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I genuinely wonder how long it will be until an independent (as in, not vertically integrated in another company with different sources of revenue) service like

I genuinely wonder how long it will be until an independent (as in, not vertically integrated in another company with different sources of revenue) service like Spotify just gets bought out by one of these companies. Or is it just that the other players don't feel the need to do any acquiring because they can just siphon off (and gain new) subscribers? (For one, I like that Spotify and Rhapsody are separate because they work basically everywhere and aren't trying to lock me into another company's ecosystem...which seems to be the name of the game for almost everybody these days.)

niftich 10y ago
Every case is different. This made sense for Amazon because if you're already a Prime subscriber, you may consider using less of Spotify/Pandora/Apple Music/Youtube RED down the road. And if you're not, Prime just became a better value proposition and becomes harder to resist. You're spot on about the ecosystem. This move is more of a hedge against Apple and Google than against the independent ones, although it will hurt them too. They'll become acquisition targets for companies that want to become a 'media company'. Yahoo tried this [1]... Verizon wants to [2]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/27/marissa-mayers-mavens/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/27/marissa-mayers-mavens/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go90 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go90
icebraining 10y ago
I'm not sure they have an incentive. They can't do like Facebook did with Instagram, because there are already multiple competitors anyway. Merging it with their existing service would be way too unpopular and lose them a ton of Spotify's customers.