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Desperation? How do you figure? They have a sweet partnership with Facebook. That doesn't sound desperate to me. We don't know it's a sweet deal. My gut feelin
by waitwhat 15y ago
Desperation? How do you figure? They have a sweet partnership with Facebook. That doesn't sound desperate to me.
We don't know it's a sweet deal. My gut feeling is that it isn't, but that's by-the-by. We don't know anything.
Slightly more legit? I think the phrase you are looking for is "completely legit, as opposed to some of the others who are lawsuit-bait-on-a-stick.
From the point of view of the users it really is only slightly more legit. From the point of view of the content providers, slightly less legit is not the same as illegal, and from the point of view of the service providers, legal and and a one-off court case is better than legal and ongoing licensing fees.
You also appear to be assuming that Spotify are the only licensed game in town, and will continue to be. This is, of course, trivially untrue (Rhapsody).
Only if that other provider had the same kind of licenses with the record labels. At this point, Spotify is far ahead of the pack at that game.
You appear to be assuming that getting those licenses is difficult. It really isn't. If Spotify managed it, any competent competitor can also do it -- after all, the labels have no particular loyalty to a small Swedish online radio network.
- michael_dorfman 15y agoYou appear to be assuming that getting those licenses is difficult. It really isn't. If Spotify managed it, any competent competitor can also do it -- after all, the labels have no particular loyalty to a small Swedish online radio network. Spotify is far from a small Swedish online radio network; here in Europe they are far and away the market leader. They have over a million accounts in Norway alone, which is phenomenal penetration in a country of 5 million. Second, getting those licenses was incredibly difficult for them; the negotiations to enter the US market took several years. There is absolutely no indication that the record labels are prepared to give similar terms, or even any terms at all, to other competitors. Again, here in Europe, I know of several firms attempting to compete with Spotify, and they are getting hung up on precisely this point.
- waitwhat 15y agoSpotify really is tiny. They make "a profit of €5m or less" -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/28/spotify-on-track-first-profit http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/28/spotify-on-...
- chalst 15y agoYou are right, they are not big, but turnover (Eur 59mn) is the P&L metric that counts as a matter of size, not profit. Or you can have fun with GM having become massively negatively sized when it reported a $4.3bn loss in 2009...
- waitwhat 15y agoSure. And if you compare Spotify's turnover with that of the big dogs I mentioned earlier (Apple, Google, Amazon) with whom they are bound to eventually compete directly, they are still tiny.