6 ms·

Spotify trying to lock-in users just after IPO (2018)

90 points by bartoszhernas 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bredren 8y ago
Should be marked (2018) It would be awesome if music licenses were portable. Holding collections hostage reminds me of how carriers made it difficult or impossible to keep your phone number when moving between them.
- kgwxd 8y ago
  They are portable if you don't buy through those channels.
  - bredren 8y ago
    I acknowledge this point, though there are efforts to reduce the value of non-subscription digital licensing. For example, exclusive or advanced content only available to streaming subscribers. While brand new exclusive content is hard to imagine being portable (since it is often locked to a particular service) it seems to me that generic user music collections should be made portable.
- iwalton3 8y ago
  The Spotify playlists aren't even a license. They are just a list of songs that you want to listen to. The only thing that prevents you from switching services is restrictions on porting the playlists. (Currently, the two ways of getting playlists out of Spotify are the developer oauth tokens and the GDPR export.)
  - mfts0 8y ago
    Couldn't Spotify argue that the creation of the playlist on Spotify and therefore the resulting object "playlist" is a unique property of Spotify and therefore lockable to their service, excludable from APIs...
IpV8 8y ago
Who cares if you can't export your playlists. You probably used their proprietary recommendation systems to generate them anyways. And its not like I can't write down all of my playlists and recreate them elsewhere. Why should Spotify go out of their way to make it easier for me to switch off of their platform. I refused to get fired up over this non-issue.
- CharlesW 8y ago
  > Who cares if you can't export your playlists. Many people spend lots of time carefully creating playlists, consider them theirs, and would like to bring them with if and when they switch vendors. > Why should Spotify go out of their way to make it easier for me to switch off of their platform. The problem is that (allegedly) Spotify was fine with this, and then they weren't. Yes, everyone should know that everyone dependent on a platform is subject to their whims. However, it's still possible to find empathy with the author.
- mental1896 8y ago
  This is noteworthy because it's an act that favors the company at the consumer's expense--like how grocery stores put necessities on the periphery, forcing exposure to other items; or how cable companies gradually raise prices over time. It's a dick thing to do and I regard it as adversarial. They've also recently started showing promoted tracks in "Release Radar" & "Discovery Weekly" which cannot be disliked. Just another reason to keep your mind open to other services.
- wheelie_boy 8y ago
  Yeah, the context for this is that spotify recently launched a website & EU legal complaint against apple for not opening up its platform sufficiently to competitors (or not sufficiently prioritizing feature work desired by competitors). I assume OP found spotify's actions hypocritical, which is why they posted this. Then the question is whether we should see spotify's 'time to play fair' website as a true statement of principle, or a cynical attempt to sway public opinion against actions that harm it as a business, but that it would be more than happy to engage in itself if it were in apple's position.
have_faith 8y ago
> Select all songs in the playlist > drag into textedit or equivalent Tada
- franky47 8y ago
  You get Spotify URLs for each song, that still counts as lock-in. For European residents, if you request a copy of your data (GDPR), you get your playlists as JSON. Granted, the data is not very elaborated, but it's a start: { "name": "Spotify Playlist Export Test", "lastModifiedDate": "2019-02-15", "tracks": [ { "trackName": "Sabotage", "artistName": "Beastie Boys", "note": null }, { "trackName": "Unknown Track", "artistName": "Unknown Artist", "note": "LOCAL FILE" } ] }
- corgiorgy 8y ago
  On Mac OS this just gives me a list of open.spotify.com links. Not very useful for portability unless you plan on scraping the metadata from each URL.
  - have_faith 8y ago
    True, but it is the playlist in Song - Artist format. I don't think Spotify has any obligation to provide interoperability with other platforms, but getting the basic song information out seems pretty straight forward. My off handed solution wouldn't work for mobile though so don't know if there's an equivalent.
quotha 8y ago
Amazing! If you want others to play fair, you should too
- bartoszhernas 8y ago
  Thanks for the support ! :)
CharlesW 8y ago
The worst aspect of this post that it lacks a call-to-action. Without that, it didn't have a chance to make an impact. The second-worst aspect of this post is that it proves Spotify's point. Not only does the author attack and threaten Spotify from start to finish, but they reinforce that the primary use case is to leave Spotify for competitive services.
- bartoszhernas 8y ago
  Replace Spotify with Apple Music in the article. Same case. If Spotify wants others to play fair, it should start playing fair as well.
  - athenot 8y ago
    Not sure that is the case as your playlists are accessible from AppleScript. Here's their titles, you can further iterate and get the info about the tracks in the playlists. tell application "iTunes" repeat with p in playlists log name of p as string end repeat end tell
    - bartoszhernas 8y ago
      Funny you mention AppleScript, because before there was Apple Music API, we were using it and pure applescript was exactly how we have started. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stamp-2 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stamp-2 Bit of a history now, but it was just an applescript that used CSV to click through iTunes.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Smart companies make it easier to leave, because potential customers are more likely to sign up if they know they won’t be locked in.
- bartoszhernas 8y ago
  The post was originally written more like a vent/message to our users. I do not have time and resources to set up new website like Spotify did. Today when I saw Spotify asking Apple about being fair, I immediatelly though about our case from few months ago. It's not like they did not implement something, they deliberatelly changed TOS for Developers and send email to us that we have to stop using their SDK which was ok to use just before IPO... So they did exactly what they accuse Apple of doing: bending TOS to company's benefit.
duado 8y ago
Now you just need a tool that OCR’s screenshotted playlists and imports them... at which point Spotify will start using a less legible font... the end State will be that Spotify’s main font will be “Captcha”
- bartoszhernas 8y ago
  It's classic cat-and-mouse game. If they truly believe they are better than competition, then why to lock-in users?
- fyfy18 8y ago
  For anyone wondering "would that actually work" there are helper tools for PoGo that actually work like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cjin.pokegenie.standard&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cjin.pokeg...
  - Aissen 8y ago
    Yup, even an open source one: https://github.com/farkam135/GoIV https://github.com/farkam135/GoIV Unfortunately it's not as good as Calcy IV. There are also iOS apps, but they require manual screenshotting.
mises 8y ago
Spotify was salty after Apple was mean to them; this is a good example of the fact that they aren't concerned about "fairness" as much about their own business. Users that have poured time into Spotify playlists aren't going to transfer if they can't move them. Spotify didn't even have to develop something here, they blocked the work of someone who did it for them. This isn't fair. Which is fine, but it is then okay for Apple to be "unfair" about their business too.
- bartoszhernas 8y ago
  That's exactly why I posted this with title "Developers to Spotify: Stop Locking-In Users, Time to Play Fair" first. Spotify is being hypocritical af :(. Our users experience degradated a lot and every few weeks our hacks stop working and we need to update user agents we use to simulate browser. Spotify is actively trying to bring us down.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    So you're just looking after your own interests while calling Spotify hypocritical for doing the same? We're all hypocrites, and we're all looking after our own interests...
    - bartoszhernas 8y ago
      Of course I am looking after my own interests. I am human, that's how we evolved, that's how we made it to the moon. How am I hypocritical? I am just in favour of not locking in users, and we do not lock in users. Spotify wants Apple to not change TOS to their favour while doing exactly the same.
      - ucaetano 8y ago
        > How am I hypocritical? Oh, that wasn't about you specifically, just humans in general. We aren't internally consistent, we are all hypocrites. It isn't a criticism :) And we're all in favor of no lock-in until it conflicts with our own interests.
zihotki 8y ago
Well, you can always issue a GDPR request for all your data. They're obliged to comply, aren't they?
- bartoszhernas 8y ago
  Yes, but the GDPR doesnt say “make it easy so apps like STAMP can exist”. Spotify could create export process that takes 3 days, you get zip file of JSON with format changing every day, and it would still be GDPR compliant.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    Are there no time constraints on GDPR exports?
    - bartoszhernas 8y ago
      Honestly, I haven't checked. Once we would need to use GDPR law to be able to export the data, then we would rather find a hacky way and pretent do be a user browsing their webpage. Just to offer best user experience for our customers.
  - stordoff 8y ago
    Arguably it does: > The data subject shall have the right to receive the personal data concerning him or her, which he or she has provided to a controller, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from the controller to which the personal data have been provided > In exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to paragraph 1, the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible. Whether that will be enforced in any meaningfully useful way is debatable, but the format changing every day would seem to break the spirit at least.
    - bartoszhernas 8y ago
      Thanks, good to know!
thiele 8y ago
I built a tool for exporting your Spotify playlists and library to CSV spreadsheets: http://www.streamexport.com/ http://www.streamexport.com/ It doesn't 'move' your playlists to other services but it gives you a record of all of your playlists that you can control and store locally.
solarkraft 8y ago
> Stamp is in violation of Spotify’s Developer Terms, which prohibit developers from integrating Spotify Content (including metadata) with third-party services So ... It's forbidden to use Spotify's API? I currently stay with Spotify because of its decently good UX (despite constant, nonsensical A/B testing) and because I had the impression they were behaving well. This perception is fragile. I'm not sure making your service less attractive to users will increase your stock price either.
- bartoszhernas 8y ago
  It's was always ok to use their SDK and make money as long as you did not make money from music listening. We make money from user playlists data (which we believe should belong to user) and I don't treat our usecase as integrating with others, as we do it in 3 steps: download from Spotify, then import to somewhere else. It was all fine for 2 year, but after IPO they changed their TOS for Developers. There was either making our service less attractive or removing Spotify all together, so we had no choice. Don't really care about stock price ;), just want to keep the project going and allow others to be able to migrate between different services. I like that with email on your own domain you can easily switch providers (which I recently did with google to protonmail). But there are many other solutions which are not so easy to switch which halts competition.
rchaud 8y ago
I can't even recall the number of "music curation" and "share your playlist" type services I used in the '00s, and how they all folded. For that reason, I've never bothered to make Spotify playlists, because I realized I might be locking myself in to begin with. The current generation of streaming users are now discovering something similar to what I did back then. I do have some playlists on Youtube (whose selection is far bigger when you consider bootlegs, B-sides, unreleased tracks, demos etc), but I take a screenshot of it every now and then so I'll have a copy. I nearly always own a digital copy of what I listen to, so there's really no reason to store your playlists on Spotify at all.
- bootlooped 8y ago
  It's possible to take a full page screenshot of any of your playlists or saved songs in the Spotify web player. That would probably be the easiest way to save them, but not the most usable. For a little more effort a scraper could be written that would generate simple text file with artist - album - song.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    I have a "full page screenshot" Chrome extension that does this. YT is annoying though because they lazyload scrolling content, so a list of say, a 100 items would be tough to export. My playlists are around 15-20 songs each, so it's not too bad.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Spotify backups: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Export-Playlist-Backup/td-p/369752 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Export-Play... https://github.com/bitsofpancake/spotify-backup https://github.com/bitsofpancake/spotify-backup (Python, JSON backup) YouTube backups: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/ https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/ YouTube-dl can dump public playlists for YouTube (you might need jq to pretty it up), Google Takeout should export your private playlists.
taigeair 8y ago
Google Play Music and Apple Music also do this. I don't think I'm able to move any of my playlists off their services.
- bartoszhernas 8y ago
  We (FreeYourMusic.com) support both Apple Music and Google Music, so you can easily migrate ;) Apple Music has official SDK for both web and mobile. (even on Android) Google Play Music is same case now as Spotify. We mimic their web API, but it's far from perfect as you need to use "app password" for login.

90 points by bartoszhernas 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Should be marked (2018) It would be awesome if music licenses were portable. Holding collections hostage reminds me of how carriers made it difficult or impossible to keep your phone number when moving between them.

kgwxd 8y ago
They are portable if you don't buy through those channels.
- bredren 8y ago
  I acknowledge this point, though there are efforts to reduce the value of non-subscription digital licensing. For example, exclusive or advanced content only available to streaming subscribers. While brand new exclusive content is hard to imagine being portable (since it is often locked to a particular service) it seems to me that generic user music collections should be made portable.
iwalton3 8y ago
The Spotify playlists aren't even a license. They are just a list of songs that you want to listen to. The only thing that prevents you from switching services is restrictions on porting the playlists. (Currently, the two ways of getting playlists out of Spotify are the developer oauth tokens and the GDPR export.)
- mfts0 8y ago
  Couldn't Spotify argue that the creation of the playlist on Spotify and therefore the resulting object "playlist" is a unique property of Spotify and therefore lockable to their service, excludable from APIs...

IpV8 8y ago

Who cares if you can't export your playlists. You probably used their proprietary recommendation systems to generate them anyways. And its not like I can't write down all of my playlists and recreate them elsewhere. Why should Spotify go out of their way to make it easier for me to switch off of their platform. I refused to get fired up over this non-issue.

CharlesW 8y ago
> Who cares if you can't export your playlists. Many people spend lots of time carefully creating playlists, consider them theirs, and would like to bring them with if and when they switch vendors. > Why should Spotify go out of their way to make it easier for me to switch off of their platform. The problem is that (allegedly) Spotify was fine with this, and then they weren't. Yes, everyone should know that everyone dependent on a platform is subject to their whims. However, it's still possible to find empathy with the author.
mental1896 8y ago
This is noteworthy because it's an act that favors the company at the consumer's expense--like how grocery stores put necessities on the periphery, forcing exposure to other items; or how cable companies gradually raise prices over time. It's a dick thing to do and I regard it as adversarial. They've also recently started showing promoted tracks in "Release Radar" & "Discovery Weekly" which cannot be disliked. Just another reason to keep your mind open to other services.
wheelie_boy 8y ago
Yeah, the context for this is that spotify recently launched a website & EU legal complaint against apple for not opening up its platform sufficiently to competitors (or not sufficiently prioritizing feature work desired by competitors). I assume OP found spotify's actions hypocritical, which is why they posted this. Then the question is whether we should see spotify's 'time to play fair' website as a true statement of principle, or a cynical attempt to sway public opinion against actions that harm it as a business, but that it would be more than happy to engage in itself if it were in apple's position.

have_faith 8y ago

> Select all songs in the playlist > drag into textedit or equivalent Tada

franky47 8y ago
You get Spotify URLs for each song, that still counts as lock-in. For European residents, if you request a copy of your data (GDPR), you get your playlists as JSON. Granted, the data is not very elaborated, but it's a start: { "name": "Spotify Playlist Export Test", "lastModifiedDate": "2019-02-15", "tracks": [ { "trackName": "Sabotage", "artistName": "Beastie Boys", "note": null }, { "trackName": "Unknown Track", "artistName": "Unknown Artist", "note": "LOCAL FILE" } ] }
corgiorgy 8y ago
On Mac OS this just gives me a list of open.spotify.com links. Not very useful for portability unless you plan on scraping the metadata from each URL.
- have_faith 8y ago
  True, but it is the playlist in Song - Artist format. I don't think Spotify has any obligation to provide interoperability with other platforms, but getting the basic song information out seems pretty straight forward. My off handed solution wouldn't work for mobile though so don't know if there's an equivalent.

quotha 8y ago

Amazing! If you want others to play fair, you should too

bartoszhernas 8y ago
Thanks for the support ! :)

CharlesW 8y ago

The worst aspect of this post that it lacks a call-to-action. Without that, it didn't have a chance to make an impact. The second-worst aspect of this post is that it proves Spotify's point. Not only does the author attack and threaten Spotify from start to finish, but they reinforce that the primary use case is to leave Spotify for competitive services.

bartoszhernas 8y ago
Replace Spotify with Apple Music in the article. Same case. If Spotify wants others to play fair, it should start playing fair as well.
- athenot 8y ago
  Not sure that is the case as your playlists are accessible from AppleScript. Here's their titles, you can further iterate and get the info about the tracks in the playlists. tell application "iTunes" repeat with p in playlists log name of p as string end repeat end tell
  - bartoszhernas 8y ago
    Funny you mention AppleScript, because before there was Apple Music API, we were using it and pure applescript was exactly how we have started. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stamp-2 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stamp-2 Bit of a history now, but it was just an applescript that used CSV to click through iTunes.
mikeash 8y ago
Smart companies make it easier to leave, because potential customers are more likely to sign up if they know they won’t be locked in.
bartoszhernas 8y ago
The post was originally written more like a vent/message to our users. I do not have time and resources to set up new website like Spotify did. Today when I saw Spotify asking Apple about being fair, I immediatelly though about our case from few months ago. It's not like they did not implement something, they deliberatelly changed TOS for Developers and send email to us that we have to stop using their SDK which was ok to use just before IPO... So they did exactly what they accuse Apple of doing: bending TOS to company's benefit.

duado 8y ago

Now you just need a tool that OCR’s screenshotted playlists and imports them... at which point Spotify will start using a less legible font... the end State will be that Spotify’s main font will be “Captcha”

bartoszhernas 8y ago
It's classic cat-and-mouse game. If they truly believe they are better than competition, then why to lock-in users?
fyfy18 8y ago
For anyone wondering "would that actually work" there are helper tools for PoGo that actually work like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cjin.pokegenie.standard&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cjin.pokeg...
- Aissen 8y ago
  Yup, even an open source one: https://github.com/farkam135/GoIV https://github.com/farkam135/GoIV Unfortunately it's not as good as Calcy IV. There are also iOS apps, but they require manual screenshotting.

mises 8y ago

Spotify was salty after Apple was mean to them; this is a good example of the fact that they aren't concerned about "fairness" as much about their own business. Users that have poured time into Spotify playlists aren't going to transfer if they can't move them. Spotify didn't even have to develop something here, they blocked the work of someone who did it for them. This isn't fair. Which is fine, but it is then okay for Apple to be "unfair" about their business too.

bartoszhernas 8y ago
That's exactly why I posted this with title "Developers to Spotify: Stop Locking-In Users, Time to Play Fair" first. Spotify is being hypocritical af :(. Our users experience degradated a lot and every few weeks our hacks stop working and we need to update user agents we use to simulate browser. Spotify is actively trying to bring us down.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  So you're just looking after your own interests while calling Spotify hypocritical for doing the same? We're all hypocrites, and we're all looking after our own interests...
  - bartoszhernas 8y ago
    Of course I am looking after my own interests. I am human, that's how we evolved, that's how we made it to the moon. How am I hypocritical? I am just in favour of not locking in users, and we do not lock in users. Spotify wants Apple to not change TOS to their favour while doing exactly the same.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      > How am I hypocritical? Oh, that wasn't about you specifically, just humans in general. We aren't internally consistent, we are all hypocrites. It isn't a criticism :) And we're all in favor of no lock-in until it conflicts with our own interests.

zihotki 8y ago

Well, you can always issue a GDPR request for all your data. They're obliged to comply, aren't they?

bartoszhernas 8y ago
Yes, but the GDPR doesnt say “make it easy so apps like STAMP can exist”. Spotify could create export process that takes 3 days, you get zip file of JSON with format changing every day, and it would still be GDPR compliant.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Are there no time constraints on GDPR exports?
  - bartoszhernas 8y ago
    Honestly, I haven't checked. Once we would need to use GDPR law to be able to export the data, then we would rather find a hacky way and pretent do be a user browsing their webpage. Just to offer best user experience for our customers.
- stordoff 8y ago
  Arguably it does: > The data subject shall have the right to receive the personal data concerning him or her, which he or she has provided to a controller, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from the controller to which the personal data have been provided > In exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to paragraph 1, the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible. Whether that will be enforced in any meaningfully useful way is debatable, but the format changing every day would seem to break the spirit at least.
  - bartoszhernas 8y ago
    Thanks, good to know!

thiele 8y ago

I built a tool for exporting your Spotify playlists and library to CSV spreadsheets: http://www.streamexport.com/ http://www.streamexport.com/ It doesn't 'move' your playlists to other services but it gives you a record of all of your playlists that you can control and store locally.

solarkraft 8y ago

> Stamp is in violation of Spotify’s Developer Terms, which prohibit developers from integrating Spotify Content (including metadata) with third-party services So ... It's forbidden to use Spotify's API? I currently stay with Spotify because of its decently good UX (despite constant, nonsensical A/B testing) and because I had the impression they were behaving well. This perception is fragile. I'm not sure making your service less attractive to users will increase your stock price either.

bartoszhernas 8y ago
It's was always ok to use their SDK and make money as long as you did not make money from music listening. We make money from user playlists data (which we believe should belong to user) and I don't treat our usecase as integrating with others, as we do it in 3 steps: download from Spotify, then import to somewhere else. It was all fine for 2 year, but after IPO they changed their TOS for Developers. There was either making our service less attractive or removing Spotify all together, so we had no choice. Don't really care about stock price ;), just want to keep the project going and allow others to be able to migrate between different services. I like that with email on your own domain you can easily switch providers (which I recently did with google to protonmail). But there are many other solutions which are not so easy to switch which halts competition.

rchaud 8y ago

I can't even recall the number of "music curation" and "share your playlist" type services I used in the '00s, and how they all folded. For that reason, I've never bothered to make Spotify playlists, because I realized I might be locking myself in to begin with. The current generation of streaming users are now discovering something similar to what I did back then. I do have some playlists on Youtube (whose selection is far bigger when you consider bootlegs, B-sides, unreleased tracks, demos etc), but I take a screenshot of it every now and then so I'll have a copy. I nearly always own a digital copy of what I listen to, so there's really no reason to store your playlists on Spotify at all.

bootlooped 8y ago
It's possible to take a full page screenshot of any of your playlists or saved songs in the Spotify web player. That would probably be the easiest way to save them, but not the most usable. For a little more effort a scraper could be written that would generate simple text file with artist - album - song.
- rchaud 8y ago
  I have a "full page screenshot" Chrome extension that does this. YT is annoying though because they lazyload scrolling content, so a list of say, a 100 items would be tough to export. My playlists are around 15-20 songs each, so it's not too bad.
toomuchtodo 8y ago
Spotify backups: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Export-Playlist-Backup/td-p/369752 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Export-Play... https://github.com/bitsofpancake/spotify-backup https://github.com/bitsofpancake/spotify-backup (Python, JSON backup) YouTube backups: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/ https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/ YouTube-dl can dump public playlists for YouTube (you might need jq to pretty it up), Google Takeout should export your private playlists.

taigeair 8y ago

Google Play Music and Apple Music also do this. I don't think I'm able to move any of my playlists off their services.

bartoszhernas 8y ago
We (FreeYourMusic.com) support both Apple Music and Google Music, so you can easily migrate ;) Apple Music has official SDK for both web and mobile. (even on Android) Google Play Music is same case now as Spotify. We mimic their web API, but it's far from perfect as you need to use "app password" for login.