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I'm also unsure of any innovation Spotify has made in the world of music. Some searching has led me to the end of year recaps and a lot about advertising. Gues

I'm also unsure of any innovation Spotify has made in the world of music. Some searching has led me to the end of year recaps and a lot about advertising. Guess France will miss out.

dawatchusay 3y ago
From my perspective they made streaming a vast catalogue of music legally a business. I’ve been a user for a long time and been able to discover a lot on their platform although I must admit quality of recommendations seems to be falling lately. Last.fm was great at that
AmericanChopper 3y ago
It’s amazing that somebody could say this with a straight face. Spotify are so successfully innovative that they basically ended music piracy.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  I thought that was apple and pandora?
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    Pandora was an alternative to radio, not to pirating music, and Apple probably contributed more to music piracy than any other company. Nobody was filling their iPods to the brim with $0.99 songs, they were filling them up with pirated songs that they imported into iTunes.
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  If only the UX wasn't god awful shitgarbage. It manages to be underfeatured and obscure and just plain annoying (can I please see all music by the artist?) at the same time. A friend told me that UX designers he used to work with used to mock Spotify and took it as an example for how not to do things. A private collection and a player like Clementine is so much nicer. It's not like Spotify has everything, anyway. Not even original versions of songs if anyone released an arbitrarily bad remaster.
  - Shish2k 3y ago
    Back when they were in the “acquire users” phase (when all of this innovation was happening) the UX was much better. Now they have acquired users and are in the “exctract value” stage it’s all going to hell ;(
- tomjen3 3y ago
  99c on iTunes and later streaming on Groveshark killed mp3 sharing. Spotify cleaned up the legalities of it, but they weren't (and still are not) innovating.
- moate 3y ago
  I’m sure the corpos that it hurt are grateful, but who cares from the consumer or artists side? Piracy is a costing problem and Spotify’s solution is “keep costs to the consumer low and money in our pockets by keeping it out of the artists’ hands”. Piracy was also the leverage they originally had on the labels (better to collect 5 cents than nothing, right?) before network effect and inertia took over. They didn’t kill piracy, they co-opted it.
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    > I’m sure the corpos that it hurt are grateful, but who cares from the consumer or artists side? The reason Spotify was able to out-compete piracy (which is ostensibly free) is because it provided a substantially better experience to users. I’m sure the artists don’t get a great deal out of it, but it seems weird to blame that on streaming. Artists losing out to big business has been the entire model of the music industry since forever. In any case, even if you think Spotify is fundamentally evil, and their innovations are extremely harmful, that doesn’t take anything away from how innovative they were. Which is very, very innovative. They completely changed the whole music industry world wide. > They didn’t kill piracy, they co-opted it. Trying to claim that one company licensing a music catalog, and then selling it to consumers is “piracy” is a terrible take, and just makes you look like you have some weird and extreme views on this topic.
vsnf 3y ago
Those end of year recaps are a highlight for me. I really look forward to it every year, along with comparing against my friends. They also have a really nice API, which has admittedly been getting more and more locked down, but to claim it was not innovative, especially at the time, is farcical. All this without even mentioning, as other posters have, their effect on legitimizing music streaming. Also, and each user has anecdotally different experiences here, their music recommendations for me are top notch. I've discovered just so, so many pieces of great music through their service.
solumunus 3y ago
I used to pirate everything and then Spotify came along, since Spotify I have not pirated once. I’ve used it almost every day for over 10 years. I listen to much more diverse music now. This experience is commonplace. I would say completely changing how a generation consumes music is innovative.
impulser_ 3y ago
You might think this if you listen to mostly pop music, but I remember the day of having to find pirated uploads on YouTube or pirate the music myself just to listen to music that wasn't from a major label. There was grooveshark but that was pirated music. Spotify was the first streaming service to let you listen to any type of music from any place in the world. The only place to do that before them was YouTube but this was before you could listen to YouTube videos in audio format. Spotify has best in class discoverability with generative playlists and recommendations for any type of music. You can find Spotify generative playlist for the most niche music genres. I uploaded a single electronic music track on Spotify 10 years ago without using a label or advertising it other than to a few friends on FB and it has 100k plays. The same song on YouTube has a few 100 plays. Again if you just use Spotify to listen to popular music then yeah it will definitely feel like it not much compared to anything else, but if you listen to a lot of music and different types of music there is no match to Spotify.

I'm also unsure of any innovation Spotify has made in the world of music. Some searching has led me to the end of year recaps and a lot about advertising. Guess France will miss out.

dawatchusay 3y ago

From my perspective they made streaming a vast catalogue of music legally a business. I’ve been a user for a long time and been able to discover a lot on their platform although I must admit quality of recommendations seems to be falling lately. Last.fm was great at that

AmericanChopper 3y ago

It’s amazing that somebody could say this with a straight face. Spotify are so successfully innovative that they basically ended music piracy.

edgyquant 3y ago
I thought that was apple and pandora?
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  Pandora was an alternative to radio, not to pirating music, and Apple probably contributed more to music piracy than any other company. Nobody was filling their iPods to the brim with $0.99 songs, they were filling them up with pirated songs that they imported into iTunes.
ahartmetz 3y ago
If only the UX wasn't god awful shitgarbage. It manages to be underfeatured and obscure and just plain annoying (can I please see all music by the artist?) at the same time. A friend told me that UX designers he used to work with used to mock Spotify and took it as an example for how not to do things. A private collection and a player like Clementine is so much nicer. It's not like Spotify has everything, anyway. Not even original versions of songs if anyone released an arbitrarily bad remaster.
- Shish2k 3y ago
  Back when they were in the “acquire users” phase (when all of this innovation was happening) the UX was much better. Now they have acquired users and are in the “exctract value” stage it’s all going to hell ;(
tomjen3 3y ago
99c on iTunes and later streaming on Groveshark killed mp3 sharing. Spotify cleaned up the legalities of it, but they weren't (and still are not) innovating.
moate 3y ago
I’m sure the corpos that it hurt are grateful, but who cares from the consumer or artists side? Piracy is a costing problem and Spotify’s solution is “keep costs to the consumer low and money in our pockets by keeping it out of the artists’ hands”. Piracy was also the leverage they originally had on the labels (better to collect 5 cents than nothing, right?) before network effect and inertia took over. They didn’t kill piracy, they co-opted it.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  > I’m sure the corpos that it hurt are grateful, but who cares from the consumer or artists side? The reason Spotify was able to out-compete piracy (which is ostensibly free) is because it provided a substantially better experience to users. I’m sure the artists don’t get a great deal out of it, but it seems weird to blame that on streaming. Artists losing out to big business has been the entire model of the music industry since forever. In any case, even if you think Spotify is fundamentally evil, and their innovations are extremely harmful, that doesn’t take anything away from how innovative they were. Which is very, very innovative. They completely changed the whole music industry world wide. > They didn’t kill piracy, they co-opted it. Trying to claim that one company licensing a music catalog, and then selling it to consumers is “piracy” is a terrible take, and just makes you look like you have some weird and extreme views on this topic.

vsnf 3y ago

Those end of year recaps are a highlight for me. I really look forward to it every year, along with comparing against my friends. They also have a really nice API, which has admittedly been getting more and more locked down, but to claim it was not innovative, especially at the time, is farcical. All this without even mentioning, as other posters have, their effect on legitimizing music streaming. Also, and each user has anecdotally different experiences here, their music recommendations for me are top notch. I've discovered just so, so many pieces of great music through their service.

solumunus 3y ago

I used to pirate everything and then Spotify came along, since Spotify I have not pirated once. I’ve used it almost every day for over 10 years. I listen to much more diverse music now. This experience is commonplace. I would say completely changing how a generation consumes music is innovative.

impulser_ 3y ago

You might think this if you listen to mostly pop music, but I remember the day of having to find pirated uploads on YouTube or pirate the music myself just to listen to music that wasn't from a major label. There was grooveshark but that was pirated music. Spotify was the first streaming service to let you listen to any type of music from any place in the world. The only place to do that before them was YouTube but this was before you could listen to YouTube videos in audio format. Spotify has best in class discoverability with generative playlists and recommendations for any type of music. You can find Spotify generative playlist for the most niche music genres. I uploaded a single electronic music track on Spotify 10 years ago without using a label or advertising it other than to a few friends on FB and it has 100k plays. The same song on YouTube has a few 100 plays. Again if you just use Spotify to listen to popular music then yeah it will definitely feel like it not much compared to anything else, but if you listen to a lot of music and different types of music there is no match to Spotify.