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What do their users want though? I am a user and have some counterpoints. I have been a premium user of spotify for over a year now and I actually really love

What do their users want though? I am a user and have some counterpoints. I have been a premium user of spotify for over a year now and I actually really love it. Maybe I don't use as much features as other people do. I have a bunch of playlists (18) and love their discovery feature as well. I listen to it every time when I am at work - or doing chores at home - and sometimes during the commute on my phone. Same goes for 2 family members. I don't miss the lyrics feature - I used it occasionally but it was shortly after I started using spotify so it's hard to miss something you have not really had the opportunity to use for a long time. I have used their client on Windows and Mac (work), Linux (home) and mobile (android) and actually did not have issues with either of them. For what I use it (listening to music..) it does everything I want and does so perfectly. Storing songs offline? No thank you, if I wanted to do that, I would just torrent the albums I like. About the Hi-Fi option, they do have a HQ option but I am not sure which "quality" that actually is. I'm not an audiophile though, but I bet the average user isn't. So they might not care. --- But, like I said, to me it is essentially just a cloud music player and should not be anything else. I don't use any of the social features, I'm surely not an audiophile, and I can actually not compare it to Apple Music. (Sidenote: The pricing is really good as well, at least the premium model where you can add family members). EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not affiliated with Spotify, and as always, this is just my opinion and yours might be different which is completely OK. :-)

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simias 10y ago
I'm in the same boat as you are (subscribed to spotify less than a year ago). I was really disappointed when they removed the lyrics feature, it was pretty nice and now I have to resort to 3rd party services for that. Like the parent I really would like to be able to complete my library with my own music files when I can't find something on Spotify. That would be massively convenient for me and it doesn't seem like it would be a massive hassle for them to implement (as long as they limit the maximum amount of storage to something reasonable). I'm sure many users would love to be able to add their own audio files and podcasts to their library to access them from their spotify client everywhere. I would also really love if they added a truly random mode. I get that they try to have a "clever" shuffle mode that's supposed to avoid playing the same artist back to back and things like that, but for most of my playlists I don't actually need that and spotify ends up replaying the same tracks before it's exhausted the rest of the playlist. As a side effect it also seems to favor certain titles over others in my experience. Just give me an option to turn on "dumb" random mode and I'll be happy. "Hi-Fi" mode is probably snake oil but I guess it'd make for a nice marketing gimmick. I'm personally perfectly content with the premium audio quality as it is currently. I still don't plan on canceling my subscription but I'm mildly annoyed that in this past year I've seen features disappearing while nothing of great value was being added.
- daenney 10y ago
  > That would be massively convenient for me and it doesn't seem like it would be a massive hassle for them to implement (as long as they limit the maximum amount of storage to something reasonable). The problem isn't the storage, but figuring out who the rights holders are and ensuring they get paid for those streams too. And it gets even more complicated for things you might have that Spotify doesn't have in their catalogue vs. is not allowed to let you play due to geographical restrictions. There's no easy way to guarantee correctness and completeness of the metadata uploaded by others whereas they can reasonably trust what is given to them by music labels.
  - simias 10y ago
    Wouldn't it be similar to streaming music from a dropbox account for instance? As long as they don't allow redistribution to third parties (like grooveshark used to do) there ought to be a way to work around this issue?
    - daenney 10y ago
      Doing that is only legal (under US copyright) if you bought the CD and ripped it yourself. But that's pretty much impossible to validate from the receiving side. Dropbox "allows" for it but they're in a grey area, just like other services have been able to skirt the issue. It's likely to not be a big enough concern for anyone right now to go after that particular use case.
javier2 10y ago
I am a premium user of ~5 years, and I still share much the same sentiment. The lyrics being gone sucks though.

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simias 10y ago

I'm in the same boat as you are (subscribed to spotify less than a year ago). I was really disappointed when they removed the lyrics feature, it was pretty nice and now I have to resort to 3rd party services for that. Like the parent I really would like to be able to complete my library with my own music files when I can't find something on Spotify. That would be massively convenient for me and it doesn't seem like it would be a massive hassle for them to implement (as long as they limit the maximum amount of storage to something reasonable). I'm sure many users would love to be able to add their own audio files and podcasts to their library to access them from their spotify client everywhere. I would also really love if they added a truly random mode. I get that they try to have a "clever" shuffle mode that's supposed to avoid playing the same artist back to back and things like that, but for most of my playlists I don't actually need that and spotify ends up replaying the same tracks before it's exhausted the rest of the playlist. As a side effect it also seems to favor certain titles over others in my experience. Just give me an option to turn on "dumb" random mode and I'll be happy. "Hi-Fi" mode is probably snake oil but I guess it'd make for a nice marketing gimmick. I'm personally perfectly content with the premium audio quality as it is currently. I still don't plan on canceling my subscription but I'm mildly annoyed that in this past year I've seen features disappearing while nothing of great value was being added.

daenney 10y ago
> That would be massively convenient for me and it doesn't seem like it would be a massive hassle for them to implement (as long as they limit the maximum amount of storage to something reasonable). The problem isn't the storage, but figuring out who the rights holders are and ensuring they get paid for those streams too. And it gets even more complicated for things you might have that Spotify doesn't have in their catalogue vs. is not allowed to let you play due to geographical restrictions. There's no easy way to guarantee correctness and completeness of the metadata uploaded by others whereas they can reasonably trust what is given to them by music labels.
- simias 10y ago
  Wouldn't it be similar to streaming music from a dropbox account for instance? As long as they don't allow redistribution to third parties (like grooveshark used to do) there ought to be a way to work around this issue?
  - daenney 10y ago
    Doing that is only legal (under US copyright) if you bought the CD and ripped it yourself. But that's pretty much impossible to validate from the receiving side. Dropbox "allows" for it but they're in a grey area, just like other services have been able to skirt the issue. It's likely to not be a big enough concern for anyone right now to go after that particular use case.

javier2 10y ago

I am a premium user of ~5 years, and I still share much the same sentiment. The lyrics being gone sucks though.