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I dunno, maybe if Spotify wasn't spending hundreds of million on podcast deals and actually focusing on what its users want, they wouldn't need to lay people of
by jzb 4y ago
I dunno, maybe if Spotify wasn't spending hundreds of million on podcast deals and actually focusing on what its users want, they wouldn't need to lay people off.
Any way you slice it, there's no way that the Rogan deal pays for itself. Spotify is stingy AF with the artists that drove people to the service, and then firehoses Rogan with cash and tries to shove podcasts down people's throats. I was a happy Spotify subscriber for a long time but they just kept making the service worse while ratcheting up prices.
- nivenkos 4y agoBut Spotify doesn't pay the artists directly, the deals are with the record companies. The real issue here seems to be over-hiring and a lot of acquisitions for all sorts of marginal stuff like video podcasts, audiobooks, etc.
- missedthecue 4y agoIf they don't have enough work for their workforce, would you still say they're morally obligated to keep writing paychecks?
- jjulius 4y ago>If they don't have enough work for their workforce, would you still say they're morally obligated to keep writing paychecks? Where does OP say that Spotify is "morally obligated to keep writing paychecks"?
- missedthecue 4y agoHe didn't, hence why my comment has a question mark.
- jjulius 4y ago>He didn't... >... would you still say...
- sarchertech 4y agoWhat does a recession have to do with the amount of work you have for employees to do? If a recession causes 5% of their subscribers to cancel, it’s not like there’s 5% less work to do company wide. If the company hired more people than they have work for, it likely has little to do with a possible recession. In the case where it is true that they have too many employees, I think there is a moral responsibility to attempt to find profitable work for those employees. Or to at least ride it out and make a smaller profit in the lean years if it doesn’t seriously endanger the health of the company. Corporations aren’t merely groups of people, they have been granted additional legal rights like limited liability. I’m fine with laws that say something to the effect that in exchange for limited liability, corporations over a certain size must give some consideration to the employee welfare. Many countries require that workers have board representatives.
- mjr00 4y ago> I dunno, maybe if Spotify wasn't spending hundreds of million on podcast deals and actually focusing on what its users want, they wouldn't need to lay people off. One of the people specifically called out is Chief Content Officer Dawn Ostroff, who "decided to depart," which is how you phrase C-level firings when they coincide with layoffs. I imagine that the disastrous podcast deals with the royals and Obamas had something to do with that.
- jzb 4y agoThat's good but hardly good enough. No way they drove those deals without the CEO's buy-in.
- ghaff 4y agoI confess I don't get the big ticket podcast exclusives. But, then, I basically never listed to any of the "big name" talk radio shows either (and even actively avoided them).
- Reimersholme 4y agoWhat's weirder to me is how I can't remember even seeing them advertised within Spotify. I know there are some really need content Spotify is producing, but the ones I'm aware off I've generally found by accident somewhere on the Internet, never through their own UI.
- pc86 4y agoCan we switch accounts? I have listened to exactly 1/2 of one episode of a podcast on Spotify and now have to actively navigate away from the main page of the app if I want to do what I do the other ~99.9% of the time, which is listen to one of a handful of playlists or try to find other similar music.
- scarface74 4y agoStreaming music has always been a very bad business. No matter how much Spotify grows, it will only make 30% gross margins. Almost the definition of a tech company is one that has high fixed costs and low to almost 0 marginal cost and can take advantage of scale. Spotify doesn’t have that. At least with podcasts, they don’t have to pay a third party for each additional user. Spotify suffers from the “Dropbox problem”. Streaming music is a feature not a product.
- saurik 4y agoAnyone can build and add Dropbox-like functionality to their product suite (and I was even involved in a couple such efforts a while back)... but Spotify is not at all like that, in that not only is having the music licenses they have more than just some engineering work, people bring their music to Spotify, and so you can't even have a few ins and a major investor and then try and quickly get the same licenses to have the same service as you would still be missing essentially all of the music I listen to on Spotify.
- ben7799 4y agoVery few actually feel good about bringing their music to spotify. Other than the very few giant artists getting the sweetheart deals with guaranteed payouts most feel like they're forced to bring their music to spotify even though they know the whole thing is just bad.
- saurik 4y agoI don't understand how this detail changes anything: you still can't just build a competitor to Spotify and magically have all of its music.
- scarface74 4y agoYou don’t need all of its music. You need the three major music producers and the rest will come. But that’s not the point. The “feature not a product” saying means that a major company has your entire reason for existing as a feature in their product. Streaming music is already just a feature for Apple and Amazon. Just like today, you wouldn’t create a separate spell checker application like in the 80s.
- randomifcpfan 4y agoBlame music publishers. They are the ones raising prices and paying artists pennies. Spotify has no power to change this. Spotify is/was spending heavily on podcasts to try to create a new revenue stream with better economics.
- jzb 4y agoSpotify has plenty of power to change this and it's disingenuous to argue otherwise. Spotify has lobbied hard to affect royalty rates for music / songwriters and keep them low. Certainly the music publishers / labels are also to blame, but Spotify isn't innocent. Also - Spotify wanted Podcasts so they went to the podcasters and made deals. Spotify is apparently paying to create royalty free music it can insert into playlists. Spotify could just as easily be making direct deals with, say, indie music artists or wooing bands away from major labels if it wanted to focus on music. It's not. It's aiming for the streaming service equivalent of reality TV instead but paying big money for them instead of to musicians.
- overgard 4y agoI forget where I heard this, I think it was on Breaking Points, but I think Rogan's audience is bigger than CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News combined. I doubt they regret the Rogan deal.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ohyoutravel 4y agoApropos of little, I cancelled my family Spotify plan because of the Joe Rogan deal and moved to Apple Music. Totally forgot that’s the reason I moved us until your comment.
- snird 4y agoI moved when Rogan hosted Roger Waters, who kept saying anti-semitic things with no push back at all. Spotify aligning themselves with content, any content, made them a publisher and not a software company. That's their biggest mistake.
- AlwaysRock 4y ago> Any way you slice it, there's no way that the Rogan deal pays for itself. Especially when you still get ads on podcasts. Listening to any podcast on Spotify is so frustrating because I pay for the service and STILL get a half dozen ads an episode.
- pm90 4y agoRight, it seemed like a greedy move. Apple podcast app is just fine imo.
- selfawareMammal 4y agoSorry but how's Spotify's service worse?
- waylandsmithers 4y agoNot to mention their podcast deals are bad for the consumer- Spotify was and is great because people _wanted_ to pay a monthly fee for access to (nearly) unlimited music instead of buying albums. Podcasts on the other hand already worked great before Spotify started taking them exclusive.