6 ms·

Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

37 points by onpedrof 5y ago

jdkjs 5y ago
What is SimilarWeb and how do they know that? Because I have a hunch that they are pulling the numbers out of their asses just so they are mentioned in articles from shitty blogs like this one.
- PaywallBuster 5y ago
  They own a number of popular browser extensions which feed them data and provide them a good "sample" of web traffic It can be surprisingly close
- altdataseller 5y ago
  They have a bunch of Chrome extensions that spy on what users are visiting online, and use that data to sell their product to marketers. Personally think Google should get rid of them as they are a travesty to online privacy.
  - odshoifsdhfs 5y ago
    So google should also ban themselves? At least the Chrome extensions people installed themselves, can't say the same about Google fonts/analytics/whatever else
    - altdataseller 5y ago
      Apples and oranges, You install Google Analytics precisely to track where users are going. You don’t install a Google Chrome extension so a company can track every site you are visiting.
  - harrybr 5y ago
    So they’re estimating based on a sample that may not represent the population of Spotify subscribers. The only people who know the real figures are Spotify themselves. It would be interesting to know the names of these chrome extensions and whether the sign up experience clearly communicates the ways in which the users will be tracked.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    Is it a travesty to online privacy if you have to opt into their tracking? At some point I should be allowed to trade my personal information in exchange for goods or services, isn't that the whole point of me "owning" my information?
  - bmarquez 5y ago
    I'd like to know what these Chrome extensions are to ensure they'll never be installed on any computer I use. Unfortunately I can't find a list anywhere, which seems really scammy.
  - voisin 5y ago
    > Personally think Google should get rid of them as they are a travesty to online privacy. More likely that Google would buy them.
- evanelias 5y ago
  fwiw I have seen situations where their numbers were completely detached from reality, in absolute terms as well as relative comparisons over time. They're especially inaccurate for any product with mobile apps, since they have zero insight into that traffic. Nor do they properly extrapolate between the massively different traffic patterns of users with apps (which tends to be a lot stickier) vs web traffic. Several times, people citing SimilarWeb numbers have argued with me about things where I had first-hand direct knowledge of the correct numbers (e.g., numbers involving a company I worked for). It's frustrating. These people sided with SimilarWeb because it's some source they can cite, nevermind the fact that it was complete garbage in these cases.
taf2 5y ago
i just signed up. what's wrong with spotify?
- jraph 5y ago
  The DRMs (though that's probably not an explanation to a spike in traffic to cancellation page)
- vkou 5y ago
  It is keeping the most popular podcast in the world on its platform, despite the host breaking Spotify's TOS on the subject of COVID misinformation.
  - sp332 5y ago
    Not just keeping, but paid $100 million for exclusivity.
    - vkou 5y ago
      Well, yes, there's all that money, too, that makes dropping him rather expensive. Unfortunately, it seems that I'm being karmically silenced for speaking an uncomfortable truth - that I've done my research[1] on! [1] About 2 minutes of googling sources that tell me what I want to hear.
  - nomel 5y ago
    > host breaking Spotify's TOS Do you have a reference for this? I've been following this very closely, and this is the first time I've heard he broke the TOS.
    - vkou 5y ago
      https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotify-platform-rules/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotify-platform-rul... > Content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health His ivermectin/vaccine stuff breaks the TOS.
bkberry352 5y ago
A 200% increase in the weekly baseline? That’s… not actually all that much. Basically 2 extra weeks worth of cancellations. It’ll make the KPI look bad, but 70k cancellations doesn’t seem material when you have almost 200m users.
coding123 5y ago
- wewtyflakes 5y ago
  The numbers being called out greatly exceed 3 and 6. Unsure what inflation would have to do with cancellation numbers unless you are arguing that the cost of the service has inflated more greatly than the income of its users. However, the story did seem to give context for what is driving these numbers, and inflation was not one of them. Can you elaborate on why you think it is due to inflation, rather than what the article cited?
  - nomel 5y ago
    > unless you are arguing that the cost of the service has inflated more greatly than the income of its users. It's not required that the service itself has an inflated price. People have some amount of spending money. If inflation is causing other things to cost more, there will be less spending money left over. > Can you elaborate on why you think it is due to inflation, rather than what the article cited? I'm not the one you're replying to, but I know my fuel and food bill has gone up dramatically. I've canceled two, rarely used, streaming services, as a result.
    - wewtyflakes 5y ago
      Thank you for the thoughtful reply. That is a rational argument for how inflation would impact subscriptions, even when the price of the subscription does not increase. Though, wouldn't the effects of inflation be seen as being less spike-y? The highlight of this article was that visitations to the cancellation page spiked hundreds of percent week-over-week, however, inflation while crushing, hasn't spiked to such a degree over this same period. Would it then be reasonable to infer that these visitations to the cancellation page are not (primarily) driven by inflation?
      - nomel 5y ago
        > Would it then be reasonable to infer that these visitations to the cancellation page are not (primarily) driven by inflation? I think that's more than reasonable. :)
rdtwo 5y ago
I re subscribe every month to help their numbers.
Apocryphon 5y ago
Did not know there were that many Neil Young and Joni Mitchell fans. I wonder if there's any studies on the stickiness of cancellations. There were reoccurring pushes to delete Uber since 2017, but not sure how often people went back anyway.
- coolso 5y ago
  I canceled my premium subscription because of all of the Joe Rogan episodes they deleted.
  - knute 5y ago
    I cancelled mine in part because of the Joe Rogan kerfuffle but mostly because I made the realization that Spotify is investing more heavily in podcasts than music, but I already have a podcast player that I like and I should subscribe to a music service that cares about the music.
    - whatch 5y ago
      Exactly. I just switched back from Apple Music to Spotify (I used Spotify before Apple Music, when podcasts were unavailable where I live). I returned for missed recommendations. But now with all these podcasts issues I am really thinking about using mp3s again.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jmhyer123 5y ago
    Was there a comment box to tell them why you cancelled? Just wondering if the cancellations are sending mixed signals between the "I'm mad you took down Joe Rogan episodes" camp and the "I'm mad you took down Neil Young or others" camp of users.
    - coolso 5y ago
      I was worried about that too, but yes, there was a comment box asking to explain the reason for the cancellation, and I was careful to make it clear.
stillbourne 5y ago
I'm in the process of exporting my playlists. I've been paying for the service since 2011 hate to see them go but I have more playlists, three of them, with Neil Young than I do with Joe Rogan, none. Maybe I'm just an old foggy that likes classic rock, I don't care, I go where my music is. As much as I hate to do it I'm moving my stuff over to YouTube Music. https://github.com/sigma67/spotifyplaylist_to_ytmusic https://github.com/sigma67/spotifyplaylist_to_ytmusic
caiob 5y ago
barbazoo 5y ago
Unrelated to this (bad) story, I wish there was more competition in that field. AFAIK it's either Spotify, Google, Amazon or Apple. Am I missing any others?
- SecurityLagoon 5y ago
  Napster is actually a decent legit service now. The best method though is to buy music direct through something like bandcamp. These streaming services all give tiny amounts of money to artists per play.
- odshoifsdhfs 5y ago
  Tidal at least (not supporting them and read they also have some 'shady' stuff going on, just adding another possibility, personally I stick with Apple)
- t-writescode 5y ago
  Pandora, Tidal, Plex if you want to host your own? There's probably more still.
- sp332 5y ago
  Tidal, Deezer, Pandora... Yandex?
- xtracto 5y ago
  I don't... the market is so fragmented that the only way for me to have playlist with all my favourite songs is through piracy.
stephc_int13 5y ago
For those who didn't see this story unfold, this is about Joe Rogan (he signed an exclusivity deal with Spotify a while ago) and the alleged misinformation that was aired on his podcast (mostly about Covid).
trezemanero 5y ago
>Last week it was reported that Spotify's market value has plummeted by $2.1 billion in just one week amid controversy around the platform's continued support of podcaster Joe Rogan. Let's ignore the already downward of the share and the tech market itself.
sp332 5y ago
"How to break up with Spotify" https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-break-up-61760779 https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-break-up-61760779 Walks through removing access to your apps and devices, exporting your playlists to a new service, and configuring it with privacy in mind.
mdoms 5y ago
That seems like a very small increase to a page that presumably sees little traffic. Sounds like they're committing the base rate fallacy[0] where large percentage increases correspond to small absolute numbers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
- wewtyflakes 5y ago
  You said presumably, though the article gives specific numbers. Can you elaborate on what numbers or analysis would be reasonable as to not fall into the fallacy you also call out?
  - mdoms 5y ago
    A significant proportion of the userbase would be a good start. If 118,000 users unsubscribed up from 40,000 then that's an increase of 78,000 people, or 0.04% of the subscriber base. Also, now this is total speculation, I'd hazard that a large number of these "new unsubscribers" have clicked on social media links to the cancellation page without following through with the cancellation.
    - wewtyflakes 5y ago
      That seems reasonable, but isn't this data set a sampling, since it appears to only capture the page viewing habits of people who have opted to install various browser extensions? If so, wouldn't that imply that the non-sampled numbers would be larger, and perhaps by a fair bit, assuming that the percentage of users who install these browser telemetry tools is small? I agree that if the numbers did not represent a sampling, but were in fact reflected a complete data set, then yes, they perhaps are a drop in the bucket.
lucis 5y ago
On my social bubble, an impressive amount of people have cancelled their premium accounts. I had a friend who had always recommended me trying out Youtube Music for their recommendation and I used the opportunity to switch, not looking back.. Somehow, Youtube Premium + Music for family is cheaper than Spotify Premium for family.
- ralfn 5y ago
  Good thing YouTube isn't full of misinformation.
  - lucis 5y ago
    Not with a $200 million check from the platform, indeed.
progre 5y ago
I like spotify (I pay for the service) but I dont like anything about this. I don't like that spotify are doing "podcasts". For me, poscasts are the last (popular) vestiges of the old web. I wish they would remain platform-free. The creators own servers and an RSS feed. Total control for the creators, noone to ask for permisson. Tell me I'm dreaming. I don't like that Joe Rogan is on spotify. Never heard his show, I understand that he is some kind of post-radio chock-jock. However, I know that he is very popular so by bringing him on spotify is kind of cementing that spotify is how you do podcasts now. I don't like that spotify felt the need to remove some old episodes for him. If they are really doing podcast they should buy the whole hog, including the warts. I dont like that musicians are leaving spotify. Those that have very publicly left dont affect me much as it's not my style of music, but it's a bad trend. As a Swede i personally know people that pays the rent with spotify money. I don't like that that might end. Sorry for the rant
Shadonototra 5y ago
can we stop with this apple music propaganda already?

37 points by onpedrof 5y ago

What is SimilarWeb and how do they know that? Because I have a hunch that they are pulling the numbers out of their asses just so they are mentioned in articles from shitty blogs like this one.

PaywallBuster 5y ago
They own a number of popular browser extensions which feed them data and provide them a good "sample" of web traffic It can be surprisingly close
altdataseller 5y ago
They have a bunch of Chrome extensions that spy on what users are visiting online, and use that data to sell their product to marketers. Personally think Google should get rid of them as they are a travesty to online privacy.
- odshoifsdhfs 5y ago
  So google should also ban themselves? At least the Chrome extensions people installed themselves, can't say the same about Google fonts/analytics/whatever else
  - altdataseller 5y ago
    Apples and oranges, You install Google Analytics precisely to track where users are going. You don’t install a Google Chrome extension so a company can track every site you are visiting.
- harrybr 5y ago
  So they’re estimating based on a sample that may not represent the population of Spotify subscribers. The only people who know the real figures are Spotify themselves. It would be interesting to know the names of these chrome extensions and whether the sign up experience clearly communicates the ways in which the users will be tracked.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Is it a travesty to online privacy if you have to opt into their tracking? At some point I should be allowed to trade my personal information in exchange for goods or services, isn't that the whole point of me "owning" my information?
- bmarquez 5y ago
  I'd like to know what these Chrome extensions are to ensure they'll never be installed on any computer I use. Unfortunately I can't find a list anywhere, which seems really scammy.
- voisin 5y ago
  > Personally think Google should get rid of them as they are a travesty to online privacy. More likely that Google would buy them.
evanelias 5y ago
fwiw I have seen situations where their numbers were completely detached from reality, in absolute terms as well as relative comparisons over time. They're especially inaccurate for any product with mobile apps, since they have zero insight into that traffic. Nor do they properly extrapolate between the massively different traffic patterns of users with apps (which tends to be a lot stickier) vs web traffic. Several times, people citing SimilarWeb numbers have argued with me about things where I had first-hand direct knowledge of the correct numbers (e.g., numbers involving a company I worked for). It's frustrating. These people sided with SimilarWeb because it's some source they can cite, nevermind the fact that it was complete garbage in these cases.

taf2 5y ago

i just signed up. what's wrong with spotify?

jraph 5y ago
The DRMs (though that's probably not an explanation to a spike in traffic to cancellation page)
vkou 5y ago
It is keeping the most popular podcast in the world on its platform, despite the host breaking Spotify's TOS on the subject of COVID misinformation.
- sp332 5y ago
  Not just keeping, but paid $100 million for exclusivity.
  - vkou 5y ago
    Well, yes, there's all that money, too, that makes dropping him rather expensive. Unfortunately, it seems that I'm being karmically silenced for speaking an uncomfortable truth - that I've done my research[1] on! [1] About 2 minutes of googling sources that tell me what I want to hear.
- nomel 5y ago
  > host breaking Spotify's TOS Do you have a reference for this? I've been following this very closely, and this is the first time I've heard he broke the TOS.
  - vkou 5y ago
    https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotify-platform-rules/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotify-platform-rul... > Content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health His ivermectin/vaccine stuff breaks the TOS.

bkberry352 5y ago

A 200% increase in the weekly baseline? That’s… not actually all that much. Basically 2 extra weeks worth of cancellations. It’ll make the KPI look bad, but 70k cancellations doesn’t seem material when you have almost 200m users.

coding123 5y ago

wewtyflakes 5y ago
The numbers being called out greatly exceed 3 and 6. Unsure what inflation would have to do with cancellation numbers unless you are arguing that the cost of the service has inflated more greatly than the income of its users. However, the story did seem to give context for what is driving these numbers, and inflation was not one of them. Can you elaborate on why you think it is due to inflation, rather than what the article cited?
- nomel 5y ago
  > unless you are arguing that the cost of the service has inflated more greatly than the income of its users. It's not required that the service itself has an inflated price. People have some amount of spending money. If inflation is causing other things to cost more, there will be less spending money left over. > Can you elaborate on why you think it is due to inflation, rather than what the article cited? I'm not the one you're replying to, but I know my fuel and food bill has gone up dramatically. I've canceled two, rarely used, streaming services, as a result.
  - wewtyflakes 5y ago
    Thank you for the thoughtful reply. That is a rational argument for how inflation would impact subscriptions, even when the price of the subscription does not increase. Though, wouldn't the effects of inflation be seen as being less spike-y? The highlight of this article was that visitations to the cancellation page spiked hundreds of percent week-over-week, however, inflation while crushing, hasn't spiked to such a degree over this same period. Would it then be reasonable to infer that these visitations to the cancellation page are not (primarily) driven by inflation?
    - nomel 5y ago
      > Would it then be reasonable to infer that these visitations to the cancellation page are not (primarily) driven by inflation? I think that's more than reasonable. :)

rdtwo 5y ago

I re subscribe every month to help their numbers.

Apocryphon 5y ago

Did not know there were that many Neil Young and Joni Mitchell fans. I wonder if there's any studies on the stickiness of cancellations. There were reoccurring pushes to delete Uber since 2017, but not sure how often people went back anyway.

coolso 5y ago
I canceled my premium subscription because of all of the Joe Rogan episodes they deleted.
- knute 5y ago
  I cancelled mine in part because of the Joe Rogan kerfuffle but mostly because I made the realization that Spotify is investing more heavily in podcasts than music, but I already have a podcast player that I like and I should subscribe to a music service that cares about the music.
  - whatch 5y ago
    Exactly. I just switched back from Apple Music to Spotify (I used Spotify before Apple Music, when podcasts were unavailable where I live). I returned for missed recommendations. But now with all these podcasts issues I am really thinking about using mp3s again.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jmhyer123 5y ago
  Was there a comment box to tell them why you cancelled? Just wondering if the cancellations are sending mixed signals between the "I'm mad you took down Joe Rogan episodes" camp and the "I'm mad you took down Neil Young or others" camp of users.
  - coolso 5y ago
    I was worried about that too, but yes, there was a comment box asking to explain the reason for the cancellation, and I was careful to make it clear.

stillbourne 5y ago

I'm in the process of exporting my playlists. I've been paying for the service since 2011 hate to see them go but I have more playlists, three of them, with Neil Young than I do with Joe Rogan, none. Maybe I'm just an old foggy that likes classic rock, I don't care, I go where my music is. As much as I hate to do it I'm moving my stuff over to YouTube Music. https://github.com/sigma67/spotifyplaylist_to_ytmusic https://github.com/sigma67/spotifyplaylist_to_ytmusic

caiob 5y ago

barbazoo 5y ago

Unrelated to this (bad) story, I wish there was more competition in that field. AFAIK it's either Spotify, Google, Amazon or Apple. Am I missing any others?

SecurityLagoon 5y ago
Napster is actually a decent legit service now. The best method though is to buy music direct through something like bandcamp. These streaming services all give tiny amounts of money to artists per play.
odshoifsdhfs 5y ago
Tidal at least (not supporting them and read they also have some 'shady' stuff going on, just adding another possibility, personally I stick with Apple)
t-writescode 5y ago
Pandora, Tidal, Plex if you want to host your own? There's probably more still.
sp332 5y ago
Tidal, Deezer, Pandora... Yandex?
xtracto 5y ago
I don't... the market is so fragmented that the only way for me to have playlist with all my favourite songs is through piracy.

stephc_int13 5y ago

For those who didn't see this story unfold, this is about Joe Rogan (he signed an exclusivity deal with Spotify a while ago) and the alleged misinformation that was aired on his podcast (mostly about Covid).

trezemanero 5y ago

>Last week it was reported that Spotify's market value has plummeted by $2.1 billion in just one week amid controversy around the platform's continued support of podcaster Joe Rogan. Let's ignore the already downward of the share and the tech market itself.

sp332 5y ago

"How to break up with Spotify" https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-break-up-61760779 https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-break-up-61760779 Walks through removing access to your apps and devices, exporting your playlists to a new service, and configuring it with privacy in mind.

mdoms 5y ago

That seems like a very small increase to a page that presumably sees little traffic. Sounds like they're committing the base rate fallacy[0] where large percentage increases correspond to small absolute numbers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

wewtyflakes 5y ago
You said presumably, though the article gives specific numbers. Can you elaborate on what numbers or analysis would be reasonable as to not fall into the fallacy you also call out?
- mdoms 5y ago
  A significant proportion of the userbase would be a good start. If 118,000 users unsubscribed up from 40,000 then that's an increase of 78,000 people, or 0.04% of the subscriber base. Also, now this is total speculation, I'd hazard that a large number of these "new unsubscribers" have clicked on social media links to the cancellation page without following through with the cancellation.
  - wewtyflakes 5y ago
    That seems reasonable, but isn't this data set a sampling, since it appears to only capture the page viewing habits of people who have opted to install various browser extensions? If so, wouldn't that imply that the non-sampled numbers would be larger, and perhaps by a fair bit, assuming that the percentage of users who install these browser telemetry tools is small? I agree that if the numbers did not represent a sampling, but were in fact reflected a complete data set, then yes, they perhaps are a drop in the bucket.

lucis 5y ago

On my social bubble, an impressive amount of people have cancelled their premium accounts. I had a friend who had always recommended me trying out Youtube Music for their recommendation and I used the opportunity to switch, not looking back.. Somehow, Youtube Premium + Music for family is cheaper than Spotify Premium for family.

ralfn 5y ago
Good thing YouTube isn't full of misinformation.
- lucis 5y ago
  Not with a $200 million check from the platform, indeed.

progre 5y ago

I like spotify (I pay for the service) but I dont like anything about this. I don't like that spotify are doing "podcasts". For me, poscasts are the last (popular) vestiges of the old web. I wish they would remain platform-free. The creators own servers and an RSS feed. Total control for the creators, noone to ask for permisson. Tell me I'm dreaming. I don't like that Joe Rogan is on spotify. Never heard his show, I understand that he is some kind of post-radio chock-jock. However, I know that he is very popular so by bringing him on spotify is kind of cementing that spotify is how you do podcasts now. I don't like that spotify felt the need to remove some old episodes for him. If they are really doing podcast they should buy the whole hog, including the warts. I dont like that musicians are leaving spotify. Those that have very publicly left dont affect me much as it's not my style of music, but it's a bad trend. As a Swede i personally know people that pays the rent with spotify money. I don't like that that might end. Sorry for the rant

Shadonototra 5y ago

can we stop with this apple music propaganda already?