4 ms·

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.

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.