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I just want to mention that what I like about Spotify is I dont have to bother figuring this kind of thing out, because it provides music I want to listen to at

I just want to mention that what I like about Spotify is I dont have to bother figuring this kind of thing out, because it provides music I want to listen to at a price that is completely reasonable.

gabereiser 6y ago
But your money rarely makes it to the artists. Or worse, as an artist they just rip your music off.
- mdifrgechd 6y ago
  That seems orthogonal to my point that what spotify achieved, for me at least, was being a better value for money than copyright infringement. It's worth $10 a month to have all the music accessible in one place. The licensing agreements that spotify negotiates are between them and the artists, and if artists are unhappy they can take it up with Spotify. But hopefully artists realize that for recorded performances, there is a sweet spot where the convenience of a subscription has a higher value than trivially accessing pirated recordings.
  - gabereiser 6y ago
    Never the artists, always the labels or distribution company (not always the same). But to your point. Pre-Spotify I think the overall music market sales volumes and profits, offset by piracy and copyright infringement, ended up around the same overall total market value that Spotify based their subscription and payments off of (that and economics of scale). I’ve been a Spotify subscriber for a long time so I get it. I just wish Spotify would do more to support artists, not labels, or help fix the system for indies to self-distribute. It’s obviously way more complicated. I dream of a utopia where a platform exists not for profits sake but for the art’s sake.
- karaterobot 6y ago
  Unless every AES key you dump with this application somehow sends money to the artist, I'm not sure how this is better for them than Spotify.
- jstummbillig 6y ago
  Don't spread this nonsense. Spotify is an excellent way for independent artists to get free promotion and make money in 2020. Spotify pays about 3$ per 1000 plays, which is quite a bit more than YT will for music. We're long past the 1990s, where only a very select number of major label artists made it big and sold millions of copies. We need to stop using these numbers as a benchmark for todays music landscape -- so much has changed and most of it for the better. Music creation and distribution has been heavily democratized. Where you needed connections and thousands of dollars to even get something released (outside of niche DIY tape style releases) you can now basically do it for free from your room or band practice space. The amount of money per working musician has gone down significantly but there are more of them in 2020 than has ever before. We can certainly argue about what kind of value art should have in society. Should there be more money going around? What industries should this money be taken out of? Suffice to say independent artists are better off than they have been, creating music and making money has never been easier and Spotify/digital music distribution in general have been great enablers.
  - mdifrgechd 6y ago
    Its interesting to me that for most of modern history, the value of performing arts like music was in the performance. Then recorded media were invented and there was a fleeting moment in the 20th century when distribution was controlled, and the value of that invention was captured by a small group. And now it seems things have equilibrated so that the value of recording is distributed more broadly again. I don't know if there are other examples like this in different parts of the economy (obviously it's the same in video), but it feels like a good study in how technology disrupts an industry and then disrupts is again.
    - stubish 6y ago
      It matches most other arts, where the value is in the physical artwork. Writing is the interesting one, as it didn't even exist as a paying art form until technology allowed for relatively cheap duplication (and education for popular consumption!). And then a second disruption is the same for writing as it is for Music, that will be playing out for the next decade or so; Authors being able to distribute directly to Consumers rather than requiring Publishers.
- ponker 6y ago
  Spotify pays 70% of revenue to the copyright holder. The fact is that record labels take a much bigger bite before giving it to the artist, and then blame it on Spotify.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    Years ago when I read about this, the issue was that the remaining 70% was split between all copyright holders proportional to the number of plays. So if I listen to artist X for 10 minutes, and you listen to artist Y for 60 minutes, then artist X gets 10% of the total money and artist Y gets 60%. It would make more sense if each subscriber's money were split between the artists they listen to. I'm not sure if this is still the case.
    - ponker 6y ago
      Is this that bad? I'm not saying your way is bad -- but both seem reasonable. Are some artists heavily benefited or harmed because their listeners listen to much less or much more total music than the average?
      - gurkendoktor 6y ago
        I'd guess that Spotify's model benefits artists that make radio-friendly or ambient music because some people will listen to them 8h a day while at work. Nobody listens to the same amount of intricate and challenging music, which is probably more expensive to produce in the first place.
      - tripzilch 6y ago
        I believe it's bad. It's making all of music more generic. There's composers and producers with quite high production values, very complex and intricate music, the kind you want to pay attention to, in order to get the most out of it. But I don't listen to that music all day. I got other music for background. In my view the latter is not more valuable because I listen to it for more minutes. When it was CDs I'd pay roughly the same for my Autechre as my Kruder & Dorfmeister.
fuzzy2 6y ago
> it provides music I want to listen to at a price that is completely reasonable. Until it doesn't I use Spotify a lot. Maybe too much. And disappearing music is a real plague. Now it's there, now it's not. Why? Licensing perhaps, who knows.
- mdifrgechd 6y ago
  Yes I agree with you, I have had some songs I like disappear too. But with a subscription model, I can stop paying them when the value isnt there anymore. A good example is that I cancelled Amazon prime this year because with add-on items and ineligible items it stopped providing any value over just meeting the minimum order $ for free shipping.
  - therealx 6y ago
    Spotify reached that threshold for me two years ago. I started seeing 1 in every 20 or so liked tracks go away.
    - naikrovek 6y ago
      ... they come back after a while in my experience. The licenses for those tracks seem to rotate between services.
    - panpanna 6y ago
      You make that sound as if spotify is the problem. This is about labels and sometimes artist not wanting to have their songs on spotify anymore. This is about Tidal or whathername wanting more money from a dying market.
      - stubish 6y ago
        It might not be Spotify's fault, but it is certainly their problem. Their business survival depends on being able to fix it before a rival does, because consumers don't want to keep paying for a service that sucks for them, 'because it isn't their fault'.
awild 6y ago
Reasonable to you as a consumer or reasonable to you as a producer of music?
- nvr219 6y ago
  They clearly meant as a consumer.
gao8a 6y ago
This might not be for you, and not for me either. But it's for the 13 y/o me that was figuring out how to use alcohol 120% to burn the latest games or fix my computer from all the viruses I got downloading movies and music at that time from p2p. And if it wasn't for that pursuit that led to many other skills and opportunities, I know a lot of us wouldn't be in the financial situations we are in right now.
- goda90 6y ago
  I remember getting alcohol 120% from a less than reputable source. Soon my Windows ME install was dead and the BIOS could no longer boot from CD. That computer was dead...
  - exikyut 6y ago
    Oh meep, one of those viruses that overwrites those ranges in lower memory... Did you ever try to boot it from a floppy, just to see what would happen?
    - goda90 6y ago
      No. I was still pretty young and not that knowledgeable yet. My dad was more of a power user than an expert. It went to the basement and I got a used Dell with Windows XP several months later.
  - runsonrum 6y ago
    Yeah but that was just WinME 's normal behavior.
- moondev 6y ago
  alcohol 120%! That gave me instant nostalgia, I can almost remember that logo heh
sorenjan 6y ago
One reason to use something like this would be to listen to music offline. Spotify doesn't support offline music on WearOS watches, but they do on Garmin and Samsung watches. It's not a technical issue, since Google music supported offline music on watches for years. So once again, greedy business practices makes it more inconvenient for paying users than for pirates.
- eisa01 6y ago
  Same with Apple Watch - why exclude the most popular wearable?
  - ddoeth 6y ago
    They actually just changed that: https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/audio/a34587809/spotify-apple-watch-no-iphone-update/ https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/audio/a34587809/spotify-appl...
    - sorenjan 6y ago
      That doesn't allow offline music, so you need the LTE version if you want to go running without a phone. I'm pretty sure Spotify is selling offline music exclusivity to Samsung and Garmin.
  - panpanna 6y ago
    Because apple stopped their app so they can promote their own service instead and now we are seeing a lawsuit?
LockAndLol 6y ago
Spotify doesn't have all the music I want either. I'd need to pay for 3 different services, that don't allow me to own what I purchase and can delete things from my library at any time. When my subscription ends, my library disappears. Not a very attractive deal.
m-p-3 6y ago
The only reason I'm with Spotify is the generated playlists. I frankly wouldn't have discovered smaller bands if I stuck to buying CDs and listening to radio.

I just want to mention that what I like about Spotify is I dont have to bother figuring this kind of thing out, because it provides music I want to listen to at a price that is completely reasonable.

gabereiser 6y ago

But your money rarely makes it to the artists. Or worse, as an artist they just rip your music off.

mdifrgechd 6y ago
That seems orthogonal to my point that what spotify achieved, for me at least, was being a better value for money than copyright infringement. It's worth $10 a month to have all the music accessible in one place. The licensing agreements that spotify negotiates are between them and the artists, and if artists are unhappy they can take it up with Spotify. But hopefully artists realize that for recorded performances, there is a sweet spot where the convenience of a subscription has a higher value than trivially accessing pirated recordings.
- gabereiser 6y ago
  Never the artists, always the labels or distribution company (not always the same). But to your point. Pre-Spotify I think the overall music market sales volumes and profits, offset by piracy and copyright infringement, ended up around the same overall total market value that Spotify based their subscription and payments off of (that and economics of scale). I’ve been a Spotify subscriber for a long time so I get it. I just wish Spotify would do more to support artists, not labels, or help fix the system for indies to self-distribute. It’s obviously way more complicated. I dream of a utopia where a platform exists not for profits sake but for the art’s sake.
karaterobot 6y ago
Unless every AES key you dump with this application somehow sends money to the artist, I'm not sure how this is better for them than Spotify.
jstummbillig 6y ago
Don't spread this nonsense. Spotify is an excellent way for independent artists to get free promotion and make money in 2020. Spotify pays about 3$ per 1000 plays, which is quite a bit more than YT will for music. We're long past the 1990s, where only a very select number of major label artists made it big and sold millions of copies. We need to stop using these numbers as a benchmark for todays music landscape -- so much has changed and most of it for the better. Music creation and distribution has been heavily democratized. Where you needed connections and thousands of dollars to even get something released (outside of niche DIY tape style releases) you can now basically do it for free from your room or band practice space. The amount of money per working musician has gone down significantly but there are more of them in 2020 than has ever before. We can certainly argue about what kind of value art should have in society. Should there be more money going around? What industries should this money be taken out of? Suffice to say independent artists are better off than they have been, creating music and making money has never been easier and Spotify/digital music distribution in general have been great enablers.
- mdifrgechd 6y ago
  Its interesting to me that for most of modern history, the value of performing arts like music was in the performance. Then recorded media were invented and there was a fleeting moment in the 20th century when distribution was controlled, and the value of that invention was captured by a small group. And now it seems things have equilibrated so that the value of recording is distributed more broadly again. I don't know if there are other examples like this in different parts of the economy (obviously it's the same in video), but it feels like a good study in how technology disrupts an industry and then disrupts is again.
  - stubish 6y ago
    It matches most other arts, where the value is in the physical artwork. Writing is the interesting one, as it didn't even exist as a paying art form until technology allowed for relatively cheap duplication (and education for popular consumption!). And then a second disruption is the same for writing as it is for Music, that will be playing out for the next decade or so; Authors being able to distribute directly to Consumers rather than requiring Publishers.
ponker 6y ago
Spotify pays 70% of revenue to the copyright holder. The fact is that record labels take a much bigger bite before giving it to the artist, and then blame it on Spotify.
- smichel17 6y ago
  Years ago when I read about this, the issue was that the remaining 70% was split between all copyright holders proportional to the number of plays. So if I listen to artist X for 10 minutes, and you listen to artist Y for 60 minutes, then artist X gets 10% of the total money and artist Y gets 60%. It would make more sense if each subscriber's money were split between the artists they listen to. I'm not sure if this is still the case.
  - ponker 6y ago
    Is this that bad? I'm not saying your way is bad -- but both seem reasonable. Are some artists heavily benefited or harmed because their listeners listen to much less or much more total music than the average?
    - gurkendoktor 6y ago
      I'd guess that Spotify's model benefits artists that make radio-friendly or ambient music because some people will listen to them 8h a day while at work. Nobody listens to the same amount of intricate and challenging music, which is probably more expensive to produce in the first place.
    - tripzilch 6y ago
      I believe it's bad. It's making all of music more generic. There's composers and producers with quite high production values, very complex and intricate music, the kind you want to pay attention to, in order to get the most out of it. But I don't listen to that music all day. I got other music for background. In my view the latter is not more valuable because I listen to it for more minutes. When it was CDs I'd pay roughly the same for my Autechre as my Kruder & Dorfmeister.

fuzzy2 6y ago

> it provides music I want to listen to at a price that is completely reasonable. Until it doesn't I use Spotify a lot. Maybe too much. And disappearing music is a real plague. Now it's there, now it's not. Why? Licensing perhaps, who knows.

mdifrgechd 6y ago
Yes I agree with you, I have had some songs I like disappear too. But with a subscription model, I can stop paying them when the value isnt there anymore. A good example is that I cancelled Amazon prime this year because with add-on items and ineligible items it stopped providing any value over just meeting the minimum order $ for free shipping.
- therealx 6y ago
  Spotify reached that threshold for me two years ago. I started seeing 1 in every 20 or so liked tracks go away.
  - naikrovek 6y ago
    ... they come back after a while in my experience. The licenses for those tracks seem to rotate between services.
  - panpanna 6y ago
    You make that sound as if spotify is the problem. This is about labels and sometimes artist not wanting to have their songs on spotify anymore. This is about Tidal or whathername wanting more money from a dying market.
    - stubish 6y ago
      It might not be Spotify's fault, but it is certainly their problem. Their business survival depends on being able to fix it before a rival does, because consumers don't want to keep paying for a service that sucks for them, 'because it isn't their fault'.

awild 6y ago

Reasonable to you as a consumer or reasonable to you as a producer of music?

nvr219 6y ago
They clearly meant as a consumer.

gao8a 6y ago

This might not be for you, and not for me either. But it's for the 13 y/o me that was figuring out how to use alcohol 120% to burn the latest games or fix my computer from all the viruses I got downloading movies and music at that time from p2p. And if it wasn't for that pursuit that led to many other skills and opportunities, I know a lot of us wouldn't be in the financial situations we are in right now.

goda90 6y ago
I remember getting alcohol 120% from a less than reputable source. Soon my Windows ME install was dead and the BIOS could no longer boot from CD. That computer was dead...
- exikyut 6y ago
  Oh meep, one of those viruses that overwrites those ranges in lower memory... Did you ever try to boot it from a floppy, just to see what would happen?
  - goda90 6y ago
    No. I was still pretty young and not that knowledgeable yet. My dad was more of a power user than an expert. It went to the basement and I got a used Dell with Windows XP several months later.
- runsonrum 6y ago
  Yeah but that was just WinME 's normal behavior.
moondev 6y ago
alcohol 120%! That gave me instant nostalgia, I can almost remember that logo heh

sorenjan 6y ago

One reason to use something like this would be to listen to music offline. Spotify doesn't support offline music on WearOS watches, but they do on Garmin and Samsung watches. It's not a technical issue, since Google music supported offline music on watches for years. So once again, greedy business practices makes it more inconvenient for paying users than for pirates.

eisa01 6y ago
Same with Apple Watch - why exclude the most popular wearable?
- ddoeth 6y ago
  They actually just changed that: https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/audio/a34587809/spotify-apple-watch-no-iphone-update/ https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/audio/a34587809/spotify-appl...
  - sorenjan 6y ago
    That doesn't allow offline music, so you need the LTE version if you want to go running without a phone. I'm pretty sure Spotify is selling offline music exclusivity to Samsung and Garmin.
- panpanna 6y ago
  Because apple stopped their app so they can promote their own service instead and now we are seeing a lawsuit?

LockAndLol 6y ago

Spotify doesn't have all the music I want either. I'd need to pay for 3 different services, that don't allow me to own what I purchase and can delete things from my library at any time. When my subscription ends, my library disappears. Not a very attractive deal.

m-p-3 6y ago

The only reason I'm with Spotify is the generated playlists. I frankly wouldn't have discovered smaller bands if I stuck to buying CDs and listening to radio.