11 ms·

The clock is ticking for Spotify

101 points by open-source-ux 10y ago

dano 10y ago
Spotify's revenue model will not differ significantly from Pandora's. Same cost structure.
iamben 10y ago
I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify? I'm sure it won't be deliberate, just a combination of stubbornness, greed and living in the past. Spotify and music is like a library and books. It's fantastic and accessible for listening and discovery. I'm hard pushed to find a friend that didn't use napster or limewire that's moved to Spotify - it's just easy, there and the price is right. And with the exception of a few hold out artists (lost back catalogues, or smaller artists who are unaware of 100% revenue services like distrokid.com) it's pretty complete. It'll be such a shame if it slowly goes the way of the buffalo.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  I think Spotify's saving grace is that it's not owned by a big tech company. I think the music industry would prefer to negotiate with Spotify than with YouTube.
  - Micoloth 10y ago
    Isn't it a big tech company itself? Well at least they want to be one. It's not like they want to be the good guys there. This is what disappoints me a little bit
    - rak00n 10y ago
      At least it's focused on Music industry. At least I'm comfortable as a patron that some egoist exec won't just shut it down out of nowhere.
- patrick_haply 10y ago
  What I often find is that artists will have have everything on Spotify except their latest album, at least for a few months. Fair enough, they want people to buy their albums; it's just one area where I find Spotify consistently incomplete.
  - pimeys 10y ago
    There are other big areas where it's seriously lacking content: 1) Modern contemporary electronic music, which is usually available vinyl only. 2) Classic albums in their original form. When there's a remaster, Spotify typically only has the remaster, original was either never there or will be removed when remaster is out. Now, when you start to invest to your sound system even a bit (not talking about 100k wires here), you notice the lack of dynamics in many remasters. The originals just sound better with good soundsystem, not so much with below-average systems. When I listen to music, I like to have the best possible master from it. And preferably lossless, or that I have the control of the compression parameters and format. I guess Spotify will take the masses, but I'm not the only serious listener who prefers my own files and physical copies. Streaming is handy, but you can do a lot of things already with big hard disks with your computers, some syncing NAS system (as in Synology), beets[0] and a big enough microSD in your phone. [0] http://beets.io/ http://beets.io/
    - hluska 10y ago
      Honestly, if this is how you evaluate music, the current generation of streaming is not for you. Do yourself a favour, buy a good quality turntable and start collecting vinyl!! PS - I've been collecting vinyl for over twenty years and consider it my one serious vice. This comment is the equivalent of a drug addict suggesting that you "just try it once." You've been warned...:)
      - pimeys 10y ago
        I own plenty of vinyl, two Technics SL1200's and a mixer and I think it's a huge waste of resources. What I need is to just get lossless music effortlessly and with the right mastering. For new stuff it's pretty easy because you only have one option (or then some mega rare double vinyl versions, I'm looking at you Björk!). But for these old rock albums... In the 2000's their record labels wanted people to buy them again and so we got these super bad remastered versions, which are the ones you find from Spotify. Yes, now I need to get CD's to have the best mastering, rip them to flac and opus and put the CD's to a box collecting dust. Or in some cases I need to buy the vinyl, record it to flac and opus and maybe play the vinyl a couple of times more when I do a house party. Waste of resources...
- bogomipz 10y ago
  >"I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify?" But will it be the music industry ruining Spotify if that happens or will it simply be a failure of the business model? You could certainly argue the latter.
  - nine_k 10y ago
    Is dealing with the music industry, which cranks licensing costs up every year, a failed business model? Maybe. Spotify is allowed to live but not to thrive.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      >"Is dealing with the music industry, which cranks licensing costs up every year, a failed business model?" I think it could possibly be. Nobody has been successful yet at least that I can think of. I think the problem is the better you do the more those licenses will cost. I am trying to think of another industry that works that way. I guess cable is similar with content in that the more subscribers a cable operator has the more expensive licensing the content is. So maybe licensing entertainment content is just a very constrained business model? I can't imagine if I ran a restaurant and my costs from my food purveyors increased with the success of the restaurant. I think it would be very difficult to make a go of that.
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.
  - rak00n 10y ago
    Still it's arguably better than the alternatives out there. When I cast music to my TV Spotify has a nice interface. When I cast Google Music there is this icon dancing around all over the TV. I think their web interface is superior as well.
    - ivraatiems 10y ago
      It is, and I pay for a subscription still. I wish there were a good alternative.
    - ldev 10y ago
      I like Apple Music more - more songs and it uploads your mp3s that are not matched and make them available everywhere.
      - majewsky 10y ago
        Does it still replace your local music files with inferior copies from the cloud?
  - zpr 10y ago
    I agree. Never cared much for the UI, and always found it too buggy to keep using. At my old job, we used it for office tunes, and it was often showing the wrong song that was playing, (so you never knew what you were listening to unless you used something like SoundHound), and going to previous or next tracks was inconsistent, so you might not get back to the last song ever again. Pardon my ignorance but why is Google Play Music not worth mention here?
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  >with the exception of a few hold out artists fuck you Tool. :(
sydd 10y ago
I think Spotify will die in 5-10 years, but not because of royalty fee woes. We will not go back to the "buy a song for $1" model of the early 2000s. But it will die because of the moonopolistic and anti-competitive practices of the popular OSes: Apple preinstalls Apple Music, Google Play music, and Microsoft Groove (all 3 clones of Spotify). This agressive, monopolistic behaviour will kill Spotify, just like MS rival browsers with Netscape.
- iamben 10y ago
  If it goes that way, I'd imagine it'll go like Netflix / Prime / Whoever. One deep pocketed music service will bid a load for 'exclusive rights' to [popular artists] and you'll need to subscribe to more than one service to listen to everything. Except eventually most will just pay for none and revert to whatever way lets you do it for free in one place (youtube / piracy / whatever is about then).
- madebysquares 10y ago
  This is becoming my biggest annoyance with streaming services. The integration with your OS(iOS or android) makes it a much more attractive option when using those devices. My second biggest annoyance is the increasing trend of "artist exclusives" if you pay a monthly fee and your favorite artist are giving exclusives to the other services I'm less inclined to continue using that service(Spotify) because I don't get the content I want. I don't want to pay for 2 or 3 streaming services. That fracturing of availability is more likely to people going back to pirating music in my opinion.
  - binarymax 10y ago
    I completely agree with the OS integration annoyance. I use Spotify but it doesn't connect to Siri and the UX is abysmal on CarPlay.
    - lokedhs 10y ago
      That's mainly an Apple problem though. The integration with Android is very complete, and I don't think there are any features that Google Music gives you that Spotify doesn't. And that's a good thing given the fact that Google Music (like most Google services that are not free) is only available in the US and a handful of other countries.
danr4 10y ago
One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues. Only problem is that they need to do it before they burn all their cash, which won't be easy.
- RamenJunkie_ 10y ago
  The problem with this model, especially in music, is that music is way more reusable than a TV show. So in the end, if everyone follows this trend, you'll have to subscribe to 3-4 different services at $10/month to get a complete library, and each will be trapped into different apps, so you could end up no being able to play songs together. Unlike Netflix/Amazon/Hulu, where you could easily subscribe to or drop one month to month to watch different shows.
  - abe_duarte 10y ago
    You are right in music the older catalogue is reused more often. Netflix can produce a series which you will watch once and seldom see again. New content is king. In music you mix old with new. If you lose the old content you will greatly limit the listening experience.
- Scown 10y ago
  They do this, albeit on a smaller scale, with the Spotify Sessions stuff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify_Sessions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify_Sessions)
- bogomipz 10y ago
  >"One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues." I think if you were at the mercy of the traditional record industry for licensing and you went an signed an artist to your label whose contract was up with say Warner Bros Records you could expect some pretty unfavorable terms in licensing content from Warner Brothers in the future. This is just one example but its a slippery slope. It would certainly be much better for artists to get paid directly from the streaming provider, no doubt about that. But I think if you are out promoting that business model you are going to find it harder to license content from people business model if based on the "old way" of doing things. I think would have to forgo licensing from them almost entirely and carry only original content. This is more or less the model that is/was Tidal. I don't think has worked out too well for them. In this regard there has been some criticisms against most of the current streaming providers as simply "propping up" the oligarchy of the big 4 record labels.
superplussed 10y ago
Don't the music labels own a big percentage of Spotify? Hasn't that been the whole argument that the labels are unfairly taking money out of the hands of the artists by owning a piece of the distribution? It seems to be that they have a vested interested in working with Spotify to ensure its long term health.
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  Labels already owns most artist past present and future works, distribution channels doesn't really matter at this point.
  - superplussed 10y ago
    Of course distribution channels matter. If the labels own part of the distribution they don't mind if the distributors give a smaller cut back to the label and artist than another channel. They are able to keep that ownership of their distribution percentage away from the artist, it's the whole reason Spotify was originally so guilt-inducing to people concerned about artist's being treated fairly.
laurentdc 10y ago
Somewhat unrelated but.. is the music industry expecting that we go back to buying CDs (or $0.99 tracks) if streaming services die out? Because I'm pretty sure I won't. I can't see myself going back to physical media or DRM-laden files any soon.
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  iTunes purchased music has no DRM. Ironically, we have moved to prefer services with DRM.
- x43b 10y ago
  "Somewhat unrelated but.. is the music industry expecting that we go back to buying CDs (or $0.99 tracks) if streaming services die out? Because I'm pretty sure I won't. I can't see myself going back to physical media or DRM-laden files any soon." iTunes dropped DRM between 2007-2009. I don't think anyone is expecting you to go back to "DRM-laden files" anytime soon.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  I don't know what the music industry expects to happen in the future, but I'm fairly certain that the best approach for supporting musicians would be for Bandcamp and/or similar sites to grow in popularity. They've got the right approach IMO; high-quality DRM-free digital files, with the majority of revenues going direct to the artist, as well as curated lists (made by Bandcamp and music fans) for discovering new music. https://bandcamp.com/ https://bandcamp.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp
bogomipz 10y ago
Its worth noting that Universal, BMG, Warner Bros and EMI are all investors Spotify. It's kind of an odd situation in that respect, the labels don't need Spotify to go public but their other investors do. The big 4 record labels are the recipients of the $5 billion that the company has paid out in royalties to date. They've surely recouped any initial investment they put in by now. So they kind of have a vested interest at the moment anyway for keeping things just as they are.
- delinka 10y ago
  With respect to accounting, you don't recoup your investment (where you purchased part of a company) by collecting licensing fees (which you'd have received anyway) from the same company.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Sure, I didn't mean in any kind of GAAP sense, just that the investment has already borne fruit is all.
    - delinka 10y ago
      But it hasn't. Until they sell. They didn't need to make the investment to get those licensing fees.
      - bogomipz 10y ago
        Their actual financial investment in the company was likely nominal if anything at all. Spotify likely offered an ownership stake as an incentive to get the labels to take a chance on an unknown company and an unproven model. Whether Spotify goes public or not the labels have already made out very handsomely was my point. That's the $5 billion that Spotify often states that it has paid out to rights holders. So yes it very much has borne fruit, $5 billion worth. If the company goes public its basically gravy for them. The record labels were decimated back in 2006/2007 when Spotify started. Things looked pretty bleak for the industry as a whole. So yes the labels needed to do something as their revenues has pretty much dried up comparatively to a decade earlier.
rurban 10y ago
The clock is ticking yes, but of course - click-baiting - the clock is ticking in a good way to the gigantic IPO. All the numbers do look fantastic. They are earning the most, they are paying the most (by far, compared to all other streaming services), and they have 40M premium members already. Every artist is hoping for Spotify to succeed, and all the others being crushed by it.
adzm 10y ago
fwiw Spotify just offered to bundle HBO Now for a reasonable price, actually, but when I decided to go for it, I was told it was not available in my area. And it was never seen again. Apparently they have been testing responses to these bundles without actually following through, but it's a good indication of future movements.
tresante 10y ago
I'm a long time Spotify fan using it on everything from my Mac to our Shield TV and Echo. Music is a staple of my life and I regularly spend my working day listening to Spotify. Call me an optimist but I see a huge opportunity to capture additional $'s from less price as sensitive people like me. I'd happily hand over more money to the artists I actually like and listen to regularly but no platform gives me the means to do that (ala twitch cheer). They should start building premium features that connect subscribers more intimately with artists through gigs, merchandise or content. I see a lot of headroom in the price - $14.99/mo for 6 accounts (family plan) IMHO is very cheap.
- disantlor 10y ago
  yes, 1000% agree. i would pay an extra $10-20 a month, especially if there was some mechanism to select which receives the extra and showing who supports which artists, etc. basically some of the ideas from bandcamp
  - myfonj 10y ago
    So … why don't you just support those artists at Bandamp? In fact that is exactly my current pattern: wen lazy, conveniently discover [1] and browse more famous artists at Spotify and purchase their albums at Bandcamp. Very few IMPoW "good" artists lack BC page. [1] "Discover" function at Spotify got really nice lately supposedly thanks to the last.fm integration (?). Last.fm used to be my favourite discovery page in the past, and even today I'm not able to ditch it completely.
    - disantlor 10y ago
      i do! and my music is on bandcamp too. but i also want to support people on spotify (partly the convenience of spotify and partly just some artists are not on bandcamp). that interesting/makes sense about last.fm integration, i have about 10 years worth of data on there and the discover recommendations are consistently great. over the last year i've saved a 5-6 subset of the weekly discover suggestions into a super playlist, part also, part human. i'd love to proportion part of my monthly payment to those artists
mattlondon 10y ago
Too expensive for me. When I had the Google equivalent (now cancelled too) I found that I just ended up listening to the music I already know/own anyway, so what is the point of paying to listen to the music I have as MP3s? I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.
- puddintane 10y ago
  I recently switched to SoundCloud free and the ads are really not that bad (only con for example if your playing off your phone and it hits a video ad you can't lock your device till the SD finishes). However if the device screen is locked you'll only get audio ads (short and sweet at that). Like YouTube though it will suffer from take down notices on some stuff you book mark, as well as mainstream stuff you can only listen to the first 30 seconds (but I've never been big into what's radio popular).
  - rorykoehler 10y ago
    I use both. Soundcloud audio quality is way lower. Not suitable for all day listening without fatigue.
    - puddintane 10y ago
      Very true, that is one thing I find replacing a lot of songs with others to get quality. Which can be frustrating when you don't have spare time at all during the day.
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  Did you try the discovery features? Many people find them to be among the most valuable features of Spotify. I quite like the discover weekly playlist that is auto-generated every Monday, and the daily mixes are quite good as well. Or see in which playlists other listeners discovered an artist and see if there's anything else you like in there. There's also a "generate more like this" option in playlists' context menu.
petval 10y ago
You know what? Company that silently ignores hundreds of its Android users requests to implement such a basic functionality like playlist reordering for more than 3 years maybe deserves to die. It's a book exanple of business and customer service fail and tremendous arrogance. Hard to belive but still true: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Rearrange-tracks-inside-a-playlist-Android/idc-p/1579270 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Rearrange-tracks...
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  It's not hard to believe. It's one of many, many things Spotify has done to indicate how little they care about their users. Here are a few more, arranged somewhat chronologically: * Forcing mandatory Facebook logins, only to walk them back * Releasing a "version 1.0" of their desktop app with no CTRL-F support and dozens of missing features * Breaking people's hardware with bugs that made hundreds of unnecessary reads and writes to drives, denying the issue existed until pressed to fix it * Silently removing basic features from their apps, or pushing UI updates that make said features harder to use
- 467568985476 10y ago
  I think it's more likely that Android represents a negligible share of their users than some kind of intentional malice.
yazbo_mcclure 10y ago
Radio is awesome in my town. Radio feels better more connected than any stream service long live radio
- dest 10y ago
  Are there lots of ads on your favorite radios or are they OK?
nik736 10y ago
I am still missing Rdio and hope Pandora Premium gets the UI/UX and the music suggestion part right. It's sad that Spotify is still years behind a product that died in late '15.
tmalsburg2 10y ago
Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists and yet they are not making money. Not sustainable, and it's not really suprising. If someone offers you all the music of the world for 10 bucks that is just too good to be true. I closed my Spotify account because I didn't want to be complicit in the exploitation of artists. I'm now using Qobuz ($20/month) and hope that they are paying more fairly (couldn't find any numbers, though). $20 per month still doesn't feel right to me, but unfortunately there are no better options.
- gumby 10y ago
  > Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists... What do you mean by that? And separately, is it better or worse or the same as how the music industry has exploited artists over the years?
  - tmalsburg2 10y ago
    I'm not defending the music industry. They deserve to die. But, yes, Spotify is worse. At least that's what all musicians I talk to are telling me unison.
- ng12 10y ago
  > Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists Many of my favorite bands love Spotiy, going as far as making it the platform they pre-release music on and back-catalog out of print albums. Why? It's an engine for discovery unlike anything else. A lot of people were pirating music not because they were cheap but because it gets too expensive to drop $20 to figure out if you like an album. Spotify also rewards the right behavior -- if you make the kind of album I want to listen to over and over you get a bigger return. It also automatically notifies your fans of new releases and nearby concerts which puts more money in your pocket. It's a different model than the record labels but it's far from "aggressive exploitation".
leoc 10y ago
The thing that really vexes me about Spotify is how many listens they're giving away to YouTube by making it impossible to search for and listen to a song without losing your place in your current album or playlist: the interface has no concept of tabs or easily-accessible bookmarks. There's a back button, but it doesn't remember what time or even what track you were on, and even with that memory it would be a second-best alternative anyway. The upshot is that even if you're listening to Spotify at the time you decide to search for a particular track, the instinct is to pause Spotify, go to the web browser, open a new tab and search YouTube! YouTube has other things that Spotify lacks like video, song descriptions and (for better and worse) comments, but I think it's largely just the inconvenience of losing your place that drives you away from Spotify in cases like this. For a company which is scrambling to survive, and which I assume would be better off with more plays and more and happier subscribers, it looks like reckless or hapless squandering.
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  You need to start using the queue. In the middle of an album but want to hear another track without stopping the album? right click -> add to up next (or tap-hold, add to up next, if you are that way inclined). It will then play after your current track and before the next track in your current playlist/album.

101 points by open-source-ux 10y ago

dano 10y ago

Spotify's revenue model will not differ significantly from Pandora's. Same cost structure.

I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify? I'm sure it won't be deliberate, just a combination of stubbornness, greed and living in the past. Spotify and music is like a library and books. It's fantastic and accessible for listening and discovery. I'm hard pushed to find a friend that didn't use napster or limewire that's moved to Spotify - it's just easy, there and the price is right. And with the exception of a few hold out artists (lost back catalogues, or smaller artists who are unaware of 100% revenue services like distrokid.com) it's pretty complete. It'll be such a shame if it slowly goes the way of the buffalo.

Eridrus 10y ago
I think Spotify's saving grace is that it's not owned by a big tech company. I think the music industry would prefer to negotiate with Spotify than with YouTube.
- Micoloth 10y ago
  Isn't it a big tech company itself? Well at least they want to be one. It's not like they want to be the good guys there. This is what disappoints me a little bit
  - rak00n 10y ago
    At least it's focused on Music industry. At least I'm comfortable as a patron that some egoist exec won't just shut it down out of nowhere.
patrick_haply 10y ago
What I often find is that artists will have have everything on Spotify except their latest album, at least for a few months. Fair enough, they want people to buy their albums; it's just one area where I find Spotify consistently incomplete.
- pimeys 10y ago
  There are other big areas where it's seriously lacking content: 1) Modern contemporary electronic music, which is usually available vinyl only. 2) Classic albums in their original form. When there's a remaster, Spotify typically only has the remaster, original was either never there or will be removed when remaster is out. Now, when you start to invest to your sound system even a bit (not talking about 100k wires here), you notice the lack of dynamics in many remasters. The originals just sound better with good soundsystem, not so much with below-average systems. When I listen to music, I like to have the best possible master from it. And preferably lossless, or that I have the control of the compression parameters and format. I guess Spotify will take the masses, but I'm not the only serious listener who prefers my own files and physical copies. Streaming is handy, but you can do a lot of things already with big hard disks with your computers, some syncing NAS system (as in Synology), beets[0] and a big enough microSD in your phone. [0] http://beets.io/ http://beets.io/
  - hluska 10y ago
    Honestly, if this is how you evaluate music, the current generation of streaming is not for you. Do yourself a favour, buy a good quality turntable and start collecting vinyl!! PS - I've been collecting vinyl for over twenty years and consider it my one serious vice. This comment is the equivalent of a drug addict suggesting that you "just try it once." You've been warned...:)
    - pimeys 10y ago
      I own plenty of vinyl, two Technics SL1200's and a mixer and I think it's a huge waste of resources. What I need is to just get lossless music effortlessly and with the right mastering. For new stuff it's pretty easy because you only have one option (or then some mega rare double vinyl versions, I'm looking at you Björk!). But for these old rock albums... In the 2000's their record labels wanted people to buy them again and so we got these super bad remastered versions, which are the ones you find from Spotify. Yes, now I need to get CD's to have the best mastering, rip them to flac and opus and put the CD's to a box collecting dust. Or in some cases I need to buy the vinyl, record it to flac and opus and maybe play the vinyl a couple of times more when I do a house party. Waste of resources...
bogomipz 10y ago
>"I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify?" But will it be the music industry ruining Spotify if that happens or will it simply be a failure of the business model? You could certainly argue the latter.
- nine_k 10y ago
  Is dealing with the music industry, which cranks licensing costs up every year, a failed business model? Maybe. Spotify is allowed to live but not to thrive.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    >"Is dealing with the music industry, which cranks licensing costs up every year, a failed business model?" I think it could possibly be. Nobody has been successful yet at least that I can think of. I think the problem is the better you do the more those licenses will cost. I am trying to think of another industry that works that way. I guess cable is similar with content in that the more subscribers a cable operator has the more expensive licensing the content is. So maybe licensing entertainment content is just a very constrained business model? I can't imagine if I ran a restaurant and my costs from my food purveyors increased with the success of the restaurant. I think it would be very difficult to make a go of that.
ivraatiems 10y ago
The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.
- rak00n 10y ago
  Still it's arguably better than the alternatives out there. When I cast music to my TV Spotify has a nice interface. When I cast Google Music there is this icon dancing around all over the TV. I think their web interface is superior as well.
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    It is, and I pay for a subscription still. I wish there were a good alternative.
  - ldev 10y ago
    I like Apple Music more - more songs and it uploads your mp3s that are not matched and make them available everywhere.
    - majewsky 10y ago
      Does it still replace your local music files with inferior copies from the cloud?
- zpr 10y ago
  I agree. Never cared much for the UI, and always found it too buggy to keep using. At my old job, we used it for office tunes, and it was often showing the wrong song that was playing, (so you never knew what you were listening to unless you used something like SoundHound), and going to previous or next tracks was inconsistent, so you might not get back to the last song ever again. Pardon my ignorance but why is Google Play Music not worth mention here?
NTripleOne 10y ago
>with the exception of a few hold out artists fuck you Tool. :(

sydd 10y ago

I think Spotify will die in 5-10 years, but not because of royalty fee woes. We will not go back to the "buy a song for $1" model of the early 2000s. But it will die because of the moonopolistic and anti-competitive practices of the popular OSes: Apple preinstalls Apple Music, Google Play music, and Microsoft Groove (all 3 clones of Spotify). This agressive, monopolistic behaviour will kill Spotify, just like MS rival browsers with Netscape.

iamben 10y ago
If it goes that way, I'd imagine it'll go like Netflix / Prime / Whoever. One deep pocketed music service will bid a load for 'exclusive rights' to [popular artists] and you'll need to subscribe to more than one service to listen to everything. Except eventually most will just pay for none and revert to whatever way lets you do it for free in one place (youtube / piracy / whatever is about then).
madebysquares 10y ago
This is becoming my biggest annoyance with streaming services. The integration with your OS(iOS or android) makes it a much more attractive option when using those devices. My second biggest annoyance is the increasing trend of "artist exclusives" if you pay a monthly fee and your favorite artist are giving exclusives to the other services I'm less inclined to continue using that service(Spotify) because I don't get the content I want. I don't want to pay for 2 or 3 streaming services. That fracturing of availability is more likely to people going back to pirating music in my opinion.
- binarymax 10y ago
  I completely agree with the OS integration annoyance. I use Spotify but it doesn't connect to Siri and the UX is abysmal on CarPlay.
  - lokedhs 10y ago
    That's mainly an Apple problem though. The integration with Android is very complete, and I don't think there are any features that Google Music gives you that Spotify doesn't. And that's a good thing given the fact that Google Music (like most Google services that are not free) is only available in the US and a handful of other countries.

danr4 10y ago

One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues. Only problem is that they need to do it before they burn all their cash, which won't be easy.

RamenJunkie_ 10y ago
The problem with this model, especially in music, is that music is way more reusable than a TV show. So in the end, if everyone follows this trend, you'll have to subscribe to 3-4 different services at $10/month to get a complete library, and each will be trapped into different apps, so you could end up no being able to play songs together. Unlike Netflix/Amazon/Hulu, where you could easily subscribe to or drop one month to month to watch different shows.
- abe_duarte 10y ago
  You are right in music the older catalogue is reused more often. Netflix can produce a series which you will watch once and seldom see again. New content is king. In music you mix old with new. If you lose the old content you will greatly limit the listening experience.
Scown 10y ago
They do this, albeit on a smaller scale, with the Spotify Sessions stuff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify_Sessions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify_Sessions)
bogomipz 10y ago
>"One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues." I think if you were at the mercy of the traditional record industry for licensing and you went an signed an artist to your label whose contract was up with say Warner Bros Records you could expect some pretty unfavorable terms in licensing content from Warner Brothers in the future. This is just one example but its a slippery slope. It would certainly be much better for artists to get paid directly from the streaming provider, no doubt about that. But I think if you are out promoting that business model you are going to find it harder to license content from people business model if based on the "old way" of doing things. I think would have to forgo licensing from them almost entirely and carry only original content. This is more or less the model that is/was Tidal. I don't think has worked out too well for them. In this regard there has been some criticisms against most of the current streaming providers as simply "propping up" the oligarchy of the big 4 record labels.

superplussed 10y ago

Don't the music labels own a big percentage of Spotify? Hasn't that been the whole argument that the labels are unfairly taking money out of the hands of the artists by owning a piece of the distribution? It seems to be that they have a vested interested in working with Spotify to ensure its long term health.

LoSboccacc 10y ago
Labels already owns most artist past present and future works, distribution channels doesn't really matter at this point.
- superplussed 10y ago
  Of course distribution channels matter. If the labels own part of the distribution they don't mind if the distributors give a smaller cut back to the label and artist than another channel. They are able to keep that ownership of their distribution percentage away from the artist, it's the whole reason Spotify was originally so guilt-inducing to people concerned about artist's being treated fairly.

laurentdc 10y ago

Somewhat unrelated but.. is the music industry expecting that we go back to buying CDs (or $0.99 tracks) if streaming services die out? Because I'm pretty sure I won't. I can't see myself going back to physical media or DRM-laden files any soon.

EduardoBautista 10y ago
iTunes purchased music has no DRM. Ironically, we have moved to prefer services with DRM.
x43b 10y ago
"Somewhat unrelated but.. is the music industry expecting that we go back to buying CDs (or $0.99 tracks) if streaming services die out? Because I'm pretty sure I won't. I can't see myself going back to physical media or DRM-laden files any soon." iTunes dropped DRM between 2007-2009. I don't think anyone is expecting you to go back to "DRM-laden files" anytime soon.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
I don't know what the music industry expects to happen in the future, but I'm fairly certain that the best approach for supporting musicians would be for Bandcamp and/or similar sites to grow in popularity. They've got the right approach IMO; high-quality DRM-free digital files, with the majority of revenues going direct to the artist, as well as curated lists (made by Bandcamp and music fans) for discovering new music. https://bandcamp.com/ https://bandcamp.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp

bogomipz 10y ago

Its worth noting that Universal, BMG, Warner Bros and EMI are all investors Spotify. It's kind of an odd situation in that respect, the labels don't need Spotify to go public but their other investors do. The big 4 record labels are the recipients of the $5 billion that the company has paid out in royalties to date. They've surely recouped any initial investment they put in by now. So they kind of have a vested interest at the moment anyway for keeping things just as they are.

delinka 10y ago
With respect to accounting, you don't recoup your investment (where you purchased part of a company) by collecting licensing fees (which you'd have received anyway) from the same company.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Sure, I didn't mean in any kind of GAAP sense, just that the investment has already borne fruit is all.
  - delinka 10y ago
    But it hasn't. Until they sell. They didn't need to make the investment to get those licensing fees.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      Their actual financial investment in the company was likely nominal if anything at all. Spotify likely offered an ownership stake as an incentive to get the labels to take a chance on an unknown company and an unproven model. Whether Spotify goes public or not the labels have already made out very handsomely was my point. That's the $5 billion that Spotify often states that it has paid out to rights holders. So yes it very much has borne fruit, $5 billion worth. If the company goes public its basically gravy for them. The record labels were decimated back in 2006/2007 when Spotify started. Things looked pretty bleak for the industry as a whole. So yes the labels needed to do something as their revenues has pretty much dried up comparatively to a decade earlier.

rurban 10y ago

The clock is ticking yes, but of course - click-baiting - the clock is ticking in a good way to the gigantic IPO. All the numbers do look fantastic. They are earning the most, they are paying the most (by far, compared to all other streaming services), and they have 40M premium members already. Every artist is hoping for Spotify to succeed, and all the others being crushed by it.

adzm 10y ago

fwiw Spotify just offered to bundle HBO Now for a reasonable price, actually, but when I decided to go for it, I was told it was not available in my area. And it was never seen again. Apparently they have been testing responses to these bundles without actually following through, but it's a good indication of future movements.

tresante 10y ago

I'm a long time Spotify fan using it on everything from my Mac to our Shield TV and Echo. Music is a staple of my life and I regularly spend my working day listening to Spotify. Call me an optimist but I see a huge opportunity to capture additional $'s from less price as sensitive people like me. I'd happily hand over more money to the artists I actually like and listen to regularly but no platform gives me the means to do that (ala twitch cheer). They should start building premium features that connect subscribers more intimately with artists through gigs, merchandise or content. I see a lot of headroom in the price - $14.99/mo for 6 accounts (family plan) IMHO is very cheap.

disantlor 10y ago
yes, 1000% agree. i would pay an extra $10-20 a month, especially if there was some mechanism to select which receives the extra and showing who supports which artists, etc. basically some of the ideas from bandcamp
- myfonj 10y ago
  So … why don't you just support those artists at Bandamp? In fact that is exactly my current pattern: wen lazy, conveniently discover [1] and browse more famous artists at Spotify and purchase their albums at Bandcamp. Very few IMPoW "good" artists lack BC page. [1] "Discover" function at Spotify got really nice lately supposedly thanks to the last.fm integration (?). Last.fm used to be my favourite discovery page in the past, and even today I'm not able to ditch it completely.
  - disantlor 10y ago
    i do! and my music is on bandcamp too. but i also want to support people on spotify (partly the convenience of spotify and partly just some artists are not on bandcamp). that interesting/makes sense about last.fm integration, i have about 10 years worth of data on there and the discover recommendations are consistently great. over the last year i've saved a 5-6 subset of the weekly discover suggestions into a super playlist, part also, part human. i'd love to proportion part of my monthly payment to those artists

mattlondon 10y ago

Too expensive for me. When I had the Google equivalent (now cancelled too) I found that I just ended up listening to the music I already know/own anyway, so what is the point of paying to listen to the music I have as MP3s? I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.

puddintane 10y ago
I recently switched to SoundCloud free and the ads are really not that bad (only con for example if your playing off your phone and it hits a video ad you can't lock your device till the SD finishes). However if the device screen is locked you'll only get audio ads (short and sweet at that). Like YouTube though it will suffer from take down notices on some stuff you book mark, as well as mainstream stuff you can only listen to the first 30 seconds (but I've never been big into what's radio popular).
- rorykoehler 10y ago
  I use both. Soundcloud audio quality is way lower. Not suitable for all day listening without fatigue.
  - puddintane 10y ago
    Very true, that is one thing I find replacing a lot of songs with others to get quality. Which can be frustrating when you don't have spare time at all during the day.
lorenzhs 10y ago
Did you try the discovery features? Many people find them to be among the most valuable features of Spotify. I quite like the discover weekly playlist that is auto-generated every Monday, and the daily mixes are quite good as well. Or see in which playlists other listeners discovered an artist and see if there's anything else you like in there. There's also a "generate more like this" option in playlists' context menu.

petval 10y ago

You know what? Company that silently ignores hundreds of its Android users requests to implement such a basic functionality like playlist reordering for more than 3 years maybe deserves to die. It's a book exanple of business and customer service fail and tremendous arrogance. Hard to belive but still true: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Rearrange-tracks-inside-a-playlist-Android/idc-p/1579270 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Rearrange-tracks...

ivraatiems 10y ago
It's not hard to believe. It's one of many, many things Spotify has done to indicate how little they care about their users. Here are a few more, arranged somewhat chronologically: * Forcing mandatory Facebook logins, only to walk them back * Releasing a "version 1.0" of their desktop app with no CTRL-F support and dozens of missing features * Breaking people's hardware with bugs that made hundreds of unnecessary reads and writes to drives, denying the issue existed until pressed to fix it * Silently removing basic features from their apps, or pushing UI updates that make said features harder to use
467568985476 10y ago
I think it's more likely that Android represents a negligible share of their users than some kind of intentional malice.

yazbo_mcclure 10y ago

Radio is awesome in my town. Radio feels better more connected than any stream service long live radio

dest 10y ago
Are there lots of ads on your favorite radios or are they OK?

nik736 10y ago

I am still missing Rdio and hope Pandora Premium gets the UI/UX and the music suggestion part right. It's sad that Spotify is still years behind a product that died in late '15.

tmalsburg2 10y ago

Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists and yet they are not making money. Not sustainable, and it's not really suprising. If someone offers you all the music of the world for 10 bucks that is just too good to be true. I closed my Spotify account because I didn't want to be complicit in the exploitation of artists. I'm now using Qobuz ($20/month) and hope that they are paying more fairly (couldn't find any numbers, though). $20 per month still doesn't feel right to me, but unfortunately there are no better options.

gumby 10y ago
> Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists... What do you mean by that? And separately, is it better or worse or the same as how the music industry has exploited artists over the years?
- tmalsburg2 10y ago
  I'm not defending the music industry. They deserve to die. But, yes, Spotify is worse. At least that's what all musicians I talk to are telling me unison.
ng12 10y ago
> Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists Many of my favorite bands love Spotiy, going as far as making it the platform they pre-release music on and back-catalog out of print albums. Why? It's an engine for discovery unlike anything else. A lot of people were pirating music not because they were cheap but because it gets too expensive to drop $20 to figure out if you like an album. Spotify also rewards the right behavior -- if you make the kind of album I want to listen to over and over you get a bigger return. It also automatically notifies your fans of new releases and nearby concerts which puts more money in your pocket. It's a different model than the record labels but it's far from "aggressive exploitation".

leoc 10y ago

The thing that really vexes me about Spotify is how many listens they're giving away to YouTube by making it impossible to search for and listen to a song without losing your place in your current album or playlist: the interface has no concept of tabs or easily-accessible bookmarks. There's a back button, but it doesn't remember what time or even what track you were on, and even with that memory it would be a second-best alternative anyway. The upshot is that even if you're listening to Spotify at the time you decide to search for a particular track, the instinct is to pause Spotify, go to the web browser, open a new tab and search YouTube! YouTube has other things that Spotify lacks like video, song descriptions and (for better and worse) comments, but I think it's largely just the inconvenience of losing your place that drives you away from Spotify in cases like this. For a company which is scrambling to survive, and which I assume would be better off with more plays and more and happier subscribers, it looks like reckless or hapless squandering.

NTripleOne 10y ago
You need to start using the queue. In the middle of an album but want to hear another track without stopping the album? right click -> add to up next (or tap-hold, add to up next, if you are that way inclined). It will then play after your current track and before the next track in your current playlist/album.