3 ms·
Spotify could make the argument that they are willing to provide free unlimited music streaming to impoverished Americans (as an altruistic act of course) by pa
by chrischen 11y ago
Spotify could make the argument that they are willing to provide free unlimited music streaming to impoverished Americans (as an altruistic act of course) by partnering with ISPs (of course Spotify will still serve ads to these users). They would pump their millions of dollars as a large player in the industry into this effort, and music listening becomes de-facto based on the Spotify platform because they've invested in a deal that would bring free music streaming to the masses of impoverished and (musically) underserved Americans.
Smaller streaming services such as Bandcamp, with their selfish capitalistic intent on charging for their services directly, cannot compete with the pervasiveness and free-ness of Spotify services. People cannot fathom why they would pay to buy music when Spotify is so generously providing it for free (faster loading, free, and doesn't use up their data allotments!) included in their ISP plan.
Far down in the future Spotify realizes they don't have to improve their services anymore. They realize "hey altruistic act we did is actually a great indirect way to pay to make our competitor's services worse, instead of investing in making our services better."
By paying to prioritize their traffic at the network level, Spotify realized they can leverage their existing size, money, and power to simply hold down the competition at the ISP level rather than rise up above them in the product level.