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I work for Spotify and I can tell you the company's spending is completely out of control. Between throwing parties where they fly every single employee out to

I work for Spotify and I can tell you the company's spending is completely out of control. Between throwing parties where they fly every single employee out to Sweden to party or purchasing Echo Nest, only to ditch the tech later for in-house tech (Discover Weekly), they really have no clue how to manage their capital. We have nearly 2000 employees and no roadmap for profitability. Talk of an IPO has been ongoing since 2013 and employees can barely invest in the ESOP since the share price is so ridiculously priced at over $1000 a share. Spotify has postponed the inevitable by granting shares of the corp to the companies they license music from. However, the time will come when the larger institutions want their money back and it's not going end pretty. They need to reduce their liabilities and reduce headcount ASAP.

tornadoboy55 10y ago
Not only that, you guys seem to have a big amount of techincal debt. The macOS client was writing like.. 100-200Gb a day just a few months ago, and that was going on for months already until the noise about it picked up in the media. Now the macOS client (somehow its always the macOS client..) regularly starts using 90% CPU at random and doesn't stop until you kill the process. Again, has already been going on for some time and there's a forum post about it but no one is doing anything... do the Spotify guys not use their own client? Then there's the myriad of obvious gaps in features that should be there. 1. You can 'Heart' a track in 'Daily Mix', but you can't un-'Heart' it. 1b. If you accidentally dislike an artist in daily mix, you can't undo that, so that artist won't play anymore. 2. You can like an artist for a certain Radio (and remove the like in the playlist 'liked by radio') but you can't remove an 'unlike'. 3. You can have either a public playlist controlled by you, or a collaborative playlist that's secret. Why not a public collaborative playlist for which I can select which users can edit it? With most of the above issues there's one overarching thing: counter-intuitivity. You can often do an action (heart, like, etc.), and do so by tapping or clicking on something, but tapping or clicking on the same thing doesn't undo the action (probably because you can't undo the action).. and wouldn't you want to have your friends be able to see/follow your playlist that you built with that one Techno-listening buddy without granting them all editing rights? I still like Spotify because you have the largest library and are available on the most platforms (Windows/Linux/macOS/Chromecast/Sonos/Digt.Amplifiers/PS4), but its a choice of 'sucks the least' rather than 'is the best'.
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  Not to mention the 10,000 limit on tracks saved to your collection. Which is insane considering that Spotify doesn't distinguish between saved albums and tracks — saving an album is exactly the same as saving all the tracks in that album. A 10,000-track "library" is not a very big collection! Personally, I've been creating individual playlists for every artist I care about, organized in folders by genre, since those tools were always lacking. So when I ran into the aforementioned limit, I just un-saved all the tracks and went back to solely using playlists. A few months ago I considered switching to Apple Music, which does this stuff correctly, but nobody has made a migration tool that works. (Apple Music also has several features Spotify ought to have had a long time ago. A sane distinction between composer and performer for classical music is one. Another is the completely seamless syncing of downloaded music — purchased, encoded or whatever — between all devices. Spotify only supports "offline sync" if you have Spotify open on the machine that has the files.)
  - citruspi 10y ago
    I transferred some stuff over from Spotify to Apple Music last week using SongShift[0] without any issues, but YMMV. [0]: https://appsto.re/us/MmCCbb.i https://appsto.re/us/MmCCbb.i
- siquick 10y ago
  and why on earth can't you delete a track from a playlist on the iOS client.
  - anonred 10y ago
    You can. 1. Tap the More Options button in the navbar of a playlist 2. Tap Edit 3. Tap the Delete icon next to any of the tracks and tap Delete to confirm
    - siquick 10y ago
      You made my day, thanks.
chii 10y ago
> spending is completely out of control. sounds like a ship that rats would start deserting, and I know what I'd do if I were in that situation (spend as much as possible on short term perks, and cashout at the earliest opportunity).
BlackjackCF 10y ago
What a huge shame. Spotify really had the chance to cinch the market. It's a shame they can't get it together.
- tehwebguy 10y ago
  I would guess that being first to offer what feels like "all music" for free came at a great price.
- simooooo 10y ago
  None of this internal faffery is evident to an end user. The only thing I'm disappointed with is the removal of lyrics
  - bostand 10y ago
    Maybe not, but the state of their desktop app definitely indicates something is wrong inside the company.
    - glenntzke 10y ago
      This is a symptom of a heavily mobile-first strategy. There are many developers at Spotify passionate about improving the desktop platform - and not just for feature parity with mobile.
      - simooooo 10y ago
        The desktop works fine for me. The mobile app sits at a black screen for 10 seconds when I try to look at my playlists
        BlackjackCF 10y ago
        Same here. Also, the mobile app will always tell me that it has errors connecting when I have the Internet just fine...
    - 10y ago
gherdylo 10y ago
Hi, I also work at Spotify. It sounds like you have a better idea about the share price being so high - once we do IPO do you think it will convert to a reasonable price per share? I was really surprised (and disappointed) when the $Xk amount in stock options I was granted only worked out to be a total of approx 30 options... Will the $1000+ per share convert to say 50 shares priced at $20 each once IPO happens? I would also like to hear how you know about these financial incentives for VPs, I guess as a newish employee I am not privy to this sort of info or am not in the right backchannels :(
- tuyguntn 10y ago
  > I was granted only worked out to be a total of approx X options Remove the numbers immediately if you want to stay an anonymous
  - jacks55 10y ago
    This kind of info can be found on Glassdoor, I think the OP is fine
- lessclue 10y ago
  Seriously, take those numbers off if you don't want to reveal your identity to your employer.
- eganist 10y ago
  Flagged for your protection
qwrusz 10y ago
I don't know what you do at Spotify but I have seen some of your company pitch books and your two paragraph analysis is one of the best succinct descriptions of the company I have read anywhere. Hope you're in management, if not you should be. Good luck.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jraedisch 10y ago
On the other hand, from the perspective of an end user, Spotify has a huge (probably the best) catalogue and I routinely discover good music via `Discover Weekly`, while Google Play so far failed to achieve something similar, although I buy all my mp3s there (which is much better data). Can't say much about iTunes. SoundCloud is the best for discovering recent and unreleased electronic music. I would much like them and Spotify to stay independent and not be gobbled up.
jjawssd 10y ago
How can I make money by betting against Spotify?
- kikki 10y ago
  You can't do much until an IPO happens, unless you think they'll have some big public mistakes / downfalls (which cause a lot of users to leave) prior to that in which case share price of its competitors may go up (Apple Music, Pandora, possibly Amazon/Google).

tornadoboy55 10y ago

Not only that, you guys seem to have a big amount of techincal debt. The macOS client was writing like.. 100-200Gb a day just a few months ago, and that was going on for months already until the noise about it picked up in the media. Now the macOS client (somehow its always the macOS client..) regularly starts using 90% CPU at random and doesn't stop until you kill the process. Again, has already been going on for some time and there's a forum post about it but no one is doing anything... do the Spotify guys not use their own client? Then there's the myriad of obvious gaps in features that should be there. 1. You can 'Heart' a track in 'Daily Mix', but you can't un-'Heart' it. 1b. If you accidentally dislike an artist in daily mix, you can't undo that, so that artist won't play anymore. 2. You can like an artist for a certain Radio (and remove the like in the playlist 'liked by radio') but you can't remove an 'unlike'. 3. You can have either a public playlist controlled by you, or a collaborative playlist that's secret. Why not a public collaborative playlist for which I can select which users can edit it? With most of the above issues there's one overarching thing: counter-intuitivity. You can often do an action (heart, like, etc.), and do so by tapping or clicking on something, but tapping or clicking on the same thing doesn't undo the action (probably because you can't undo the action).. and wouldn't you want to have your friends be able to see/follow your playlist that you built with that one Techno-listening buddy without granting them all editing rights? I still like Spotify because you have the largest library and are available on the most platforms (Windows/Linux/macOS/Chromecast/Sonos/Digt.Amplifiers/PS4), but its a choice of 'sucks the least' rather than 'is the best'.

lobster_johnson 10y ago
Not to mention the 10,000 limit on tracks saved to your collection. Which is insane considering that Spotify doesn't distinguish between saved albums and tracks — saving an album is exactly the same as saving all the tracks in that album. A 10,000-track "library" is not a very big collection! Personally, I've been creating individual playlists for every artist I care about, organized in folders by genre, since those tools were always lacking. So when I ran into the aforementioned limit, I just un-saved all the tracks and went back to solely using playlists. A few months ago I considered switching to Apple Music, which does this stuff correctly, but nobody has made a migration tool that works. (Apple Music also has several features Spotify ought to have had a long time ago. A sane distinction between composer and performer for classical music is one. Another is the completely seamless syncing of downloaded music — purchased, encoded or whatever — between all devices. Spotify only supports "offline sync" if you have Spotify open on the machine that has the files.)
- citruspi 10y ago
  I transferred some stuff over from Spotify to Apple Music last week using SongShift[0] without any issues, but YMMV. [0]: https://appsto.re/us/MmCCbb.i https://appsto.re/us/MmCCbb.i
siquick 10y ago
and why on earth can't you delete a track from a playlist on the iOS client.
- anonred 10y ago
  You can. 1. Tap the More Options button in the navbar of a playlist 2. Tap Edit 3. Tap the Delete icon next to any of the tracks and tap Delete to confirm
  - siquick 10y ago
    You made my day, thanks.

chii 10y ago

> spending is completely out of control. sounds like a ship that rats would start deserting, and I know what I'd do if I were in that situation (spend as much as possible on short term perks, and cashout at the earliest opportunity).

BlackjackCF 10y ago

What a huge shame. Spotify really had the chance to cinch the market. It's a shame they can't get it together.

tehwebguy 10y ago
I would guess that being first to offer what feels like "all music" for free came at a great price.
simooooo 10y ago
None of this internal faffery is evident to an end user. The only thing I'm disappointed with is the removal of lyrics
- bostand 10y ago
  Maybe not, but the state of their desktop app definitely indicates something is wrong inside the company.
  - glenntzke 10y ago
    This is a symptom of a heavily mobile-first strategy. There are many developers at Spotify passionate about improving the desktop platform - and not just for feature parity with mobile.
    - simooooo 10y ago
      The desktop works fine for me. The mobile app sits at a black screen for 10 seconds when I try to look at my playlists
      - BlackjackCF 10y ago
        Same here. Also, the mobile app will always tell me that it has errors connecting when I have the Internet just fine...
  - 10y ago

gherdylo 10y ago

Hi, I also work at Spotify. It sounds like you have a better idea about the share price being so high - once we do IPO do you think it will convert to a reasonable price per share? I was really surprised (and disappointed) when the $Xk amount in stock options I was granted only worked out to be a total of approx 30 options... Will the $1000+ per share convert to say 50 shares priced at $20 each once IPO happens? I would also like to hear how you know about these financial incentives for VPs, I guess as a newish employee I am not privy to this sort of info or am not in the right backchannels :(

tuyguntn 10y ago
> I was granted only worked out to be a total of approx X options Remove the numbers immediately if you want to stay an anonymous
- jacks55 10y ago
  This kind of info can be found on Glassdoor, I think the OP is fine
lessclue 10y ago
Seriously, take those numbers off if you don't want to reveal your identity to your employer.
eganist 10y ago
Flagged for your protection

qwrusz 10y ago

I don't know what you do at Spotify but I have seen some of your company pitch books and your two paragraph analysis is one of the best succinct descriptions of the company I have read anywhere. Hope you're in management, if not you should be. Good luck.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jraedisch 10y ago

On the other hand, from the perspective of an end user, Spotify has a huge (probably the best) catalogue and I routinely discover good music via `Discover Weekly`, while Google Play so far failed to achieve something similar, although I buy all my mp3s there (which is much better data). Can't say much about iTunes. SoundCloud is the best for discovering recent and unreleased electronic music. I would much like them and Spotify to stay independent and not be gobbled up.

jjawssd 10y ago

How can I make money by betting against Spotify?

kikki 10y ago
You can't do much until an IPO happens, unless you think they'll have some big public mistakes / downfalls (which cause a lot of users to leave) prior to that in which case share price of its competitors may go up (Apple Music, Pandora, possibly Amazon/Google).