Audio streaming service Spotify has opened a listening lounge at its London headquarters, featuring a bespoke speaker system and a material palette chosen to enhance the room's acoustic properties.

The Spotify Listening Lounge is a purpose-built acoustic space designed to provide an immersive setting for users to experience the company's lossless audio offering.

The facility was designed in collaboration with local studio Cake Architecture and features a bespoke sound system developed by London-based loudspeaker design studio Friendly Pressure.

Spotify claimed that the listening room aims to celebrate listening as a communal, intentional experience, with access granted to artists' top fans and Spotify Premium users.

"The Listening Lounge is where technology, craftsmanship and culture align," said the company's head of marketing for the UK and Ireland Billie Baier.

"By bringing lossless audio into a purpose-built environment, we're demonstrating the full potential of streaming and fostering a deeper connection between fans and the music they love."

The project follows a trend for listening bars and other audio-centred spaces, such as a pink monochrome bar in Sydney and a hi-fi bar in London designed to provide a range of acoustic experiences.

Guests are welcomed into a reception area featuring warm lighting, slate floors and steel details that help to create a threshold between the bustling urban setting and the intimate lounge space.

The main listening room utilises a palette of brown hues and tactile surfaces that recede into the background to focus attention on the raised, backlit sound system.

The room is simply furnished with plump, upholstered pieces from furniture brand Afra and designer Tobia Scarpa's Soriana collection.

"Collaborating with Spotify and Friendly Pressure allowed us to treat the room itself as an instrument," said Cake creative director Hugh Scott Moncrieff.

"Every surface pattern and material choice was a functional decision to eliminate interference, ensuring that the craftsmanship of the speakers is matched by the precision of the architecture surrounding them."

New York-based acoustician Ethan Bourdeau helped to refine the space's acoustic design, with each wall featuring a calibrated surface pattern that disperses frequencies evenly around the room.

The audio system used in the lounge was created by Shivas Howard-Brown of Friendly Pressure and features custom-made cabinets along with a frosted glass version of the brand's signature waveguide horn.

"Growing up in and around recording studios exposed me to a whole heritage of craft," Howard-Brown said.

"Sound systems built in sheds, speakers designed for carnival stacks – these have always had the same ambition as anything you'd find in a high-end listening room. This new space is my attempt to make that argument."

The speaker system references a golden era of British audio engineering, utilising components including Alnico magnet drivers that would have featured in the famous Abbey Road recording studio throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

The Spotify Listening Lounge launched with an event hosted by UK artists Joy Crookes, Nao and Yazmin Lacey and will host year-round programming for music fans.

In 2021, Spotify began redesigning its offices to give them a more homely feel, with a focus on improving acoustics and introducing softer, cosier spaces.

Cake Architecture's previous work includes the design of a wellness facility featuring a sauna for 65 people and a late-night restaurant designed to evoke the moody atmosphere of an Edward Hopper painting.

The photography is courtesy of Spotify.

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Swedish music streaming brand Spotify is to improve the cosiness and acoustics of its offices to mimic domestic workspaces used by employees during the coronavirus pandemic.

It will also introduce a "work from anywhere" policy from this summer. Announced last month, this will allow employees to work from home, from the office or from a combination of the two.

"We've got a new policy, which is basically [that you can] work from anywhere, which is inclusive to everyone being able to choose wherever they work," said Sonya Simmonds, head of workplace design and build at Spotify.

Simmonds discussed the company's approach to reopening its offices during a live Dezeen talk about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on workplace design.

"I think that we see two camps really," she said, explaining how Spotify employees feel. "People who want to work from home and people who want to go into the office."

"But we still see a massive need for the office."

Based in Stockholm, Simmonds is responsible for the look and feel of all Spotify's offices around the world. She said her role is to "nail down what our culture and values are and how that shows through the buildings".

She said that working from home over the past year has highlighted some of the benefits that domestic environments have over workplaces. She now plans to adapt company premises to make them feel more homely.

"I don't agree that the desk is dead," she said. "But I think we have to look at creating spaces that mirror the kind of feeling that we've got from home so we can choose where we work."

"We will be shuffling our offices around now based on what we've learned from home," she added. "We will be reconfiguring to get the best out of each building."

Sonya Simmonds made the comments during a live Dezeen talk

Soft acoustics, cosiness and proximity to a window are among the benefits of home working, she said, along with ability to play personal music choices.

"In our homes as a whole we've got really good acoustics; we've got sofas and curtains," she said. "And that's what's lacking in an office sometimes."

"I guess what we've learned is this cosiness, and we want to keep that. I think that we really have to kind of get that comfort level in."

She plans to introduce "cosy little nooks" where people can work quietly. But she has also noticed that many people who are working from home choose to sit facing a window.

"Maybe people are putting their computers by the window so they can see activity; people walking past. That brings you some life. This is something we are really lacking when working on our own at home."

At home, Simmonds added, people can music to suit their mood without worrying about whether co-workers will like it or not.

'The benefits of music are huge," she said. "It's a very emotional reflection of your whole entire life. People choose different music for every part of their life. At home, you can choose what you want"

The company has used music to liven up video meetings during lockdown. "Quite a lot of our meetings open up with music pumping out," she said.

"It just gets you going. It gets you super excited about what's coming up."

Unsurprisingly, Spotify already integrates music into its office and has speakers installed in all its spaces. "We have music in all of our lifts," she said. "We also have music in our toilets."

In the brand's Gothenburg office, it has installed a system that plays an employee's favourite song when they swipe in. "That's awesome," she said. "So you can just like arrive to your favourite song every day."

Broadcast live last month, the Dezeen talk explored how office design will change as a result of the pandemic. It was held in collaboration with architecture studio TP Bennett and featured Simmonds alongside TP Bennett principal director Cristiano Testi.

Testi noted that corporate clients were increasingly interested in providing music in the workplace.

"People we work with like Spotify, Google and Facebook have had music in their receptions and restaurants for a long time but we're now seeing that go into other more traditionally corporate sectors, like banking and law firms," he said.

"It might be subtle jazz or classical music or chill out music – but I now notice if it isn't there and spaces are poorer without it."

"I think the offices of the future will have to consider all five senses in an equal way," he added.

All interiors are of Spotify's London office designed by TP Bennett. Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

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