10 ms·

Spotify Said to Retaliate Against Artists with Apple Exclusives

49 points by taylorbuley 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
Lots of people at this point basically ignore music unless it's on Spotify and fall back to youtube. I don't think anyone picks up Apple Music because of exclusives. Mostly it's a question of what platform people prefer. I'm super happy apple music exists because it puts some movement into the space. Before it there was no real competition to Spotify.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > Before it there was no real competition to Spotify. What about Google Music (or is it Google Play Music or just Play Music or just Play under a music category? ugh)? They were earlier and have been really good especially lately. Their initial iOS app was awful but I heard it has improved. There is also Groove music (which I guess is now XBox music?) but the Apps are awful for it. I got a Groove music subscription for the heavily discounted black friday sale and stopped using it after a few weeks simply because the apps are all absolutely horrific.
  - guelo 10y ago
    The best streaming deal by far is Youtube Red which includes a Play Music subscription as well as ad-free youtube and youtube backgrounding on mobile.
  - dingo_bat 10y ago
    Play music has no desktop client so it's not even worth considering. I think apple music and Spotify are both very nice. The android apps of both are particularly good and both have acceptable desktop clients.
    - jewel 10y ago
      I'm using it in chromium in app mode, with the Streamkeys extension for global hotkey and media key support. Notifications seem to work, but I've got them disabled. They could release an electron app, but I believe it'd be an identical experience. I'm on a desktop so I don't care about offline support, perhaps that's the feature that removes the web version from consideration for some people.
      - dingo_bat 10y ago
        > They could release an electron app, but I believe it'd be an identical experience. That's why they should release a proper native app.
    - LynxInLA 10y ago
      That's true, their desktop client is just a Chrome wrapper. I still use it and like it more than Spotify. Other than Discover weekly, I've enjoyed Google Play's recommendations more, and the ability to upload 20,000 of your own songs to stream anywhere is a huge bonus.
      - dingo_bat 10y ago
        I don't have 20k songs so that feature is useless to me. And the music library on Spotify and iTunes is far, far superior.
    - KallDrexx 10y ago
      Why do you need a desktop client? I used Play Music for over a year just using the web client. That has worked better for me than Spotify's desktop client, which while is nice is extremely buggy.
      - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
        > Why do you need a desktop client? I used Play Music for over a year just using the web client. Offline usage and media keys.
  - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
    > What about Google Music Only really exists on mobile. Spotify exists everywhere (hardware, all mobile platforms, all gaming consoles, etc.). Google does not give a shit about their software past the barebones experience. Nobody in my family picks up Google software unless I or my brother push them to. It's just too confusing and badly supported in general.
    - spankalee 10y ago
      > Only really exists on mobile. Huh? I use it on desktop every day. https://play.google.com/music/listen https://play.google.com/music/listen
      - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
        Well, and a web app I should have added.
    - rndstr 10y ago
      You can stream to Chromecast, what else do you need? A different app for each of the dozen platforms out there? Google Music All Access is one of the few streaming services that got it right.
  - on_and_off 10y ago
    Play Music is an hidden gem IMO (disclaimer : I work for one of their competitors) . It is a shame that Google does not push it. The Orange should go away and the android app needs more maintenance / QA but otherwise that's an extremely solid product IMO. Other than that : youtube, rdio, deezer, soundcloud, pandora, there are a lot of products in the same place.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      Interesting, can you elaborate on why you think its a gem? I don't hear a lot of people talking about it. Maybe I should give it a look?
      - on_and_off 10y ago
        As somebody working in that market, honestly most music services look the same to me and if you are fully satisfied with whatever music service you use, you probably don't really need to switch. That being said Play Music is pretty great for me because : -It lets me upload my own mp3s without needing anything else than the folder where it needs to look for them. You can even ask the app to always monitor a specific folder for new music files. It tries to match these files with its catalogs and if they match they will be automatically added to your library instead of being uploaded. When you upload an unknown file, you can alter its tags and cover if you in Play Music and you can regroup them in Albums anyway you want. As somebody with a huge existing music files collection, many of which are not available on any service, this is a killer feature for me. I understand that it is not going to appeal to everybody though. - The Android and desktop apps have been constantly great for quite some time. The only complaints I could form is that this orange is not really great and that on Android they should probably get rid of the Transitions. The design idea is great but the platform does not support them really well. I have seen some kinks in the app recently but they might have been caused by the Android N beta build I was using at the time. - Most of the big music services have the same base features : albums, curated playlists, automatic radios, family plans ... Play Music has these as well for quite some time. The suggestion algorithm has been pretty good for me but that's probably very subjective. Play Music also has nice contextual suggestions based on their Songza acquisition (for example right now : it is sunday afternoon, it proposes running, pokemon, BBQ, beach, ... musics ) . - So overall it is a great service, IMO absolutely on par with Spotify or Apple Music. The price is the same as any other music service .. but you also get 10% off on all of your Play Store apps & musics purchases and if you are in the USA, it also gives you Youtube Red (= no ads on youtube). The value proposition seems pretty insane to me compared to the other music services.
- altendo 10y ago
  > Before it there was no real competition to Spotify. rdio and Grooveshark were competitors well before Apple/Google Music until both shuttered :(
  - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
    rdio did not exist outside the US and Grooveshark was never really a legitimate service.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      I'm in the UK and subscribed to Rdio..
      - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
        Oh. It did eventually launch in Europe I guess. Bad marketing then.
        vidarh 10y ago
        Well, there's a reason they don't exist anymore...
  - vidarh 10y ago
    On one hand I liked Rdio because it was cheap and had a lot of niche music I liked. On the other hand their algorithms were shit. E.g. I once indicated I liked some electronica by Marek Biliński, a Polish musician, and it took hours to stop the ensuing assault on my ears of 70's Polish pop music. In general it took very little for their algorithm to start playing music I had no interest in, and a lot of effort to make it stop playing stuff I found awful. Algorithmic music selection in general still seem to be in a very poor state - I've yet to find any that do great, presumably because a lot of them seem to treat it as a question of solving "people who listened to A also likes B". But it isn't. It's more a matter of "people who listened to some sequence of A,B and C, also listened to D relatively shortly afterwards without skipping/downvoting it" coupled with a lot of other checks (e.g. I might skip D even if it fits in perfectly with both my mood and A,B and C if I have heard it too often lately, or if it's a very loud/intensive track and it's late a night, and any number of othr factors). I wonder how many of these systems try to take more factors into consideration but just aren't very good at it. And also how problematic the lack of more contextual knowledge is (e.g. I may make different selections when alone, vs. when a romantic partner vs. when with friends, even if the starting type is the same type of tracks - it doesn't mean my taste has changed). Many recommendation systems makes me vary about indicating a preference because they're not clear about how it'll be used and the ones I've used so far gives me little confidence they'll do the right thing...
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
So Apple has enough money coming in from other businesses that, if they want to (and maybe they do), they can simply operate their Apple Music service at a loss. Forever. Spotify can't do that so how do you combat against Apple, one of your biggest competitors? Burying in the search rankings and not being featured doesn't seem like a good way to handle it. If those artists are among people's favorites if they can't find them as easily on Spotify AND if they can get exclusives with Apple, why wouldn't they just jump ship to Apple Music? Obviously I don't understand all of the nuances of the music business so I could be completely off base here but it feels like, to me, this would have the opposite affect that they intend.
- notJim 10y ago
  Yeah I don't get this strategy either. It also seems like it would hurt Spotify's relationships with these artists, which doesn't help Spotify either.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  "So Apple has enough money coming in from other businesses that, if they want to (and maybe they do), they can simply operate their Apple Music service at a loss. Forever. Spotify can't do that ..." But Spotify can and is also operating at a loss. They are just doing it with VC money instead of their own. The numbers for 2015 were a loss of almost 200 million dollars!
  - zaidf 10y ago
    ...they can simply operate their Apple Music service at a loss. Forever. The keyword is "forever" or at least for the next decade or two. It applies to Apple but not Spotify.
  - aroman 10y ago
    That VC money is given to Spotify on the expectation that eventually Spotify will stop operating at a loss. Otherwise there is no reason to give them money at all. If and when that expectation no longer holds, the money will stop.
philtar 10y ago
Isn't competition great?
- johansch 10y ago
  Exclusives are bad for consumers.
Shoop 10y ago
Do people actually take exclusives into account that much when picking a streaming service? It seems to me like the biggest differentiating factors would be price and familiarity, as long as the services in question had a reasonable amount of the content one wanted.
- fizzbatter 10y ago
  Features for me are the big ones. Currently i debate between Spotify and Google Music. I vastly prefer Spotify's social features and collab playlists.. currently using Spotify. With that said, i was using Google Music for ~5+ years due to having a large custom library which was accessible cross device.. Unfortunately Spotify doesn't support this. Tough decisions on the features front, atleast. Exclusives and other crap.. those don't matter to me. Fwiw.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Exclusives are just a good way to get people to try out your service. It works best when someone doesn't already have a streaming subscription, and their favorite artist releases an album exclusively somewhere. You sign up to hear the album, you like the service, you decide to stick with it.
  - cwal37 10y ago
    With timed exclusives they can also capture some amount of revenue from conversion of free trial users into "forgot to unsubscribe" users. They got me with Coloring Book a few months ago. It wasn't available elsewhere, so I signed up for the free trial. Well before the free trial was over Coloring Book appeared on Spotify (my preferred platform). I prompt forgot about Apple Music until I saw a bill in my inbox. I then couldn't figure out how to unsub without googling the process, it's certainly not readily available as an option in-app (although that just might be the way Apple sometimes tends to obfuscate through streamlining).
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      The unsubscribing process is truely awful. I'd try them again as rumour has it they have got a lot better, but importing Spotify playlists wasn't possible early on. I'll have to look again to see if that's solved.
bogomipz 10y ago
So Spotify is penalizing artists who opt to do an exclusive with a company whose business model doesn't give their music away for free? That just seems wrong.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  It's hard to see how this will help them? The Taylor Swift moment may be coming to Spotify.
IBM 10y ago
Spotify is a money losing operation that artists already criticize heavily because they make pennies from it (because most users are on the free tier and ad revenue is much smaller than paid subscriptions)[1]. They have deep pocketed competitors for whom music represents an ancillary business. They're on month to month contracts with the major labels who want them to match Apple Music's higher cut [2]. Usually you take the stick over carrot approach when you have some leverage. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/04/taylor-swift-bad-blood-spotify-streaming-music https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/04/taylor-sw... [2] http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-contract-three-major-labels-wants-pay-less/ http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-contract-three...
- on_and_off 10y ago
  From what I know of the market, most of the money paid to music services goes to paying the contracts. The main issue is that the labels are the ones which get paid the lion's share, not the music service or the artist.
  - IBM 10y ago
    Which is why artists like doing exclusives with Apple. https://medium.com/@sdotglass/apple-music-exclusives-2d5b5ed3ac4f#.9qi2941ii https://medium.com/@sdotglass/apple-music-exclusives-2d5b5ed...
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      I don't see why if an artist can publish directly on Apple Music they can't do it on Spotify. Artists are usually locked by their labels with pretty bad contracts that prevent them from doing anything else on the side. Labels often even can even get the majority of the revenue from live performances.
      - bogomipz 10y ago
        Publishing directly is the Tidal model and it really should be the future as it benefits the artist and the streaming provider and positions the record label as the middle man that it is. I am not aware of any artists that "publish direct" to Apple Music. The reason that is a problem for a Spotify is because that is "biting the hand that feeds." If you start encouraging artists to deal directly to you the streaming company, you can rest assured that when it comes time to renegotiate your licensing deal with the record labels the terms will not be very favorable or at least not as favorable as they were previously. You mentioned that "Labels often even get the majority of revenue from live performances." I believe what you are referring to is a "360 deal" I think these are largely the domain of the only biggest artists in the world. I could be wrong though. https://www.thebalance.com/how-360-deals-in-the-music-industry-work-2460343 https://www.thebalance.com/how-360-deals-in-the-music-indust...
marcoperaza 10y ago
I get a bad feeling about everyone in this space operating at a massive loss in an attempt to force the competition out of business by attrition. It seems like the domestic equivalent of dumping. I'm not informed enough to make a strong judgment on it, but it doesn't seem like healthy competition.
- vlozko 10y ago
  But is Apple Music operating at a loss, though? Doing so is not their modus operandi. They don't have a free tier and the only time they're not making money is during the one month trial period. On top of that, they actually do pay more to artists/labels.
  - sushid 10y ago
    Well, it's a three month trial and they pay the musicians during that time.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Dumping?
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
zaidf 10y ago
Anyone else think Apple is fighting a petty war? Spotify is a solid product and instead of spending energy, money and time fighting them, they could acquire them and take on more ambitious fights.
- Gorbzel 10y ago
  Or they could compete in the marketplace w/ a better product, an integrated product strategy, and a long term understanding of the market and talent. In doing so, they deliver shareholder value without burning unnecessary cash. Oh look! They're doing exactly that with exclusives.
  - zaidf 10y ago
    Exclusives provide a monopoly of sorts to Apple by removing choices for consumer. That makes exclusives a bad thing for the consumers and the market.
    - yardie 10y ago
      It works both way. The producers want to be paid for their work and they've said so many times, in uncertain words. Spotify is still at the point that they rely on new signups at the free tier. Apple doesn't do free, they pay better, and they are willing to give artists the white glove treatment. As a listener you have a choice of pay now for access or wait until it's streaming everywhere else.
      - zaidf 10y ago
        I get that artists want to make more money but at the end of the day, that is simply a function of the total pot size and the money that has to be spent to get a pot that size. Spotify, so far, has been losing money. Overall, monetizing music is just a very hard business. I feel that point is often missed by artists who want to put the blame on Spotify as if Spotify is sitting on billions in profits that could go to the artists. Apple temporarily enabling a few artists to make some extra money doesn't change the fact that music is a very hard business to make money in--as much for the broadcasters like Spotify as for the artist.
YOSPOS 10y ago
“Apple treated me like I was a voice of a creative community that they actually cared about,” Swift told Vanity Fair about the latter dispute, which saw Apple change its plans not to pay rightsholders for streams on its Apple Music service’s free trial shortly after she criticised them in a blog post. “And I found it really ironic that the multi-billion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the start-up with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine.”
corndoge 10y ago
Subscription streaming considered harmful

49 points by taylorbuley 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Lots of people at this point basically ignore music unless it's on Spotify and fall back to youtube. I don't think anyone picks up Apple Music because of exclusives. Mostly it's a question of what platform people prefer. I'm super happy apple music exists because it puts some movement into the space. Before it there was no real competition to Spotify.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> Before it there was no real competition to Spotify. What about Google Music (or is it Google Play Music or just Play Music or just Play under a music category? ugh)? They were earlier and have been really good especially lately. Their initial iOS app was awful but I heard it has improved. There is also Groove music (which I guess is now XBox music?) but the Apps are awful for it. I got a Groove music subscription for the heavily discounted black friday sale and stopped using it after a few weeks simply because the apps are all absolutely horrific.
- guelo 10y ago
  The best streaming deal by far is Youtube Red which includes a Play Music subscription as well as ad-free youtube and youtube backgrounding on mobile.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  Play music has no desktop client so it's not even worth considering. I think apple music and Spotify are both very nice. The android apps of both are particularly good and both have acceptable desktop clients.
  - jewel 10y ago
    I'm using it in chromium in app mode, with the Streamkeys extension for global hotkey and media key support. Notifications seem to work, but I've got them disabled. They could release an electron app, but I believe it'd be an identical experience. I'm on a desktop so I don't care about offline support, perhaps that's the feature that removes the web version from consideration for some people.
    - dingo_bat 10y ago
      > They could release an electron app, but I believe it'd be an identical experience. That's why they should release a proper native app.
  - LynxInLA 10y ago
    That's true, their desktop client is just a Chrome wrapper. I still use it and like it more than Spotify. Other than Discover weekly, I've enjoyed Google Play's recommendations more, and the ability to upload 20,000 of your own songs to stream anywhere is a huge bonus.
    - dingo_bat 10y ago
      I don't have 20k songs so that feature is useless to me. And the music library on Spotify and iTunes is far, far superior.
  - KallDrexx 10y ago
    Why do you need a desktop client? I used Play Music for over a year just using the web client. That has worked better for me than Spotify's desktop client, which while is nice is extremely buggy.
    - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
      > Why do you need a desktop client? I used Play Music for over a year just using the web client. Offline usage and media keys.
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  > What about Google Music Only really exists on mobile. Spotify exists everywhere (hardware, all mobile platforms, all gaming consoles, etc.). Google does not give a shit about their software past the barebones experience. Nobody in my family picks up Google software unless I or my brother push them to. It's just too confusing and badly supported in general.
  - spankalee 10y ago
    > Only really exists on mobile. Huh? I use it on desktop every day. https://play.google.com/music/listen https://play.google.com/music/listen
    - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
      Well, and a web app I should have added.
  - rndstr 10y ago
    You can stream to Chromecast, what else do you need? A different app for each of the dozen platforms out there? Google Music All Access is one of the few streaming services that got it right.
- on_and_off 10y ago
  Play Music is an hidden gem IMO (disclaimer : I work for one of their competitors) . It is a shame that Google does not push it. The Orange should go away and the android app needs more maintenance / QA but otherwise that's an extremely solid product IMO. Other than that : youtube, rdio, deezer, soundcloud, pandora, there are a lot of products in the same place.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Interesting, can you elaborate on why you think its a gem? I don't hear a lot of people talking about it. Maybe I should give it a look?
    - on_and_off 10y ago
      As somebody working in that market, honestly most music services look the same to me and if you are fully satisfied with whatever music service you use, you probably don't really need to switch. That being said Play Music is pretty great for me because : -It lets me upload my own mp3s without needing anything else than the folder where it needs to look for them. You can even ask the app to always monitor a specific folder for new music files. It tries to match these files with its catalogs and if they match they will be automatically added to your library instead of being uploaded. When you upload an unknown file, you can alter its tags and cover if you in Play Music and you can regroup them in Albums anyway you want. As somebody with a huge existing music files collection, many of which are not available on any service, this is a killer feature for me. I understand that it is not going to appeal to everybody though. - The Android and desktop apps have been constantly great for quite some time. The only complaints I could form is that this orange is not really great and that on Android they should probably get rid of the Transitions. The design idea is great but the platform does not support them really well. I have seen some kinks in the app recently but they might have been caused by the Android N beta build I was using at the time. - Most of the big music services have the same base features : albums, curated playlists, automatic radios, family plans ... Play Music has these as well for quite some time. The suggestion algorithm has been pretty good for me but that's probably very subjective. Play Music also has nice contextual suggestions based on their Songza acquisition (for example right now : it is sunday afternoon, it proposes running, pokemon, BBQ, beach, ... musics ) . - So overall it is a great service, IMO absolutely on par with Spotify or Apple Music. The price is the same as any other music service .. but you also get 10% off on all of your Play Store apps & musics purchases and if you are in the USA, it also gives you Youtube Red (= no ads on youtube). The value proposition seems pretty insane to me compared to the other music services.
altendo 10y ago
> Before it there was no real competition to Spotify. rdio and Grooveshark were competitors well before Apple/Google Music until both shuttered :(
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  rdio did not exist outside the US and Grooveshark was never really a legitimate service.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    I'm in the UK and subscribed to Rdio..
    - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
      Oh. It did eventually launch in Europe I guess. Bad marketing then.
      - vidarh 10y ago
        Well, there's a reason they don't exist anymore...
- vidarh 10y ago
  On one hand I liked Rdio because it was cheap and had a lot of niche music I liked. On the other hand their algorithms were shit. E.g. I once indicated I liked some electronica by Marek Biliński, a Polish musician, and it took hours to stop the ensuing assault on my ears of 70's Polish pop music. In general it took very little for their algorithm to start playing music I had no interest in, and a lot of effort to make it stop playing stuff I found awful. Algorithmic music selection in general still seem to be in a very poor state - I've yet to find any that do great, presumably because a lot of them seem to treat it as a question of solving "people who listened to A also likes B". But it isn't. It's more a matter of "people who listened to some sequence of A,B and C, also listened to D relatively shortly afterwards without skipping/downvoting it" coupled with a lot of other checks (e.g. I might skip D even if it fits in perfectly with both my mood and A,B and C if I have heard it too often lately, or if it's a very loud/intensive track and it's late a night, and any number of othr factors). I wonder how many of these systems try to take more factors into consideration but just aren't very good at it. And also how problematic the lack of more contextual knowledge is (e.g. I may make different selections when alone, vs. when a romantic partner vs. when with friends, even if the starting type is the same type of tracks - it doesn't mean my taste has changed). Many recommendation systems makes me vary about indicating a preference because they're not clear about how it'll be used and the ones I've used so far gives me little confidence they'll do the right thing...

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

So Apple has enough money coming in from other businesses that, if they want to (and maybe they do), they can simply operate their Apple Music service at a loss. Forever. Spotify can't do that so how do you combat against Apple, one of your biggest competitors? Burying in the search rankings and not being featured doesn't seem like a good way to handle it. If those artists are among people's favorites if they can't find them as easily on Spotify AND if they can get exclusives with Apple, why wouldn't they just jump ship to Apple Music? Obviously I don't understand all of the nuances of the music business so I could be completely off base here but it feels like, to me, this would have the opposite affect that they intend.

notJim 10y ago
Yeah I don't get this strategy either. It also seems like it would hurt Spotify's relationships with these artists, which doesn't help Spotify either.
bogomipz 10y ago
"So Apple has enough money coming in from other businesses that, if they want to (and maybe they do), they can simply operate their Apple Music service at a loss. Forever. Spotify can't do that ..." But Spotify can and is also operating at a loss. They are just doing it with VC money instead of their own. The numbers for 2015 were a loss of almost 200 million dollars!
- zaidf 10y ago
  ...they can simply operate their Apple Music service at a loss. Forever. The keyword is "forever" or at least for the next decade or two. It applies to Apple but not Spotify.
- aroman 10y ago
  That VC money is given to Spotify on the expectation that eventually Spotify will stop operating at a loss. Otherwise there is no reason to give them money at all. If and when that expectation no longer holds, the money will stop.

philtar 10y ago

Isn't competition great?

johansch 10y ago
Exclusives are bad for consumers.

Shoop 10y ago

Do people actually take exclusives into account that much when picking a streaming service? It seems to me like the biggest differentiating factors would be price and familiarity, as long as the services in question had a reasonable amount of the content one wanted.

fizzbatter 10y ago
Features for me are the big ones. Currently i debate between Spotify and Google Music. I vastly prefer Spotify's social features and collab playlists.. currently using Spotify. With that said, i was using Google Music for ~5+ years due to having a large custom library which was accessible cross device.. Unfortunately Spotify doesn't support this. Tough decisions on the features front, atleast. Exclusives and other crap.. those don't matter to me. Fwiw.
burkaman 10y ago
Exclusives are just a good way to get people to try out your service. It works best when someone doesn't already have a streaming subscription, and their favorite artist releases an album exclusively somewhere. You sign up to hear the album, you like the service, you decide to stick with it.
- cwal37 10y ago
  With timed exclusives they can also capture some amount of revenue from conversion of free trial users into "forgot to unsubscribe" users. They got me with Coloring Book a few months ago. It wasn't available elsewhere, so I signed up for the free trial. Well before the free trial was over Coloring Book appeared on Spotify (my preferred platform). I prompt forgot about Apple Music until I saw a bill in my inbox. I then couldn't figure out how to unsub without googling the process, it's certainly not readily available as an option in-app (although that just might be the way Apple sometimes tends to obfuscate through streamlining).
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    The unsubscribing process is truely awful. I'd try them again as rumour has it they have got a lot better, but importing Spotify playlists wasn't possible early on. I'll have to look again to see if that's solved.

bogomipz 10y ago

So Spotify is penalizing artists who opt to do an exclusive with a company whose business model doesn't give their music away for free? That just seems wrong.

lostlogin 10y ago
It's hard to see how this will help them? The Taylor Swift moment may be coming to Spotify.

IBM 10y ago

Spotify is a money losing operation that artists already criticize heavily because they make pennies from it (because most users are on the free tier and ad revenue is much smaller than paid subscriptions)[1]. They have deep pocketed competitors for whom music represents an ancillary business. They're on month to month contracts with the major labels who want them to match Apple Music's higher cut [2]. Usually you take the stick over carrot approach when you have some leverage. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/04/taylor-swift-bad-blood-spotify-streaming-music https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/04/taylor-sw... [2] http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-contract-three-major-labels-wants-pay-less/ http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-contract-three...

on_and_off 10y ago
From what I know of the market, most of the money paid to music services goes to paying the contracts. The main issue is that the labels are the ones which get paid the lion's share, not the music service or the artist.
- IBM 10y ago
  Which is why artists like doing exclusives with Apple. https://medium.com/@sdotglass/apple-music-exclusives-2d5b5ed3ac4f#.9qi2941ii https://medium.com/@sdotglass/apple-music-exclusives-2d5b5ed...
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    I don't see why if an artist can publish directly on Apple Music they can't do it on Spotify. Artists are usually locked by their labels with pretty bad contracts that prevent them from doing anything else on the side. Labels often even can even get the majority of the revenue from live performances.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      Publishing directly is the Tidal model and it really should be the future as it benefits the artist and the streaming provider and positions the record label as the middle man that it is. I am not aware of any artists that "publish direct" to Apple Music. The reason that is a problem for a Spotify is because that is "biting the hand that feeds." If you start encouraging artists to deal directly to you the streaming company, you can rest assured that when it comes time to renegotiate your licensing deal with the record labels the terms will not be very favorable or at least not as favorable as they were previously. You mentioned that "Labels often even get the majority of revenue from live performances." I believe what you are referring to is a "360 deal" I think these are largely the domain of the only biggest artists in the world. I could be wrong though. https://www.thebalance.com/how-360-deals-in-the-music-industry-work-2460343 https://www.thebalance.com/how-360-deals-in-the-music-indust...

marcoperaza 10y ago

I get a bad feeling about everyone in this space operating at a massive loss in an attempt to force the competition out of business by attrition. It seems like the domestic equivalent of dumping. I'm not informed enough to make a strong judgment on it, but it doesn't seem like healthy competition.

vlozko 10y ago
But is Apple Music operating at a loss, though? Doing so is not their modus operandi. They don't have a free tier and the only time they're not making money is during the one month trial period. On top of that, they actually do pay more to artists/labels.
- sushid 10y ago
  Well, it's a three month trial and they pay the musicians during that time.
bogomipz 10y ago
Dumping?
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

zaidf 10y ago

Anyone else think Apple is fighting a petty war? Spotify is a solid product and instead of spending energy, money and time fighting them, they could acquire them and take on more ambitious fights.

Gorbzel 10y ago
Or they could compete in the marketplace w/ a better product, an integrated product strategy, and a long term understanding of the market and talent. In doing so, they deliver shareholder value without burning unnecessary cash. Oh look! They're doing exactly that with exclusives.
- zaidf 10y ago
  Exclusives provide a monopoly of sorts to Apple by removing choices for consumer. That makes exclusives a bad thing for the consumers and the market.
  - yardie 10y ago
    It works both way. The producers want to be paid for their work and they've said so many times, in uncertain words. Spotify is still at the point that they rely on new signups at the free tier. Apple doesn't do free, they pay better, and they are willing to give artists the white glove treatment. As a listener you have a choice of pay now for access or wait until it's streaming everywhere else.
    - zaidf 10y ago
      I get that artists want to make more money but at the end of the day, that is simply a function of the total pot size and the money that has to be spent to get a pot that size. Spotify, so far, has been losing money. Overall, monetizing music is just a very hard business. I feel that point is often missed by artists who want to put the blame on Spotify as if Spotify is sitting on billions in profits that could go to the artists. Apple temporarily enabling a few artists to make some extra money doesn't change the fact that music is a very hard business to make money in--as much for the broadcasters like Spotify as for the artist.

YOSPOS 10y ago

“Apple treated me like I was a voice of a creative community that they actually cared about,” Swift told Vanity Fair about the latter dispute, which saw Apple change its plans not to pay rightsholders for streams on its Apple Music service’s free trial shortly after she criticised them in a blog post. “And I found it really ironic that the multi-billion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the start-up with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine.”

corndoge 10y ago

Subscription streaming considered harmful