Spotify is often called a music streaming service, because, well, it’s a service that streams music. Obviously. However… Quick, stop the presses and hold the front pages, Spotify deals in more than just music. I know, right? Because audio doesn’t necessarily mean music, as any fan of podcasts will tell you.
Comedy albums have been a thing for over 100 years, with gramophone records of a comic named Cal Stewart reciting humorous short stories having been released as long ago as 1898. famous comedians and comedy troupes have released albums in every recent decade, and the medium is still immensely popular to this day.
Unless you’ve gone searching for your favorite comedian(s) on Spotify, you’ll probably be totally unaware that they’re there. Until now. Thanks to the Official Comedy app it’s now much easier to find comedians, their albums, and even individual jokes to share on social networks, all within the confines of Spotify.
It’s time to have a laugh, and not just at my overly verbose style of writing.
Spotify Apps
At the end of 2011, Spotify introduced apps to its platform. It was really no surprise, because apps were becoming the be-all and end-all in terms of user interaction across all platforms. Spotify offered third parties the opportunity to create apps that would use the streaming service’s extensive library and powerful tools to reach the mainstream public.
Dozens of apps have been launched, and we’ve published several round-ups of apps based on a theme since then. These include Spotify apps for discovering music, Spotify apps for true music fans, and Spotify apps made by record labels.
The one thing all of these apps have in common is their reliance on music. But as we’ve already noted, Spotify boasts more than just music. Which is where the Official Comedy app enters stage right, microphone in hand and ready to deliver the LOLs.
The Official Comedy App
The Official Comedy app is the first Spotify app to focus on something other than music. The brains behind the Official Comedy app are Bedrocket Media Ventures, which already runs a YouTube channel using the same Official Comedy moniker.
The YouTube channel has in excess of 175,000 subscribers, and delivers a mix of new and classic comedy, original shorts, and pranks played on members of the public.
The Spotify app delivers a range of comedy albums and tracks, all curated by editors. The content is divided into four distinct sections which offer different ways to explore the funny stuff that’s hidden in the deepest recesses of Spotify’s library.
Funny Now
‘Funny Now’ is the default section you’ll land on when you click the Official Comedy app. This is, as the name suggests, the section where anything or anyone that’s currently trending is dropped. So you get comedians who are especially popular at the moment for one reason or another, and links to playlists built around current news events.
Clicking on one of the comedians highlighted takes you to their page within the Official Comedy app. You get a brief biography, links to their websites and social networking profiles, and the option to ‘Play All’. Clicking on one of the playlists highlighted gives you a brief note on why that particular playlist was built and the chance to play the tracks either in part or in full.
Comedians
The next section is wholly dedicated to comedians, with the Official Comedy app choosing who it considers to be the “funniest people on Spotify.” The same rule applies as before; when you click on a comedian’s image you’ll be whisked to their profile page to discover what content they currently have available on Spotify.
What the Official Comedy app does really well is blend the old with the new, with Bill Hicks and George Carlin sitting comfortably alongside Louis C.K. and Aziz Ansari. This means everybody is catered for, whatever their age and preferred type of humor.
One-Liners
The ‘One-Liners’ section is particularly interesting these days, when if something isn’t shared on social networking sites then it’s considered worthless. Single jokes are pulled from the comedy albums and quoted in text form. These can then be shared instantly on Facebook, with which Spotify already integrates.
Luckily each one-liner is given some context by the inclusion of the name of the comedian responsible for it, the name of the track it comes from, and even the point during that track at which it begins.
Playlists
Last but not least is ‘Playlists’, which we’ve already seen a little of in the ‘Funny Now’ section. These “happy packets of funny” are curated lists of tracks that fit together around a particular theme. These may be animal jokes, jokes about medicine, or (especially for the grammar Nazis among us) jokes about the English language.
Clicking ‘Play’ on any of these will bring up the track listing, which you can then choose to listen to in full or just pick individual tracks out according to personal taste. There are plenty of playlists already on the app, but it has to be hoped they will be refreshed regularly to prevent them from becoming stale.
Conclusions
The Official Comedy app brings spoken-word content out from the Spotify shadows. And about time too. This is a medium and a genre that has so far remained somewhat hidden from view, but the Official Comedy app will hopefully mean mainstream Spotify users will now know what they should be listening to for a daily dose of funny.
Did you already know there are hundreds of comedy albums on Spotify? Will you be using the Official Comedy app to explore the wealth of stand-up comedy content Spotify has to offer? Do you use any Spotify apps? If so, which ones? If not, why not? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
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