty Labs, which will act as a vehicle for development in the booming sector the platform is known for. Club House.

Read also:Clubhouse, the social network that talks a lot

In the wake of the podcast, Live Audio, which offers live broadcasts and conferences or conversations between Internet users, all in audio-only format, rose about a year ago, driven by the Clubhouse app. Provides the possibility of interactions that do not exist with pre-recorded podcats.

Created in 2018, Betty Labs specializes in this area and in particular, in October 2020, the Locker Room app, which regulates the exchange of live sound over sports. Spotify announced Tuesday that it will develop Locker Room into an open platform for Wide range of creators and fansAccording to a statement. The platform will thus open up to topics related to music and more broadly to culture, but also to creators from all walks of life. Among the early investors in Betty Labs was GV, the private equity arm of Alphabet (Google).

Similar offer to Clubhouse by Facebook

At the end of February, Spotify confirmed its ambitions for non-musical audio. The group has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars putting together an integrated podcast offering, with technology, production, ad interface, and exclusive content.

According to several media, Facebook is currently running a similar offer to Clubhouse. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is also making his own version called Fireside.

The Discord platform, the former “Live Voice”, which launched in 2015, has already raised $ 479 million, according to the database of the specialist site Crunchbase, and is now valued at about $ 7 billion.