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What boils my blood the most about this is the fact Spotify lured developers in the early days, filled out their functional gaps and got free feature validation
by pjmq 4y ago
What boils my blood the most about this is the fact Spotify lured developers in the early days, filled out their functional gaps and got free feature validation through those developers, bought and shuttered the Echonest to ensure devs would mostly only build for Spotify and its (Premium) subscriber base and then invested nothing into the developer ecosystem after that, instead chipping away at the existing tools and stopped responding to developers emails.
It feels like Spotify showed music devs a green pasture and then corralled them into a slaughter pit (so to speak).
- matkoniecz 4y agoThis seems standard and entirely predictable progression of events, given that everything depended on proprietary, centrally controlled software and enormous pile of contracts? Has anyone expected anything else?
- pjmq 4y agoYou're not wrong. But if Spotify doesn't want to allow developers to be lab rats for wild and whacky ideas that are too risky for them to try themselves but could eventually either become or reveal the next big thing, they're leaving themselves wide open to major disruption.
- matkoniecz 4y agoI hope so! Not entirely is it true, network effects may be really powerful here. And "negotiate with 18383838 copyright holders" is not a small task.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoThis was a financial executive decision for sure. A lot of those tend to be hostile towards paying customers.