8 ms·

Spotify waste so much money on their employees, who effectively do very little. I know a designer who has been there 2 years, basically sits in meetings and get

• criley2 11y ago
  The modern desktop app is at a point where it's pretty solid, but I still miss that old 0.80.x branch or whatever the final non-chromium verison was. But you know what? Google doesn't have a desktop app for Google Music. Amazon doesn't have a desktop app for Amazon Prime. Apple doesn't have a desktop version... so yeah, despite the fact that Spotify's only-one-in-the-business desktop app isn't perfect, it does exist... (and I do use it every day between Android and two desktops and I think it works pretty ok)
  • pfg 11y ago
    Apple's desktop version is iTunes.
  • iMiiTH 11y ago
    The desktop app is nothing special, just another web-view. Put Amazon or Google Music into Fluid and you have the same functionality minus media key control.
    • cwyers 11y ago
      "Minus key control" is HUGE, though. Key control is amazing.
    • criley2 11y ago
      That's not true at all. It's more than a web view as it supports more functionality, for example the open.spotify.com website does not supported a nested folder structure, but, on desktop I create something like http://i.imgur.com/pOMwTeB.png http://i.imgur.com/pOMwTeB.png. It also has the integration between phone and multiple devices, unlike web, so I can control my desktop app from my phone (full control of desktop from phone, and vice versa)
  • philliphaydon 11y ago
    I closed my account about 3 months after they changed the desktop app. Haven't tried since. May give it another to.
  • jschmitz28 11y ago
    Amazon Music has a desktop client: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?ie=UTF8&docId=1001067901 http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?ie=UTF8&docId=1001067...
    • philliphaydon 11y ago
      I don't believe it's available in Singapore :( asks for US address when I tried to sign up not long ago.
  • mbrock 11y ago
    Pretty solid is a bit of an exaggeration in my case. About once a day, my MacBook's fans start spinning like crazy. By now I know... oh, it's "Spotify Helper" stuck in a loop again, lemme force quit it. Before I reinstalled, instead Spotify would show me "there's a new version!" every single day, seemingly without upgrading anything. These serious quality issues, plus the horrifying visual ads (for playlists and new albums) make Spotify a product I kind of love to hate. I mostly dig the iOS version though. But I'm still angry with how these services transform the idea of "music player" into "streaming client hooked into the commercial music industry."
    • sauere 11y ago
      God i hate Spotify Helper
      • mbrock 11y ago
        I googled for "spotify helper 100 cpu" and there seem to be tons of forum threads of people complaining about it... but the community forum insists that I register an account to even view the threads linked by Google, so, um, maybe I'll just go back to sheer piracy, so I can use open source software that doesn't break my computer.
    • JonnieCache 11y ago
      rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/ fixes that for me. For a while. I had no idea it was another fucking chrome wrapper now. It used to be completely native didn't it? This explains a lot. Does anyone fancy putting the last good client up on mega or something?
    • StavrosK 11y ago
      I started using Pandora purely because of Pithos (a native Desktop app). Uses next to no resources and has all the functionality. Hell, there's even pianobar, a command-line client. How I wish we had these for Google Music, my platform of choice. Spotify is right out unless I need to listen to a specific song.
    • HemanHeartYou 11y ago
  • staticelf 11y ago
    Groove (xbox music) has a desktop app and it runs a lot better than Spotifys. Also Tidal has a desktop app that also runs better.
    • rplnt 11y ago
      You are not tied to the Spotify official app if you are a paying customer. There are alternatives.
      • bonaldi 11y ago
        Oh yeah? Any good ones?
        • rplnt 11y ago
          Not that I know of really. I mean, I haven't tried any. I just stumbled upon their existence when searching for media servers.
      • staticelf 11y ago
        Or I can simply pay for basically any other service that does the same job without facebook (even though I have an old account), without social features, without a shitty client that drains computer resources in mysterious ways. But finally, an app that doesn't require me to share my pictures with them. That was the spike in the coffin for me. I really enjoyed Spotify when it was new, but their clients has just been lowering in quality ever since beta. Honestly, I think the beta client was way better than the client today.
        • rplnt 11y ago
          > [...] their clients has just been lowering in quality ever since beta. > Honestly, I think the beta client was way better than the client today. As a response to a post only stating that you don't need to use their client? Seriously? Also, what has facebook to do with anything?
  • mnsc 11y ago
    0.8.5.1356 still alive and kicking in this office...
  • 00deadbeef 11y ago
    I'm still using 0.9.7 on my Mac. I've deliberately broken its self-updating so I can keep it. If they ever do anything that stops this client from working they lose me as a customer. This is one of the last versions that have the old interface. The new all-black version is hideous and I hate using it. There's a massive thread on their forums full of people that hate it. I can't believe, with the amount of funding they have, that they can't spare the dev hours to build a few themes: light, dark, and somewhere in between.
  • nunez 11y ago
    > Apple doesn't have a desktop option iTunes?
  • wodenokoto 11y ago
    > Apple doesn't have a desktop version... What? iTunes isn't available on the desktop anymore? When did that happen? I used Apple Music on my laptop when it was released last summer.
  • joubert 11y ago
    Apple Music is available in the iTunes desktop app (Mac, dunno about Windows).
  • mr337 11y ago
    Just be happy your getting updates! http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/spotify-linux-no-development http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/spotify-linux-no-developm...
• spriggan3 11y ago
  > Spotify waste so much money on their employees, who effectively do very little Plenty of businesses waste money on some employees who effectively do very little, like diversity officers, equality consultants and such useless positions ... The problem isn't them , the problem here is Spotify unstustainable business model, period. They will go down, sooner or later. The fact that they had to take a loan means they can't raise money through VC rounds anymore. It's clearly the end of an era for a LOT of startups. And that's fine. It's call redistributing cards.
  • jrowley 11y ago
    A diversity officer isn't necessarily a waste of money. They can be crucial for ensuring a solid company culture that levages talents from a diverse pool of people. If you make your company inhospitable to groups of employees based on their race or religion you are only hurting your bottom line.
    • danieltillett 11y ago
      You shouldn’t need a diversity officer to stop your business being inhospitable to employees on the basis of background - this should be core to your business culture. It is like having a come-to-work-and-get-stuff-done officer.
      • jrowley 11y ago
        Well I agree, ideally this should be automatic and inherent to a business, but when a company gets to a certain size you need people to be really thoughtful and consciously focused about this stuff, otherwise it can slip. So sometimes growth necessitates a dedicated person thinking about these issues.
        • p4wnc6 11y ago
          More often, the person is just a token hire who functions more to ensure legal deniability on the company's part for anything that might pop up related to a diversity issue. I hope more companies hire diversity officers for the sake of thinking hard about how to ensure that policies and company behaviors aren't harmful. But for me it's a "I'll believe it when I see it" sort of thing. The default belief has to be that it's just a token position for the sake of legal deniability, just as most of HR has evolved into.
• p4wnc6 11y ago
  I've always been very put off by their rah rah support for Agile. In many ways, I think Spotify cargo cults on the Netflix culture document, but they don't actually have a tech culture identity that they've created for themselves, they just make a big fuss about Agile, oppressive open-plan spaces, and fancy parties. I think Spotify is a great example of why job candidates should look before they leap when it comes to agreeing to be managed in an Agile process or made to work in an open-plan office. Unfortunately, I agree with you that these types of situations can be good for unproductive employees who want to hide somewhere within a company that might look good on the resume. I can't say it definitively about Spotify since I have never worked there. All I can say is that the mixture of status signalling open-plan office + needless opulence + Agile strongly suggests dysfunction. It's further discomforting that they plan to use this money for marketing according to the article. That seems like a big gamble. It's somewhat of a signal that they fundamentally believe what they have engineered is good enough and satisfies customers, and now they just need to generate spam to get more customers. For a company at their stage and market penetration, I'm not sure this makes a lot of sense. I think Spotify might actually do better by creative innovative new engineering features and improvements, rather than just trying to lever up the number of subscribers for what will more or less be the product they have right now.
  • tormeh 11y ago
    Apple and Google can market to people who already have accounts and devices from Apple and Google. Spotify is at a significant convenience and huge marketing disadvantage.
  • tormeh 11y ago
    Apple and Google can market to people who already have accounts and devices from Apple and Google. Spotify is at a significant convenience and huge marketing disadvantage.
  • davelocity 11y ago
    > I think Spotify might actually do better by creative innovative new engineering features and improvements If the problem is user acquisition, you don't get there with engineering improvements. Only exception is if those tech/product improvements are for increasing virality. Yes they'll probably spend the money on marketing / PR, which makes sense since that's likely where the bottleneck (or foreseeable bottleneck given the other players in the industry) in their business is now.
• Splines 11y ago
  The majority of their costs come from buying content. In 2014 they spent 70% of their revenue on labels and artists. Fundamentally they have a bad business model. Good on them for ditching Taylor Swift - while she is very popular the financials likely showed the ROI for having her on the platform was negative. IMO Spotify is going to either need to change how their business works or make some painful cuts to become sustainable.
  • joshdickson 11y ago
    Spotify did not ditch Taylor Swift, you have it backwards. She has been quite outspoken in pulling her content off Spotify, not the other way around. Same reason why Adele's 25 is not there. The ROI is not negative for major artists. Missing major artists creates "holes" in people's listening habits, and they start getting fed up with the service the more of them that are missing, and that leads to cancellations and churn. Spotify would take her or Adele or whoever else has pulled their content back immediately if possible.