Battle of the Lavish LA Streaming Platform Studios: Apple Music’s vs. Spotify’s ‘Sycamore Studios’

Spotify and Apple Music have both unveiled their lavish new Los Angeles-area studios, both framed as fully kitted-out creative hubs for artists.

It’s a new year, and the perfect time to unveil new projects. For music streaming giants Spotify and Apple Music, that’s come in the form of their latest studio spaces, both located in the Los Angeles area. Apple Music’s new Culver City studio is built as a music-first “creative campus,” while Spotify’s new Sycamore Studios in Hollywood doubles down on the company’s video-forward podcasting pivot.

Apple Music’s studio sits in Culver City’s Hayden Tract, inside an Eric Owen Moss-designed building that aligns it with the area’s experimental architecture and film/TV-oriented infrastructure. Spotify’s Sycamore Studios is planted in Hollywood’s emerging Sycamore media corridor, neighboring major labels and audio companies and emphasizing proximity to the entertainment business.

Spotify’s new site covers roughly 11,000 square feet, divided into five studio environments that range from intimate interview spaces to larger rooms designed for big, on-camera groups. Apple’s three-story facility spans over 15,000 square feet with a 4,000-square-foot soundstage as its centerpiece, plus multiple radio studios and creative rooms.

Apple frames its studio as a creative hub for music-making, with two advanced Apple Music Radio studios, a dedicated Spatial Audio mixing room using a PMC speaker array, and private booths for songwriting, podcasting, and interviews. Spotify’s Hollywood space is explicitly “video-first,” supporting the boom in video podcasts, while its existing Arts District campus continues to focus on traditional audio production.

Spotify positions Sycamore Studios as a home base for select creators, including those at The Ringer, which Spotify acquired in 2020, with in-house staff handling production support rather than relying on rentable studio models. Apple’s complex lets artists record interviews, perform live sets on the soundstage, mix in Spatial Audio, shoot photos and social content, and host fan events—all within a tightly controlled Apple Music ecosystem.

Together, the two studios showcase a split vision of Los Angeles’ audio future: one investing in premium, immersive music spaces, and the other betting on video-driven content dominating the next era.