25 ms·

Spotify Form F-1

463 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

riku_iki 9y ago
Key numbers: For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, we generated €1,940 million, €2,952 million, and €4,090 million in revenue, respectively, representing a compound annual growth rate (“CAGR”) of 45%. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, we incurred net losses of €230 million, €539 million, and €1,235 million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, our EBITDA was €(205) million, €(311) million, and €(324) million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, our net cash flow (used in)/from operating activities was €(38) million, €101 million, and €179 million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, our Free Cash Flow was €(92) million, €73 million, and €109 million, respectively.
- estomagordo 9y ago
  So I guess that would be a compound annual shrink rate, CASR, of 132%.
- actuator 9y ago
  I think one more interesting number is churn of premium customers. It seems to be dropping over time and seems very good: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518063434/g494294g32g10.jpg https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518...
jonknee 9y ago
By far the most interesting part of this is that they are doing a direct listing. There is no IPO underwriter (the bankers that the HN audience loves to bash). The shares will just start trading, pricing should be fun to watch. Update: This nugget from the F-1 [1] alludes to the interesting to watch pricing > Moreover, prior to the opening trade, there will not be a price at which underwriters initially sold ordinary shares to the public as there would be in an underwritten initial public offering. This lack of an initial public offering price could impact the range of buy and sell orders collected by the NYSE from various broker-dealers. Consequently, the public price of our ordinary shares may be more volatile than in an underwritten initial public offering and could, upon listing on the NYSE, decline significantly and rapidly. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518063434/d494294df1.htm#rom494294_24 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518...
- tw1010 9y ago
  If you'd have to bet, do you think it's going to go significantly up or down within the first few days?
  - jonknee 9y ago
    Well, that all depends on what the opening trade is!
  - matte_black 9y ago
    WAY up.
  - Analemma_ 9y ago
    I think taking either side of this bet would be foolish. You can usually (but not always!) bet on a Day 1 bump for a normal IPO, but there's no historical data for a direct listing of this size, and Spotify might overprice it just because, hey, why not, they get more money and without underwriters the strong incentive to underprice disappears. If you're not working for a huge bank, stay away from this until it stabilizes.
    - jonknee 9y ago
      > Spotify might overprice it just because, hey, why not, they get more money and without underwriters there are no clients to disappoint Spotify isn't pricing it, they aren't even selling shares. The initial pricing will come directly out of the order book whenever it lists. It's really unusual. Read the plan of distribution section: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518063434/d494294df1.htm#rom494294_24 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518...
      - Analemma_ 9y ago
        Presumably they'll still have an initial Ask price though? Unless I'm misunderstanding something.
steve-benjamins 9y ago
I really hope Spotify succeeds. I've mentioned this before on Hacker News, but as an artist, the algorithmic playlists are amazing. On a good week I get ~4,000 new listeners. It's incredible. Discovery Weekly drives the most but Release Radar and Radio also send a good chunk. Apple Music on the hand hasn't even verified my artist profile— which I need in order to view analytics. So I don't even know if people listen to me there.
- Improvotter 9y ago
  I constantly listen to Discover Weekly on an almost daily basis and always find some great songs that I otherwise would never have found. Spotify is THE service I would never want to be without.
- estomagordo 9y ago
  Glad to hear Discover Weekly works out that way for you as an artist. As a listener, I'm quite happy about it too. Sure, a lof of there is a bit meh to me, but I've easily discovered 50 new artists that I like a reasonable lot through that channel.
- sharkweek 9y ago
  On the other side of this, I love how easy it is to find new music on Spotify! Every week, the "Discover Weekly" playlist nets me at least one or two new artists I end up loving.
  - tj-teej 9y ago
    Discover Weekly will suggest a song I loved 10 years ago and completely forgot about. It's really great stuff.
  - shostack 9y ago
    I've found I almost exclusively listen to "Discover Weekly" and "Release Radar" during my commutes, and every now and then grab a song for some playlists for other times. I do wish there were better ways to shape what songs end up in there as sometimes it can be a bit of a miss.
cronjobma 9y ago
It would be super interesting to see if Dropbox and Spotify do well and set an example for profitable tech companies to go public. Companies like Twitter & Snap went public too early IMHO. It’d be a great signal to young entrepreneurs to chase a business model early on.
- actuator 9y ago
  How are they profitable? They made a loss of € 1,235 last year.
  - erdevs 9y ago
    Haven't checked directly but from comments above seems they are profitable in terms of cash flows?
- nopriorarrests 9y ago
  Excuse me, but Spotify is not profitable, or I miss something? "For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, we incurred net losses of €230 million, €539 million, and €1,235 million, respectively" How is it better than Twitter?
  - erdevs 9y ago
    I haven't reviewed yet but from the synopses above, it sounds like they are generating FCF / are cashflow positive? "Profitability" can mean many things (FCF, NI, EBIT, EBITDA, OIBA, GAAP-figures, non-GAAP, etc)... But cash is king in reality so FCF generating isn't a bad meaning here.
    - riku_iki 9y ago
      Their net cash flow from operations is increasing, but they have negative cash flow from some investing activities (licensing music? buying startups?), which makes total cash flow negative. EBIDTA is also negative.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
saym 9y ago
They've gone from 28 million to 71 million premium subscribers in 3 years with a declining, single digit, churn rate. I'm impressed. I'm a happy Spotify customer, I hope they continue their growth and become a pillar of the music industry.
- actuator 9y ago
  *18 million to 71 million in 3 years. If you contrast this with 51 -> 92 for ad supported MAUs in 3 years it seems like they have been successful in converting a lot of ad supported users to premium ones.
- jakereps 9y ago
  I'm with you on that. I've been a Spotify Premium member since day 1 of US availability, with no intention of switching to others. The only alternative I've even tried is TIDAL, through their trial, to see if the lossless quality was worth the $10 extra a month, but didn't renew beyond that. This may be one of my first "buy and hold" stocks simply for the personal reason of loving the service.
- protonimitate 9y ago
  Same. I'm a Spotify lifer unless something catastrophic happens to their service or media availability. The only alternative service I even debated about was Apple Music when they first announced their streaming service, but there is no clear advantage to their service and I hate the Apple Music UI. I hope they find a way to help a bigger % of the revenue get into the hands of artists and start cutting out the big record companies who just middleman everything. But other than that, no complaints.
  - ishansharma 9y ago
    I was an Apple music since launch(till a month back). But once I tried Spotify and the playlists, I switched instantly. While Apple Music is a competitor, it's not everywhere like Spotify is and their recommendations are horrible. In all time using them, I discovered 2 songs that I liked. With 4 weeks on Spotify, I'm already at 25!
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Huh, their operations have been turning out cash since 2016 (page 11). Curious what they got for their €400 million of 2017 R&D spend (page 10).
- actuator 9y ago
  They might have bundled the compensation of their engineering team in that.
  - ethiclub 9y ago
    Agree probably mostly related to labour. But further, could IP and acquisitions be split out and components attributed to this? They file plenty of patents, and acquisition of entities such as Soundtrap could possibly have elements allocated to R&D. Is this standard/recommended practice?
wonder_bread 9y ago
A brilliant CEO in Elk and an unfortunate industry. It will be interesting to see how they face marginalization. The risk factors of Apple being able to retain 100% of their revenue while Spotify being forced to give away 30% back to Apple is kind of sad. It really does feel like there's continuously diminishing opportunities for companies to get in front of consumers without facing some sort of platform tax.
- dmlittle 9y ago
  Where do you see this 30% fee that Spotify has to pay to Apple? The app itself is free.
  - wonder_bread 9y ago
    https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/
  - on_and_off 9y ago
    subscriptions throughout the app store.
  - teemwerk 9y ago
    spotify premium is $10. it used to be if you subscribed to spotify premium through the app store it cost $13 because Apple literally wants 30% of any money that changes hands through the app store. otherwise you give spotify $10 directly and go on your way.
- erikrothoff 9y ago
  Spotify stopped using in-app subscriptions in their iOS app. I'd love to see the numbers comparing user growth rate vs cost caused by the in-app subscriptions, that led them to their decision.
strong_silent_t 9y ago
A few early thoughts: I think about half of their 2017 net loss was due to something to do with Convertible Notes, that they're explaining on pages F-43 and F-44. I'm trying to calculate patio11's "fundamental equation of SAAS" ( https://twitter.com/patio11/status/965985835790184448 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/965985835790184448 ) for the numbers for churn, subscribers, and ARPU on pages 67 to 70ish. Will update if I actually figure it out. Ok, here is my attempt for their premium service: pp68, 2017 ARPU = 5.32 EUR/mo. pp69, 2017 Churn = 5.5%/mo. pp79, 2017 Customer Acquisition, 48 Million at end of 2016, 71 Million at end of 2017. (71 - 48) / 48 * 100% = 48%. To convert to monthly, if I just divide by 12 it is 4%/month. If I do (1.48)^(1/12) it is 3.3%. I guess this is net of churn, So their fresh acquisition I would estimate at 5.5% + 3.3% = 8.8%. I'll leave the math as an exercise to the reader, partly because I don't know what is being summed over in the formula. I'd be curious to know at what number of users do they break-even if their cost of revenue, sales, and marketing are linear to users and their other non-financial costs remain fixed.
quickthrower2 9y ago
This and Dropbox, I'm not excited to invest in either, but I'll keep using their free-tier services, and I wish them the best.
alehul 9y ago
I remember reading how Spotify charges ~equal to Netflix, and their expenses will likely be much lower due to not needing to fund 'originals' and all. While Netflix's originals also offer a distinct advantage over their competitors and increases the cost of switching, Spotify will likely have a very profitable future as a company, and I'm curious to see if their market cap will ever approach that of Netflix.
- gautamnarula 9y ago
  I was thinking that Spotify would actually need to go in the Netflix direction and have the music equivalent of "originals" (that is, signing artists and having their own label) because otherwise record companies would try to spin off their own services and take their content with them (which has happened in video streaming), or the moment Spotify gets too profitable they'll see an opportunity to increase content prices since they know Spotify can afford it.
  - s_ngularity 9y ago
    The difference here is that presumably fewer record companies have the money to fund the development of their own streaming service. The movie industry has much bigger players in the game. Additionally I don't think anybody's cracked the code on how to make reliably well-received music yet. You can't distract the audience with good visuals and special effects if the plot is no good like in a movie.
    - nopriorarrests 9y ago
      >The difference here is that presumably fewer record companies have the money to fund the development of their own streaming service. They don't need it. With Apple Music, Google Play and Spotify majors can afford to destroy Spotify with royalties as they please, and users will just migrate to other platforms and continue to pay. It's kinda funny once you think about it. Back in early 00's, when Napster appeared, everybody was "dude, record labels are dead, new business models, bla-bla-bla". And now we are 18 years later, and majors are quite fine. And they did literally nothing for 18 years. No investments, no development, nothing. They just milked different internet services with their royalties.
1_800_UNICORN 9y ago
I want Spotify to do well, but the reason I'm cautious is the lack of true differentiation. Spotify has a great platform, but I'd worry about the level of control that the labels and artists have over their catalog, and the fact that they make a lot of money as a middleman between consumers and artists... I just feel like I could see another company coming and eating their lunch relatively easily. They're not like Netflix, who has differentiated themselves with exclusive content. But I REALLY hope they succeed, because I've been a customer since they first announced US support.
- smogcutter 9y ago
  Their competitive advantage is discovery and algorithmic playlists. For my part at least, what got me onto spotify was the large library but what keeps me using it is the discover weekly playlist.
k4ch0w 9y ago
I only left Spotify for Youtube Red/Google Music. It was not an easy decision because they have the best music selection and discover imo. They should acquire pandora and then I think they could dominate this space.
- nindalf 9y ago
  Its interesting that you praise Spotify's selection. I love Spotify, have been a Premium subscriber for 4 years, but there are hundreds of songs that I'd like to listen to but have never been available on Spotify. Meanwhile, they're available on Apple Music. Also, some of the songs that I've saved over the past few years have been removed from Spotify's library - just yesterday I noticed that The Safety Dance is greyed out in my client. (Others include I Walk the Line, Save Tonight and Ambarsariya) That said, I'm a Spotify lifer. I can't see myself leaving and as for the selection, I live in eternal hope that they'll improve it with time.
  - Orphis 9y ago
    Don't blame the service for missing tracks but the artist's label for not putting them there. I once complained to Sufjan Stevens' label about his albums missing in Spotify. They basically told me the deal with their distributor in Europe expired and they didn't look for a new one yet. "woops". It took them many months to get the tracks back.
criddell 9y ago
I wonder if Spotify will become a music label for the same reasons that Netflix has been making their own shows? Spotify could be severely damaged if only a few labels were to pull their content.
- underwater 9y ago
  Spotify would be severely damaged if any major label pulled their content. That’s very different from Netflix.
  - criddell 9y ago
    I looked - there are three major record labels and six major movie studios in the US.
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    Well, not exactly. I don't have Netflix exactly because of that: not all major producers are on Netflix. That's the same as a major producer pulling something from Spotify. There's no point if I'm still going to have to pirate half the stuff I watch or listen to, or pay twice for a subscription. (If you can subscribe in the first place, that is; last I heard one couldn't even watch game of thrones legally in the Netherlands if I wanted to.) Well, and it also doesn't help that I've heard you need to unroot your android device (I will not be an unprivileged user on my own hardware) and enable DRM in firefox to watch Netflix. But the main reason is that every time I check, they don't have at around a third of what I would want to watch.
CodeSheikh 9y ago
Pandora started "the algorithmic playlists" but sadly their management team could not capitalize on it.
- telmnstr 9y ago
  Eh, still the #1 streaming service in the USA. Record labels + licensing held them back a good bit and has kept them limited to the USA. Spotify has some huge lawsuits underway for not clearing proper rights for music as well, I believe one is for 1.8 billion. They do have huge investment (ownership chunk) from at least one major label though I believe? I don't get all the hoopla about Spotify's bad discovery stations. I notice this similar reality distortion field on reddit, feels like marketing. And I will be keeping my hard drives full of media and cds.
john58 9y ago
Will Spotify face the music for its unconventional public listing? https://news.alphastreet.com/will-spotify-face-the-music-for-its-unconventional-public-listing/ https://news.alphastreet.com/will-spotify-face-the-music-for...
zrail 9y ago
I really would like them to rebuild their Roku app. We recently got a TV with a Roku built in and it's been fantastic, except the Spotify app appears to be a beta from 2014 that never got finished. We pay for Spotify but we use Pandora on the TV because of the app quality.
dopeboy 9y ago
Spotify is the reason why I don't pirate music anymore. I say this as someone who used to be involved in the scene (low level FXP couriering in the late 90s and early 00s) and has gigs of release from the RNS, EGO, etc days. It's much faster and convenient to use Spotify. I also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. My only wish is they'd get off Electron (EDIT Chromium - thanks jjgod) and go native. A music player is a frequently enough used piece of software to optimize for performance.
- kbouw 9y ago
  What performance issues do you usually run into on the current iteration of the app? Just out of personal curiosity so I can take note next time I'm using the application.
  - dopeboy 9y ago
    Mostly it's millisecond lag when changing songs or opening up new playlists. I get that everything is on the cloud but maybe more aggressive caching would be helpful. If it were any other application, I wouldn't care. But because this is the second most frequently piece of software I use (browser being first), I'd love for it to be as performant as possible.
    - fascinated 9y ago
      I definitely miss the very old version of the app too. That one was written by the uTorrent creators - it was incredibly fast, felt great.
  - lambda_lover 9y ago
    Not who you asked, but I notice a lot of lag when I'm searching/navigating/etc in Spotify. I understand that it's fetching a lot of this data from their servers, but the UI itself is also laggy when I'm browing local files, scrolling through playlists, etc, so it's not just serverside. Not to mention the SSD-destroying & CPU-hogging habits of the application. That being said, I still use Spotify because I really value the music discovery and algorithms... and nobody else offers a streaming service with a dark theme :)
hxn 9y ago
I am a huge huge music fan and meanwhile I tried most music services. I had Spotify for a while too. But nowadays I prefer to use smaller sites like http://www.bandcamp.com http://www.bandcamp.com and the sites of small labels. For discovery I use http://www.gnoosic.com http://www.gnoosic.com an AI recommender created by a fellow HN member. For me, music consumption feels more adventurous this way.
- ep103 9y ago
  I do the same thing. But 90% of my listening time is spotify, because I no longer really keep a personal library outside of spotify. I download files off bandcamp, and upload them to spotify and Music-map.com (gnoosic) is amazing. I didn't think it was AI though? I thought it was just simple: if you like this, other people who liked this, liked that.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  Another avid Bandcamp user reporting in. Streaming isn't an option at all - there's just too much music missing, or it might be missing someday. However I maintain a very large collection of music with lots of obscure and rare music, which is very different from most listeners, which are, frankly, very well served by Spotify - for a very cheap price. Too cheap. Nobody is earning any money from streaming. I couldn't imagine renting my music and I don't think it's a working business model for anyone but Apple, Google & Co., who can handle a loss.
- disappearance 9y ago
  Just to throw another into the ring: https://fanburst.com/ https://fanburst.com/ I discovered them recently. The model appears to be (paraphrasing) 'give us non-exclusive world-wide rights to distribute your music freely, and we'll work on ways to monetise later'. Of note: high-profile artists Wyclef Jean and Bonobo appear to have signed up.
wufufufu 9y ago
Am I reading this right? > No public market for our ordinary shares currently exists. However, our ordinary shares have a history of trading in private transactions. Based on information available to us, the low and high sales price per ordinary share for such private transactions during the year ended December 31, 2017 was $37.50 and $125.00, respectively, and during the period from January 1, 2018 through February 22, 2018 was $90.00 and $132.50, respectively, in each case excluding the Tencent Transactions (as defined herein). > As of February 22, 2018, we had 176,976,280 ordinary shares outstanding. Except as otherwise indicated, the number of ordinary shares outstanding excludes (i) 14,095,254 ordinary shares issuable upon exercise of stock options outstanding as of February 22, 2018 at a weighted-average exercise price of $49.02 per ordinary share, (ii) 191,985 ordinary shares issuable upon the settlement of restricted stock units (“RSUs”) outstanding as of February 22, 2018, and (iii) 6,720,000 ordinary shares issuable upon the exercise of warrants outstanding as of February 22, 2018, at a weighted average exercise price of $59.92 per ordinary share. So their private valuation is somewhere between $15B and $23B?
par 9y ago
I just recently signed up for spotify and honestly I love it. Only wish I signed up sooner.
malshe 9y ago
A key metric not mentioned in the comments is premium average revenue per user (ARPU). It's consistently decreasing over the last 3 years: 2015: € 6.84 2016: € 6.20 (9% decline) 2017: € 5.32 (14% decline) Also, the number of hours consumed per MAU as of December of each year is also increasing. I should have taken the average over the year for both but I am interested in the trend. 2015: 191 hours per year (17.4 billion/91 million) 2016: 217 hours per year (26.7 billion/123 million) 2017: 253 hours per year (40.3 billion/159 million)
- spyspy 9y ago
  This probably just means that more people are using family plans instead of paying individually. I'm part of a family plan, as are pretty my everyone else I know. It only makes sense. The upside is that canceling a family plan is much harder than a single one just due to the increased number of people involved who'll be inconvenienced.
  - oxymoron 9y ago
    It may also mean that they’ve expanded the user base in countries that have lower purchasing power than western europe, and thus probably lower pricing. That’s surely a good thing?
    - gafasRotas 9y ago
      Can confirm. Countries in Latin America are getting plans for the equivalent of $1.5
      - propogandist 9y ago
        how easy would it be to VPN to a LA country, signup for the plan and then just have service for $1.5?
        skoocda 9y ago
        Probably not very hard. The biggest headache is probably that the recurring credit card purchases might be flagged and blocked for being an unrecognized international transaction. But then again, $1.50 won't raise alarms for many banks.
poisonarena 9y ago
Spotify is for girls
- sctb 9y ago
  Please post civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
3327 9y ago
Spotify stock is going to get crushed. you think the powerful investments banks of wall street will let someone go around them and not make an example of the stock? If everyone did this and gets encouragement from Spotify - its serious bucks that wall street looses. It may work in the future, but Bold Spotify and its shareholders will pay the price...
throw1257 9y ago
Is anyone going to actually invest? If so, I am curious why. Seems that all recent tech IPO are spectacular fails. And spotify itself does not excite me that much
juddlyon 9y ago
Spotify adds value to my life, I hope they are a wild success. Also, RIP Rdio.
tomc1985 9y ago
I will never forgive the computing world for abandoning files in favor of streaming. We've gone from digital citizenship to digital serfdom...
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  No, we've simply gone from primarily direct purchase to primarily a subscription model, which is common in a lot of other markets. And nobody has actually abandoned local files, you can buy and download more music than ever before, and own it forever (if you have backups).
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    You have to go to boutique retailers to get files that are anywhere near the quality of commercially-available CDs. And while subscription models may be common that doesn't make them pro-consumer, the right thing to do, or even a good idea.
    - KozmoNau7 9y ago
      Bandcamp is pretty big nowadays, but it could still be considered a boutique retailer when it comes to pop music. It depends a lot on the genres you prefer. No matter what audiophiles claim, 320kbps MP3/AAC/Ogg/etc. files are equivalent audible quality to CDs, and that's what most online music stores sell. Subscriptions have existed for hundreds of years, for anything from newspapers to soap. Priced correctly, subscriptions are perfectly fine. You pay a recurring fee for a service, and in return you don't have to worry about logistics or storage. A subscription model could even work perfectly fine for cars (and does, in many cities), as long as it's correctly managed and fairly priced. Pay a set monthly fee, and you get access to a range of cars, parked in a central location near where you live. You don't have to worry about maintenance or depreciation, the car sharing company handles all of that. In return, the monthly rate is lower than what most people would pay to actually own and maintain a car of their own. It works because the costs are shared across a lot more people. I know a lot of people prefer to own stuff, and I get it in a lot of cases, especially when you know you'll need the item in question for a long time, need to modify or otherwise do something that's outside of a normal use case. On the other hand, I think this race towards owning as much stuff as possible is driving western society to destruction.
swlkr 9y ago
This Spotify IPO is similar to the Dropbox IPO, when they first started it was a blue ocean situation, almost no competitors, and now there are large tech companies competing, not sure what Spotify or Dropbox's advantages are against these large companies...
baby 9y ago
I’ve tried Spotify but I cannot upload my own library (lots of mashup, asian music, remix, etc... that Spotify doesn’t have), use it and retrieve it later if needed. I’ve been looking for a service to do that and I couldn’t really find anything except iTunes match. But iTunes match is not really the same as spotify. So I did this spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ptV0sWO2tBT4c3G8aiB0WgQ7asZFK2WBoIlg8OcBKg8 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ptV0sWO2tBT4c3G8aiB0...
- kepano 9y ago
  You can do this in Spotify, it's actually one of the main reasons I use it. You need to add your local directory to the list of music sources. The trick to getting that music to sync to other devices is that you need to create a playlist and download it while both devices are on the same local network. Your personal library is never uploaded to the cloud.
  - baby 9y ago
    The last time I tried it was really an ordeal to make it work. I should have taken better note as to why it wasn't a good solution.
- samfriedman 9y ago
  Have you looked into Google Play Music? They let you upload your own music, and will try to match it with metadata automatically if they have it available. You can then stream your uploads to any device over Internet (as opposed to LAN which is all Spotify offers IIRC). I'm a Spotify user, but I still maintain a free GPM account specifically for music that isn't on Spotify.
  - baby 9y ago
    yeah but I think you can't download it back if you need to. I compared the service a while ago and decided not to go with Google for this reason if I remember correctly. I should have taken better notes.
holmberd 9y ago
I've used Spotify for many years now, especially since growing up in Sweden where its been around for awhile, I currently live in North America. There is a few things that bothers me though. One is that zero effort is spent on solving developer issues in regards to their public API. Some issues has been open far too long on github and the community is unhappy. The other is that they bought up EchoNest, which provided everything Spotify was lacking in terms of a music API, only to close the service and implement none of those features into their public API. That's it.
dirtylowprofile 9y ago
I quit Spotify just recently and transferred to Apple Music. Main reason is because of their new policy on Family plan. I paid for a Family plan since its inception. Recently they updated their policy where every member of the Family plan must have the same address. My brother is working in another town and that doesn't mean we're no longer fam. That is one stupid policy.
- kdamken 9y ago
  You know you don’t have to tell them you live at different addresses right?
- gokhan 9y ago
  Did you try contacting them? A divorced friend's daughter only lives with him at weekends, got cancelled from the family plan. He wrote them and got her added back. I work away from home in another city weekdays and still in the family plan. If your brother never visits, I understand their rationale though.
- rplnt 9y ago
  Family plan is a bad name probably. It explicitly says it's for people living together, they don't have to be family at all. It's silly to take this as an issue.
MediumD 9y ago
There has been a lot of discussion over the fact they are direct listing, instead of a traditional IPO, and how that will affect the price. However, does anyone know their motivation for doing a direct listing in the first place? They're still paying invest bankers and being 'engaged' with Morgan Stanley. So what's their reasoning, besides shits & giggles?
spondyl 9y ago
I really like Spotify but I feel I'm soon going to rebuild an MP3 library. A mix of songs being removed (licensing), the apps being sluggish due to library size and local playlist features being rubbish for years. I've got enough "niche" read: game osts and that to make it worth while. For anyone considering the same, beets (python) is your best friend
- cstejerean 9y ago
  This is why I like Apple Music. If an album I want isn’t available for streaming I can just buy it. I can also buy music that Apple doesn’t carry (from Beaport for example) and add it to my library and play everything whether streaming, bought through Apple or other services in a single place.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  I prefer using Quod Libet. It does take a bit of customizing, but the benefit is that you can customize everything. It also doesn't try to do anything fancy with tags, letting you determine the entire structure you want to use, including custom tags. It's the only credible alternative to Foobar2000 on Linux.
yeukhon 9y ago
Spotify is absolutely affordable especially there's a family plan and a student plan. I also stop pirating music (well I do work for a music company but that's not even a factor at all) because of Spotify.
braderhart 9y ago
I cancelled my Spotify premium membership after being a customer for over 2 years, because they refuse to actually develop their application. Their music discovery and playlist radio functionality are horrific right now. They are on repeat essentially, with no way to unlike music that you have liked or accidentally liked.
- majortennis 9y ago
  i can add or remove songs from my library, which seems to have an effect on my discover weekly. I'm in a 3 month trial period for the 2nd time. its worth it at this rate
brynjolf 9y ago
When Spotify launched in USA they increased the prices on their existing markets and lowered the prices for USA below their original. This left me with a sour taste. Now they complain about Stockholms infrastructure while also tax dodging. I know Americans are used to this incredible unhealthy relationship but to me it is rotten to the core.
dirkk0 9y ago
https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/02/12/the-bandcamp-2017-year-in-review/ https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/02/12/the-bandcamp-2017-year...

463 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

Key numbers: For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, we generated €1,940 million, €2,952 million, and €4,090 million in revenue, respectively, representing a compound annual growth rate (“CAGR”) of 45%. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, we incurred net losses of €230 million, €539 million, and €1,235 million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, our EBITDA was €(205) million, €(311) million, and €(324) million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, our net cash flow (used in)/from operating activities was €(38) million, €101 million, and €179 million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, our Free Cash Flow was €(92) million, €73 million, and €109 million, respectively.

estomagordo 9y ago
So I guess that would be a compound annual shrink rate, CASR, of 132%.
actuator 9y ago
I think one more interesting number is churn of premium customers. It seems to be dropping over time and seems very good: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518063434/g494294g32g10.jpg https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518...

jonknee 9y ago

By far the most interesting part of this is that they are doing a direct listing. There is no IPO underwriter (the bankers that the HN audience loves to bash). The shares will just start trading, pricing should be fun to watch. Update: This nugget from the F-1 [1] alludes to the interesting to watch pricing > Moreover, prior to the opening trade, there will not be a price at which underwriters initially sold ordinary shares to the public as there would be in an underwritten initial public offering. This lack of an initial public offering price could impact the range of buy and sell orders collected by the NYSE from various broker-dealers. Consequently, the public price of our ordinary shares may be more volatile than in an underwritten initial public offering and could, upon listing on the NYSE, decline significantly and rapidly. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518063434/d494294df1.htm#rom494294_24 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518...

tw1010 9y ago
If you'd have to bet, do you think it's going to go significantly up or down within the first few days?
- jonknee 9y ago
  Well, that all depends on what the opening trade is!
- matte_black 9y ago
  WAY up.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  I think taking either side of this bet would be foolish. You can usually (but not always!) bet on a Day 1 bump for a normal IPO, but there's no historical data for a direct listing of this size, and Spotify might overprice it just because, hey, why not, they get more money and without underwriters the strong incentive to underprice disappears. If you're not working for a huge bank, stay away from this until it stabilizes.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    > Spotify might overprice it just because, hey, why not, they get more money and without underwriters there are no clients to disappoint Spotify isn't pricing it, they aren't even selling shares. The initial pricing will come directly out of the order book whenever it lists. It's really unusual. Read the plan of distribution section: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518063434/d494294df1.htm#rom494294_24 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639920/000119312518...
    - Analemma_ 9y ago
      Presumably they'll still have an initial Ask price though? Unless I'm misunderstanding something.

steve-benjamins 9y ago

I really hope Spotify succeeds. I've mentioned this before on Hacker News, but as an artist, the algorithmic playlists are amazing. On a good week I get ~4,000 new listeners. It's incredible. Discovery Weekly drives the most but Release Radar and Radio also send a good chunk. Apple Music on the hand hasn't even verified my artist profile— which I need in order to view analytics. So I don't even know if people listen to me there.

Improvotter 9y ago
I constantly listen to Discover Weekly on an almost daily basis and always find some great songs that I otherwise would never have found. Spotify is THE service I would never want to be without.
estomagordo 9y ago
Glad to hear Discover Weekly works out that way for you as an artist. As a listener, I'm quite happy about it too. Sure, a lof of there is a bit meh to me, but I've easily discovered 50 new artists that I like a reasonable lot through that channel.
sharkweek 9y ago
On the other side of this, I love how easy it is to find new music on Spotify! Every week, the "Discover Weekly" playlist nets me at least one or two new artists I end up loving.
- tj-teej 9y ago
  Discover Weekly will suggest a song I loved 10 years ago and completely forgot about. It's really great stuff.
- shostack 9y ago
  I've found I almost exclusively listen to "Discover Weekly" and "Release Radar" during my commutes, and every now and then grab a song for some playlists for other times. I do wish there were better ways to shape what songs end up in there as sometimes it can be a bit of a miss.

cronjobma 9y ago

It would be super interesting to see if Dropbox and Spotify do well and set an example for profitable tech companies to go public. Companies like Twitter & Snap went public too early IMHO. It’d be a great signal to young entrepreneurs to chase a business model early on.

actuator 9y ago
How are they profitable? They made a loss of € 1,235 last year.
- erdevs 9y ago
  Haven't checked directly but from comments above seems they are profitable in terms of cash flows?
nopriorarrests 9y ago
Excuse me, but Spotify is not profitable, or I miss something? "For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, we incurred net losses of €230 million, €539 million, and €1,235 million, respectively" How is it better than Twitter?
- erdevs 9y ago
  I haven't reviewed yet but from the synopses above, it sounds like they are generating FCF / are cashflow positive? "Profitability" can mean many things (FCF, NI, EBIT, EBITDA, OIBA, GAAP-figures, non-GAAP, etc)... But cash is king in reality so FCF generating isn't a bad meaning here.
  - riku_iki 9y ago
    Their net cash flow from operations is increasing, but they have negative cash flow from some investing activities (licensing music? buying startups?), which makes total cash flow negative. EBIDTA is also negative.
toomuchtodo 9y ago

saym 9y ago

They've gone from 28 million to 71 million premium subscribers in 3 years with a declining, single digit, churn rate. I'm impressed. I'm a happy Spotify customer, I hope they continue their growth and become a pillar of the music industry.

actuator 9y ago
*18 million to 71 million in 3 years. If you contrast this with 51 -> 92 for ad supported MAUs in 3 years it seems like they have been successful in converting a lot of ad supported users to premium ones.
jakereps 9y ago
I'm with you on that. I've been a Spotify Premium member since day 1 of US availability, with no intention of switching to others. The only alternative I've even tried is TIDAL, through their trial, to see if the lossless quality was worth the $10 extra a month, but didn't renew beyond that. This may be one of my first "buy and hold" stocks simply for the personal reason of loving the service.
protonimitate 9y ago
Same. I'm a Spotify lifer unless something catastrophic happens to their service or media availability. The only alternative service I even debated about was Apple Music when they first announced their streaming service, but there is no clear advantage to their service and I hate the Apple Music UI. I hope they find a way to help a bigger % of the revenue get into the hands of artists and start cutting out the big record companies who just middleman everything. But other than that, no complaints.
- ishansharma 9y ago
  I was an Apple music since launch(till a month back). But once I tried Spotify and the playlists, I switched instantly. While Apple Music is a competitor, it's not everywhere like Spotify is and their recommendations are horrible. In all time using them, I discovered 2 songs that I liked. With 4 weeks on Spotify, I'm already at 25!

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

Huh, their operations have been turning out cash since 2016 (page 11). Curious what they got for their €400 million of 2017 R&D spend (page 10).

actuator 9y ago
They might have bundled the compensation of their engineering team in that.
- ethiclub 9y ago
  Agree probably mostly related to labour. But further, could IP and acquisitions be split out and components attributed to this? They file plenty of patents, and acquisition of entities such as Soundtrap could possibly have elements allocated to R&D. Is this standard/recommended practice?

wonder_bread 9y ago

A brilliant CEO in Elk and an unfortunate industry. It will be interesting to see how they face marginalization. The risk factors of Apple being able to retain 100% of their revenue while Spotify being forced to give away 30% back to Apple is kind of sad. It really does feel like there's continuously diminishing opportunities for companies to get in front of consumers without facing some sort of platform tax.

dmlittle 9y ago
Where do you see this 30% fee that Spotify has to pay to Apple? The app itself is free.
- wonder_bread 9y ago
  https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/
- on_and_off 9y ago
  subscriptions throughout the app store.
- teemwerk 9y ago
  spotify premium is $10. it used to be if you subscribed to spotify premium through the app store it cost $13 because Apple literally wants 30% of any money that changes hands through the app store. otherwise you give spotify $10 directly and go on your way.
erikrothoff 9y ago
Spotify stopped using in-app subscriptions in their iOS app. I'd love to see the numbers comparing user growth rate vs cost caused by the in-app subscriptions, that led them to their decision.

strong_silent_t 9y ago

A few early thoughts: I think about half of their 2017 net loss was due to something to do with Convertible Notes, that they're explaining on pages F-43 and F-44. I'm trying to calculate patio11's "fundamental equation of SAAS" ( https://twitter.com/patio11/status/965985835790184448 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/965985835790184448 ) for the numbers for churn, subscribers, and ARPU on pages 67 to 70ish. Will update if I actually figure it out. Ok, here is my attempt for their premium service: pp68, 2017 ARPU = 5.32 EUR/mo. pp69, 2017 Churn = 5.5%/mo. pp79, 2017 Customer Acquisition, 48 Million at end of 2016, 71 Million at end of 2017. (71 - 48) / 48 * 100% = 48%. To convert to monthly, if I just divide by 12 it is 4%/month. If I do (1.48)^(1/12) it is 3.3%. I guess this is net of churn, So their fresh acquisition I would estimate at 5.5% + 3.3% = 8.8%. I'll leave the math as an exercise to the reader, partly because I don't know what is being summed over in the formula. I'd be curious to know at what number of users do they break-even if their cost of revenue, sales, and marketing are linear to users and their other non-financial costs remain fixed.

quickthrower2 9y ago

This and Dropbox, I'm not excited to invest in either, but I'll keep using their free-tier services, and I wish them the best.

alehul 9y ago

I remember reading how Spotify charges ~equal to Netflix, and their expenses will likely be much lower due to not needing to fund 'originals' and all. While Netflix's originals also offer a distinct advantage over their competitors and increases the cost of switching, Spotify will likely have a very profitable future as a company, and I'm curious to see if their market cap will ever approach that of Netflix.

gautamnarula 9y ago
I was thinking that Spotify would actually need to go in the Netflix direction and have the music equivalent of "originals" (that is, signing artists and having their own label) because otherwise record companies would try to spin off their own services and take their content with them (which has happened in video streaming), or the moment Spotify gets too profitable they'll see an opportunity to increase content prices since they know Spotify can afford it.
- s_ngularity 9y ago
  The difference here is that presumably fewer record companies have the money to fund the development of their own streaming service. The movie industry has much bigger players in the game. Additionally I don't think anybody's cracked the code on how to make reliably well-received music yet. You can't distract the audience with good visuals and special effects if the plot is no good like in a movie.
  - nopriorarrests 9y ago
    >The difference here is that presumably fewer record companies have the money to fund the development of their own streaming service. They don't need it. With Apple Music, Google Play and Spotify majors can afford to destroy Spotify with royalties as they please, and users will just migrate to other platforms and continue to pay. It's kinda funny once you think about it. Back in early 00's, when Napster appeared, everybody was "dude, record labels are dead, new business models, bla-bla-bla". And now we are 18 years later, and majors are quite fine. And they did literally nothing for 18 years. No investments, no development, nothing. They just milked different internet services with their royalties.

1_800_UNICORN 9y ago

I want Spotify to do well, but the reason I'm cautious is the lack of true differentiation. Spotify has a great platform, but I'd worry about the level of control that the labels and artists have over their catalog, and the fact that they make a lot of money as a middleman between consumers and artists... I just feel like I could see another company coming and eating their lunch relatively easily. They're not like Netflix, who has differentiated themselves with exclusive content. But I REALLY hope they succeed, because I've been a customer since they first announced US support.

smogcutter 9y ago
Their competitive advantage is discovery and algorithmic playlists. For my part at least, what got me onto spotify was the large library but what keeps me using it is the discover weekly playlist.

k4ch0w 9y ago

I only left Spotify for Youtube Red/Google Music. It was not an easy decision because they have the best music selection and discover imo. They should acquire pandora and then I think they could dominate this space.

nindalf 9y ago
Its interesting that you praise Spotify's selection. I love Spotify, have been a Premium subscriber for 4 years, but there are hundreds of songs that I'd like to listen to but have never been available on Spotify. Meanwhile, they're available on Apple Music. Also, some of the songs that I've saved over the past few years have been removed from Spotify's library - just yesterday I noticed that The Safety Dance is greyed out in my client. (Others include I Walk the Line, Save Tonight and Ambarsariya) That said, I'm a Spotify lifer. I can't see myself leaving and as for the selection, I live in eternal hope that they'll improve it with time.
- Orphis 9y ago
  Don't blame the service for missing tracks but the artist's label for not putting them there. I once complained to Sufjan Stevens' label about his albums missing in Spotify. They basically told me the deal with their distributor in Europe expired and they didn't look for a new one yet. "woops". It took them many months to get the tracks back.

criddell 9y ago

I wonder if Spotify will become a music label for the same reasons that Netflix has been making their own shows? Spotify could be severely damaged if only a few labels were to pull their content.

underwater 9y ago
Spotify would be severely damaged if any major label pulled their content. That’s very different from Netflix.
- criddell 9y ago
  I looked - there are three major record labels and six major movie studios in the US.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  Well, not exactly. I don't have Netflix exactly because of that: not all major producers are on Netflix. That's the same as a major producer pulling something from Spotify. There's no point if I'm still going to have to pirate half the stuff I watch or listen to, or pay twice for a subscription. (If you can subscribe in the first place, that is; last I heard one couldn't even watch game of thrones legally in the Netherlands if I wanted to.) Well, and it also doesn't help that I've heard you need to unroot your android device (I will not be an unprivileged user on my own hardware) and enable DRM in firefox to watch Netflix. But the main reason is that every time I check, they don't have at around a third of what I would want to watch.

CodeSheikh 9y ago

Pandora started "the algorithmic playlists" but sadly their management team could not capitalize on it.

telmnstr 9y ago
Eh, still the #1 streaming service in the USA. Record labels + licensing held them back a good bit and has kept them limited to the USA. Spotify has some huge lawsuits underway for not clearing proper rights for music as well, I believe one is for 1.8 billion. They do have huge investment (ownership chunk) from at least one major label though I believe? I don't get all the hoopla about Spotify's bad discovery stations. I notice this similar reality distortion field on reddit, feels like marketing. And I will be keeping my hard drives full of media and cds.

john58 9y ago

Will Spotify face the music for its unconventional public listing? https://news.alphastreet.com/will-spotify-face-the-music-for-its-unconventional-public-listing/ https://news.alphastreet.com/will-spotify-face-the-music-for...

zrail 9y ago

I really would like them to rebuild their Roku app. We recently got a TV with a Roku built in and it's been fantastic, except the Spotify app appears to be a beta from 2014 that never got finished. We pay for Spotify but we use Pandora on the TV because of the app quality.

dopeboy 9y ago

Spotify is the reason why I don't pirate music anymore. I say this as someone who used to be involved in the scene (low level FXP couriering in the late 90s and early 00s) and has gigs of release from the RNS, EGO, etc days. It's much faster and convenient to use Spotify. I also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. My only wish is they'd get off Electron (EDIT Chromium - thanks jjgod) and go native. A music player is a frequently enough used piece of software to optimize for performance.

kbouw 9y ago
What performance issues do you usually run into on the current iteration of the app? Just out of personal curiosity so I can take note next time I'm using the application.
- dopeboy 9y ago
  Mostly it's millisecond lag when changing songs or opening up new playlists. I get that everything is on the cloud but maybe more aggressive caching would be helpful. If it were any other application, I wouldn't care. But because this is the second most frequently piece of software I use (browser being first), I'd love for it to be as performant as possible.
  - fascinated 9y ago
    I definitely miss the very old version of the app too. That one was written by the uTorrent creators - it was incredibly fast, felt great.
- lambda_lover 9y ago
  Not who you asked, but I notice a lot of lag when I'm searching/navigating/etc in Spotify. I understand that it's fetching a lot of this data from their servers, but the UI itself is also laggy when I'm browing local files, scrolling through playlists, etc, so it's not just serverside. Not to mention the SSD-destroying & CPU-hogging habits of the application. That being said, I still use Spotify because I really value the music discovery and algorithms... and nobody else offers a streaming service with a dark theme :)

hxn 9y ago

I am a huge huge music fan and meanwhile I tried most music services. I had Spotify for a while too. But nowadays I prefer to use smaller sites like http://www.bandcamp.com http://www.bandcamp.com and the sites of small labels. For discovery I use http://www.gnoosic.com http://www.gnoosic.com an AI recommender created by a fellow HN member. For me, music consumption feels more adventurous this way.

ep103 9y ago
I do the same thing. But 90% of my listening time is spotify, because I no longer really keep a personal library outside of spotify. I download files off bandcamp, and upload them to spotify and Music-map.com (gnoosic) is amazing. I didn't think it was AI though? I thought it was just simple: if you like this, other people who liked this, liked that.
thirdsun 9y ago
Another avid Bandcamp user reporting in. Streaming isn't an option at all - there's just too much music missing, or it might be missing someday. However I maintain a very large collection of music with lots of obscure and rare music, which is very different from most listeners, which are, frankly, very well served by Spotify - for a very cheap price. Too cheap. Nobody is earning any money from streaming. I couldn't imagine renting my music and I don't think it's a working business model for anyone but Apple, Google & Co., who can handle a loss.
disappearance 9y ago
Just to throw another into the ring: https://fanburst.com/ https://fanburst.com/ I discovered them recently. The model appears to be (paraphrasing) 'give us non-exclusive world-wide rights to distribute your music freely, and we'll work on ways to monetise later'. Of note: high-profile artists Wyclef Jean and Bonobo appear to have signed up.

wufufufu 9y ago

Am I reading this right? > No public market for our ordinary shares currently exists. However, our ordinary shares have a history of trading in private transactions. Based on information available to us, the low and high sales price per ordinary share for such private transactions during the year ended December 31, 2017 was $37.50 and $125.00, respectively, and during the period from January 1, 2018 through February 22, 2018 was $90.00 and $132.50, respectively, in each case excluding the Tencent Transactions (as defined herein). > As of February 22, 2018, we had 176,976,280 ordinary shares outstanding. Except as otherwise indicated, the number of ordinary shares outstanding excludes (i) 14,095,254 ordinary shares issuable upon exercise of stock options outstanding as of February 22, 2018 at a weighted-average exercise price of $49.02 per ordinary share, (ii) 191,985 ordinary shares issuable upon the settlement of restricted stock units (“RSUs”) outstanding as of February 22, 2018, and (iii) 6,720,000 ordinary shares issuable upon the exercise of warrants outstanding as of February 22, 2018, at a weighted average exercise price of $59.92 per ordinary share. So their private valuation is somewhere between $15B and $23B?

par 9y ago

I just recently signed up for spotify and honestly I love it. Only wish I signed up sooner.

malshe 9y ago

A key metric not mentioned in the comments is premium average revenue per user (ARPU). It's consistently decreasing over the last 3 years: 2015: € 6.84 2016: € 6.20 (9% decline) 2017: € 5.32 (14% decline) Also, the number of hours consumed per MAU as of December of each year is also increasing. I should have taken the average over the year for both but I am interested in the trend. 2015: 191 hours per year (17.4 billion/91 million) 2016: 217 hours per year (26.7 billion/123 million) 2017: 253 hours per year (40.3 billion/159 million)

spyspy 9y ago
This probably just means that more people are using family plans instead of paying individually. I'm part of a family plan, as are pretty my everyone else I know. It only makes sense. The upside is that canceling a family plan is much harder than a single one just due to the increased number of people involved who'll be inconvenienced.
- oxymoron 9y ago
  It may also mean that they’ve expanded the user base in countries that have lower purchasing power than western europe, and thus probably lower pricing. That’s surely a good thing?
  - gafasRotas 9y ago
    Can confirm. Countries in Latin America are getting plans for the equivalent of $1.5
    - propogandist 9y ago
      how easy would it be to VPN to a LA country, signup for the plan and then just have service for $1.5?
      - skoocda 9y ago
        Probably not very hard. The biggest headache is probably that the recurring credit card purchases might be flagged and blocked for being an unrecognized international transaction. But then again, $1.50 won't raise alarms for many banks.

poisonarena 9y ago

Spotify is for girls

sctb 9y ago
Please post civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

3327 9y ago

Spotify stock is going to get crushed. you think the powerful investments banks of wall street will let someone go around them and not make an example of the stock? If everyone did this and gets encouragement from Spotify - its serious bucks that wall street looses. It may work in the future, but Bold Spotify and its shareholders will pay the price...

throw1257 9y ago

Is anyone going to actually invest? If so, I am curious why. Seems that all recent tech IPO are spectacular fails. And spotify itself does not excite me that much

juddlyon 9y ago

Spotify adds value to my life, I hope they are a wild success. Also, RIP Rdio.

tomc1985 9y ago

I will never forgive the computing world for abandoning files in favor of streaming. We've gone from digital citizenship to digital serfdom...

KozmoNau7 9y ago
No, we've simply gone from primarily direct purchase to primarily a subscription model, which is common in a lot of other markets. And nobody has actually abandoned local files, you can buy and download more music than ever before, and own it forever (if you have backups).
- tomc1985 9y ago
  You have to go to boutique retailers to get files that are anywhere near the quality of commercially-available CDs. And while subscription models may be common that doesn't make them pro-consumer, the right thing to do, or even a good idea.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    Bandcamp is pretty big nowadays, but it could still be considered a boutique retailer when it comes to pop music. It depends a lot on the genres you prefer. No matter what audiophiles claim, 320kbps MP3/AAC/Ogg/etc. files are equivalent audible quality to CDs, and that's what most online music stores sell. Subscriptions have existed for hundreds of years, for anything from newspapers to soap. Priced correctly, subscriptions are perfectly fine. You pay a recurring fee for a service, and in return you don't have to worry about logistics or storage. A subscription model could even work perfectly fine for cars (and does, in many cities), as long as it's correctly managed and fairly priced. Pay a set monthly fee, and you get access to a range of cars, parked in a central location near where you live. You don't have to worry about maintenance or depreciation, the car sharing company handles all of that. In return, the monthly rate is lower than what most people would pay to actually own and maintain a car of their own. It works because the costs are shared across a lot more people. I know a lot of people prefer to own stuff, and I get it in a lot of cases, especially when you know you'll need the item in question for a long time, need to modify or otherwise do something that's outside of a normal use case. On the other hand, I think this race towards owning as much stuff as possible is driving western society to destruction.

swlkr 9y ago

This Spotify IPO is similar to the Dropbox IPO, when they first started it was a blue ocean situation, almost no competitors, and now there are large tech companies competing, not sure what Spotify or Dropbox's advantages are against these large companies...

baby 9y ago

I’ve tried Spotify but I cannot upload my own library (lots of mashup, asian music, remix, etc... that Spotify doesn’t have), use it and retrieve it later if needed. I’ve been looking for a service to do that and I couldn’t really find anything except iTunes match. But iTunes match is not really the same as spotify. So I did this spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ptV0sWO2tBT4c3G8aiB0WgQ7asZFK2WBoIlg8OcBKg8 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ptV0sWO2tBT4c3G8aiB0...

kepano 9y ago
You can do this in Spotify, it's actually one of the main reasons I use it. You need to add your local directory to the list of music sources. The trick to getting that music to sync to other devices is that you need to create a playlist and download it while both devices are on the same local network. Your personal library is never uploaded to the cloud.
- baby 9y ago
  The last time I tried it was really an ordeal to make it work. I should have taken better note as to why it wasn't a good solution.
samfriedman 9y ago
Have you looked into Google Play Music? They let you upload your own music, and will try to match it with metadata automatically if they have it available. You can then stream your uploads to any device over Internet (as opposed to LAN which is all Spotify offers IIRC). I'm a Spotify user, but I still maintain a free GPM account specifically for music that isn't on Spotify.
- baby 9y ago
  yeah but I think you can't download it back if you need to. I compared the service a while ago and decided not to go with Google for this reason if I remember correctly. I should have taken better notes.

holmberd 9y ago

I've used Spotify for many years now, especially since growing up in Sweden where its been around for awhile, I currently live in North America. There is a few things that bothers me though. One is that zero effort is spent on solving developer issues in regards to their public API. Some issues has been open far too long on github and the community is unhappy. The other is that they bought up EchoNest, which provided everything Spotify was lacking in terms of a music API, only to close the service and implement none of those features into their public API. That's it.

dirtylowprofile 9y ago

I quit Spotify just recently and transferred to Apple Music. Main reason is because of their new policy on Family plan. I paid for a Family plan since its inception. Recently they updated their policy where every member of the Family plan must have the same address. My brother is working in another town and that doesn't mean we're no longer fam. That is one stupid policy.

kdamken 9y ago
You know you don’t have to tell them you live at different addresses right?
gokhan 9y ago
Did you try contacting them? A divorced friend's daughter only lives with him at weekends, got cancelled from the family plan. He wrote them and got her added back. I work away from home in another city weekdays and still in the family plan. If your brother never visits, I understand their rationale though.
rplnt 9y ago
Family plan is a bad name probably. It explicitly says it's for people living together, they don't have to be family at all. It's silly to take this as an issue.

MediumD 9y ago

There has been a lot of discussion over the fact they are direct listing, instead of a traditional IPO, and how that will affect the price. However, does anyone know their motivation for doing a direct listing in the first place? They're still paying invest bankers and being 'engaged' with Morgan Stanley. So what's their reasoning, besides shits & giggles?

spondyl 9y ago

I really like Spotify but I feel I'm soon going to rebuild an MP3 library. A mix of songs being removed (licensing), the apps being sluggish due to library size and local playlist features being rubbish for years. I've got enough "niche" read: game osts and that to make it worth while. For anyone considering the same, beets (python) is your best friend

cstejerean 9y ago
This is why I like Apple Music. If an album I want isn’t available for streaming I can just buy it. I can also buy music that Apple doesn’t carry (from Beaport for example) and add it to my library and play everything whether streaming, bought through Apple or other services in a single place.
KozmoNau7 9y ago
I prefer using Quod Libet. It does take a bit of customizing, but the benefit is that you can customize everything. It also doesn't try to do anything fancy with tags, letting you determine the entire structure you want to use, including custom tags. It's the only credible alternative to Foobar2000 on Linux.

yeukhon 9y ago

Spotify is absolutely affordable especially there's a family plan and a student plan. I also stop pirating music (well I do work for a music company but that's not even a factor at all) because of Spotify.

braderhart 9y ago

I cancelled my Spotify premium membership after being a customer for over 2 years, because they refuse to actually develop their application. Their music discovery and playlist radio functionality are horrific right now. They are on repeat essentially, with no way to unlike music that you have liked or accidentally liked.

majortennis 9y ago
i can add or remove songs from my library, which seems to have an effect on my discover weekly. I'm in a 3 month trial period for the 2nd time. its worth it at this rate

brynjolf 9y ago

When Spotify launched in USA they increased the prices on their existing markets and lowered the prices for USA below their original. This left me with a sour taste. Now they complain about Stockholms infrastructure while also tax dodging. I know Americans are used to this incredible unhealthy relationship but to me it is rotten to the core.

dirkk0 9y ago

https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/02/12/the-bandcamp-2017-year-in-review/ https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/02/12/the-bandcamp-2017-year...