Have you ever thought about how much time you spend on Spotify, that is, actually inside the Spotify app? It’s easy to get lost for 30 minutes on TikTok or Instagram, but you probably don’t have the same instinct for the Swedish streaming app. 

Spotify, though, is keen to remind the advertising world just how much time their listeners spend actually navigating the app. 

A music app designed to operate in the background isn’t an obvious target market for advertisers, who would be inclined to regard the app’s users as passive or unengaged.

This could explain why the streaming platform’s ad revenue is so low. Spotify made $1.85 billion from ad-supported revenue in 2024, a fraction of the $13.8 billion it raked in from premium subscribers. 

However, as part of a new drive to boost ad-supported revenue, Spotify is trying to convince advertisers that its listeners are anything but passive.

“It’s more nutritious… rather than these high-caloric, quick things,” Alex Norstrom, Spotify’s co-president and chief business officer, told the New York Times about the Spotify app. 

Norstrom elaborated that this included the “Jam” function, which forces listeners to turn both technical and collaborative to create the ideal group playlist. He also pointed to listeners wanting to discover more about their favorite podcaster or settling in for an extended audiobook session.

“People just feel good when they’re on Spotify,” Lee Brown, Spotify’s global head of advertising, said on Wednesday. “How many apps can say that?”

Spotify aims to grow its advertising revenue by increasing the amount of time its users spend on the app. To that end, the group enhanced its offering of podcasts with a video function, making it functionally comparable to YouTube.  

“The more content users stream, the more advertising inventory we generally have to sell,” the group wrote in its 2024 annual report.

Its strategy to do so, as Brown summarized, was to pitch itself as the alternative to “rotting and doom-scrolling.”

Spotify’s pitch for advertisers comes at a time when brands are thinking more intentionally about where they publicize themselves. Elon Musk went to war with advertisers last year after many pulled funding from his X platform as its content turned more toxic. They began to return in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, who was heavily supported by Muck.

The company has been more deliberate in its message to advertisers in recent months.

What Wednesday’s event sought to highlight was making it easier for advertisers to use the platform, including the use of Gen AI to power scripts and voiceovers in the U.S. and Canada.

In November last year, Spotify said 72% of Gen Z listeners viewed the app as the antidote to doom-scrolling, according to findings in its Culture Next Report. The report, aimed at advertisers, indicated Gen Z listeners favored brands that engaged with Spotify by creating playlists or sponsoring live music events. 

Spotify enjoyed a remarkable 2024 turnaround after rounding out 2023 with its largest-ever round of layoffs. The company enjoyed its first full year of profitability and saw its share price more than double last year.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Good morning! U.S. will host the 2031 Women’s World Cup, David’s Bridal has a new strategy, and Mexico’s president is the winner of tariff week.

– Almost unscathed. T-day hit the global economy like a ton of bricks. President Donald Trump announced the details of his tariffs—a 10% “baseline” tariff on all imports to the U.S. plus additional tariffs ranging between 20% and 54% for countries Trump called the “worst offenders.” The president says tariffs are intended to return manufacturing jobs to the U.S., a declaration of “economic independence.” Yet stocks, in one day, lost $3.1 trillion in market value. Major indexes dropped 6%. Recession odds have reached 35%.

But two countries were spared the brunt of Trump’s retaliation. Canada and Mexico saw no additional tariffs imposed—and Mexico has President Claudia Sheinbaum to thank for that.

The Washington Post anointed Sheinbaum “the world’s leading Trump whisperer” in early March after she negotiated two delays of tariffs on her country. The relationship-driven U.S. president seems to have grown to respect Sheinbaum, even as relationships with other world leaders have fractured. In March, Trump said he decided to delay the tariffs “out of respect for President Sheinbaum.” He has called her a “very wonderful woman.” Mexicans appreciated Sheinbaum’s deft negotiation, with thousands gathering in March to cheer for her; she told them “we cannot cede our sovereignty.” Her domestic approval rating soared to 85%.

Yesterday, Sheinbaum credited her relationship with Trump for Mexico’s emerging, not quite unscathed, from Trump’s new tariff regime. “This has to do with the good relationship we have built between the Mexican and U.S. government, which is based on respect,” she said on Thursday. (Trump negotiated a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico during his first term.) Mexico’s trade minister called the lack of additional tariffs on Mexico a “major achievement.”

Of course, Mexico has trading partners besides the U.S. and will feel the impact of tariffs as part of the global economy. Some companies have already paused production at facilities in Mexico while they reassess global supply chains. Taking a cue from the U.S. playbook, Sheinbaum has debuted “Plan Mexico,” to promote the country’s domestic production. Still, Sheinbaum’s ability to navigate the dangerous waters of Trumpworld has made her stand out—just six months after taking office as Mexico’s first female president.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Bank economists estimate Trump’s tariff increase would cost U.S. households $700 billion, equivalent to the largest de facto tax hike levied since LBJ’s Revenue Act of 1968 financed his war in Vietnam.

President Donald Trump’s package of tariffs to be levied starting next week could plunge not just the United States into recession but the entire world along with it. 

That’s the simple conclusion reached by the top economic minds at JPMorgan. In a research report published on Thursday titled “There will be Blood”, the Wall Street investment bank argued other global markets would not be resilient enough to escape the gravitational forces of a shrinking U.S. economy weighted down by tariffs.

Revising its 2025 forecasts for the second time in five weeks, JPMorgan said it was caught off guard by the Trump administration’s “extreme” agenda symbolized by the raft of hefty import duties announced during Trump’s so-called ‘Liberation Day.’

As a result of the White House’s attempt to convert its trade deficit into a problem for America’s trading partners, JPMorgan has now ratcheted up the probability of a global recession to 60% from 40% previously.

Yet far from making America wealthy again as Trump has promised, JPMorgan calculates taht the tariffs will cost U.S. consumers roughly $700 billion—a de facto tax hike nearly as painful relative to the size of the economy as Lyndon B. Johnson’s Revenue Act passed to finance America’s war in Vietnam.

“If sustained, this year’s ~22%-point tariff increase would be the largest U.S. tax hike since 1968,” the bank said, estimating its impact at 2.4% of domestic GDP.

The latest actions lift the average tariff rate higher than even those seen during the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, an act that many economists argue played a key role in exacerbating the Great Depression. 

“A strong case can be made that the latest tariffs are more damaging given that the share of imports and broader globalization are considerably larger now than in the 1930s,” JPMorgan continued.

$3 trillion wiped off U.S. equity markets

The Trump administration has argued a healthy manufacturing base is important to national security, worth the short-term pain to claw back heavy industry that was hollowed out over many years and moved offshore. And indeed, the pandemic did reveal globalization had its flaws, as the lack of certain $1 commodity semiconductors made in Taiwan prevented the manufacture of a $40,000 passenger car stateside.

However, due to the dimensions and arbitrary nature of the tariffs—determined not through reciprocal tariff rates but trade imbalances—their imposition risks sparking a retaliatory trade war where other countries erect their own protectionist walls in a tit-for-tat escalation.

Here JPMorgan analysts admit it becomes almost impossible to predict the outcome given the many variables at play. Business sentiment and supply chain disruption could either mitigate or exacerbate the effects of the tariffs. 

As a result, on Thursday the markets suffered their worst day since the COVID outbreak five years ago, with $3 trillion worth of value wiped off U.S. equities.

A key factor could be upcoming negotiations, in which the Trump administration is expected to seek concessions from partners that could reduce the trade deficit in exchange for the U.S. lowering its tariff rates.

Comparative advantage can sometimes trump tariffs

There are some fundamental economic realities that most likely will not change no matter what tariff is charged. 

Take the semiconductor industry as an example. Fabricating chips is a capital-intensive business that requires specialized knowledge, critical mass and economies of scale.

Taiwan didn’t simply become the world’s foundry—it aggressively invested in this specialization. Its grip on third-party chip production makes it a critical partner for the U.S. and acts as a strategic deterrent against Chinese aggression. 

By comparison, U.S. chip companies like AMD that once made their own chips hived off this side of their operations to focus on the more lucrative and less risky design and distribution. So called “fab-less” peers like Nvidia outsourced their production to foreign chip fabs from the very beginning.

JPMorgan raises this issue as a potential stumbling block and source of friction during negotiations, limiting the room for manoever and raising the risk of a protracted trade war.

“Importantly, existing bilateral trade imbalances are linked to comparative advantages that promote efficiencies and are generally independent of barriers to trade,” it said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com