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I think Spotify is an outlier in a way that Netflix isn't. Spotify doesn't just let you stream music. Spotify: a) let's you stream music on any device that is

I think Spotify is an outlier in a way that Netflix isn't. Spotify doesn't just let you stream music. Spotify: a) let's you stream music on any device that is desktop/mobile/watch or has a browser. It's frictionless and uptime is as good as it gets based on my more than a decade of continuous use (over 8 hours daily) b) lets you search for artists directly (search artist, song, lyrics) or indirectly (similarity engine by way of radio or automatic playlist generation) c) let's you share your listening habits with friends d) let's you make friend playlists The top 3 are the killer features and the reason why I would not move to Tidal/Apple Music/bandcamp. None of these services have target those 3 areas anywhere near as good as Spotify has. While I could see myself buying albums from bandcamp, the lack of advanced music search or recommendation functionality as well as the inability to make playlists is just a deal breaker for me. The days where music listening was just playing an album on a loop are long gone just like the days where listening to music meant exclusively live music. In 2025, music discovery and music tagging (as in making playlists) is part of the music listening experience and any service that does not let me make that is sadly not going to make it. In addition to this, I feel that due to the way music is experience today but many young people means that music discovery and social sharing needs to be at heart of any service that aims for mass appeal. If your business model does not address social sharing or discovery as part of its listening experience, it is unlikely to succeed in my opinion. People listening to albums on repeat, people buying single albums, people not sharing their listening habits directly (i.e not by just mentioning the artist/song/album) are the minority. The future of popular music at least short terms leans heavily towards single songs over albums, streaming over downloads, subscription over purchases, social listening over individual listening. It's like people complaining of the inability of popular artits to project their voices without using amplifiers. Artists complaining about electrical instruments over acoustic ones. The wave is here to stay, you can ride with it or end up at the bottom of it never to be seen again.

jasode 2y ago
>The top 3 are the killer features and the reason why I would not move to Tidal/Apple Music/bandcamp. For regular people, the #1 reason they can't use Bandcamp is it doesn't have mainstream artists on the Big 3 Record Labels like Universal+Sony+Warner. In contrast, Bandcamp is deliberately designed for the smaller independent artists to upload and sell their music. If people want to listen to today's Taylor Swift or yesterday's Beatles and Led Zeppelin, that music is only (legally) found on the major subscription services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc. A very small hardcore subset buy Big Label artists music from HDTracks but that site doesn't have the selection of Spotify and it's a lot more expensive.
- netdevphoenix 2y ago
  The issue lies in that most honest "independent artists" do want to go mainstream. They don't want to stay "small" (I highly dislike that word). Hence, they go to the place where mainstream music listeners listen to music: spotify. I would be surprised if most non-techy folks know about bandcamp. Especially, the older generation who are often not very computer literate and will default to the mainstream option (windows for os, gmail/outlook for email, spotify/radio for music, google for search engine, etc). Young tech-savvy audiophiles, yes. But everyone else, most likely not.
  - chneu 2y ago
    I'd actually wager the opposite. I really doubt young people are going to Bandcamp much. While I know a ton of people over the age of 35 who use Bandcamp to keep up with old bands or friend's bands. SoundCloud was more popular with younger folks. "SoundCloud rapper".
    - netdevphoenix 2y ago
      That could very well be the case. A tiny minority nonetheless. A small demographic intersection likely made of old millenials and young Gen Xers. Music leaning heavily towards alternative, and away from edm and mainstream.
- chneu 2y ago
  Reminder that today is Artist Friday on Bandcamp. All sales go straight to the artists today. Bandcamp takes no cut.
rckt 2y ago
Oh, man. I get the social thing around these experiences. People nowadays asking me what I watched and the next question is it on Netflix? Yeah, alright. I don't want the life to roll back to old days, I'm completely fine with things going their way. The problem of subscription world is that it fucks you over in various ways, makes you spend more and more money and attention on stuff you don't really need or need in a much lower scale than your are forced to consume. It's a much deeper and bigger problem than just the social aspect or the aspect of convenience. And you simply don't own anything. It's like renting an apartment/house for life instead of buying one. And your rent service can be shut down at any time. I'm just not ok with this. It may be fine with young people, but the moment you start taking life seriously it becomes obvious how wrong everything is.
- netdevphoenix 2y ago
  I agree with you on "makes you spend more and more money and attention on stuff you don't really need" but sadly this is just sometimes we have to live with and learn to control on our own or with the help of the market. Is like junk food or any other byproducts of capitalism that might not be good for us. They are not going away. We have to learn to live with them (more self-control, regulation to make it less addictive, reducing usage). As with other things capitalism, eventually an industry will grow to tackle this, it will be like Ozempic but for people with short attention spans low self-control. Regarding your "you simply don't own anything". Leaving aside the financial aspect of it, this is a purely philosophical matter. You could say that owning and streaming are means to experiences. You have more individual control over one than the other. But at the end of the day, for most people, not being able to have a say on whether they can access a given movie or song is not a big deal. Mass media is mostly a commodity. And especifically a commodity they are happy to pay someone else to manage. Sure, a pop artist might remove her music but there is thousands of other pop artists there. You can replace pop for any niche style you might fancy. If you are one of those who finds a specific media artifact not a commodity, then you have the ability to acquire and preserve a copy of that artifact. That carries its own problems of course (loss, corruption, access issues, reliability, etc). In the age of internet, if Spotify collapses, a competitor will fill the market with pretty much the same functionality. Makes no difference to you. A company removing a song or a movie from your service means you have to search for it in the bay of the pirates instead of your favourite streaming service. Either way, you will have access to it. When folks talk about owning your email server or having your own customised OS. Most people are not interest in the benefits that the ownership entails and are happy to pay directly or indirectly for a third party to manage it for them. The things people care about are the same as 2000 years ago. Their friends, their family, their love life, their work. The consequences of ownership of media ranks very low in the vast majority of the population.

jasode 2y ago

>The top 3 are the killer features and the reason why I would not move to Tidal/Apple Music/bandcamp. For regular people, the #1 reason they can't use Bandcamp is it doesn't have mainstream artists on the Big 3 Record Labels like Universal+Sony+Warner. In contrast, Bandcamp is deliberately designed for the smaller independent artists to upload and sell their music. If people want to listen to today's Taylor Swift or yesterday's Beatles and Led Zeppelin, that music is only (legally) found on the major subscription services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc. A very small hardcore subset buy Big Label artists music from HDTracks but that site doesn't have the selection of Spotify and it's a lot more expensive.

netdevphoenix 2y ago
The issue lies in that most honest "independent artists" do want to go mainstream. They don't want to stay "small" (I highly dislike that word). Hence, they go to the place where mainstream music listeners listen to music: spotify. I would be surprised if most non-techy folks know about bandcamp. Especially, the older generation who are often not very computer literate and will default to the mainstream option (windows for os, gmail/outlook for email, spotify/radio for music, google for search engine, etc). Young tech-savvy audiophiles, yes. But everyone else, most likely not.
- chneu 2y ago
  I'd actually wager the opposite. I really doubt young people are going to Bandcamp much. While I know a ton of people over the age of 35 who use Bandcamp to keep up with old bands or friend's bands. SoundCloud was more popular with younger folks. "SoundCloud rapper".
  - netdevphoenix 2y ago
    That could very well be the case. A tiny minority nonetheless. A small demographic intersection likely made of old millenials and young Gen Xers. Music leaning heavily towards alternative, and away from edm and mainstream.
chneu 2y ago
Reminder that today is Artist Friday on Bandcamp. All sales go straight to the artists today. Bandcamp takes no cut.

rckt 2y ago

Oh, man. I get the social thing around these experiences. People nowadays asking me what I watched and the next question is it on Netflix? Yeah, alright. I don't want the life to roll back to old days, I'm completely fine with things going their way. The problem of subscription world is that it fucks you over in various ways, makes you spend more and more money and attention on stuff you don't really need or need in a much lower scale than your are forced to consume. It's a much deeper and bigger problem than just the social aspect or the aspect of convenience. And you simply don't own anything. It's like renting an apartment/house for life instead of buying one. And your rent service can be shut down at any time. I'm just not ok with this. It may be fine with young people, but the moment you start taking life seriously it becomes obvious how wrong everything is.

netdevphoenix 2y ago
I agree with you on "makes you spend more and more money and attention on stuff you don't really need" but sadly this is just sometimes we have to live with and learn to control on our own or with the help of the market. Is like junk food or any other byproducts of capitalism that might not be good for us. They are not going away. We have to learn to live with them (more self-control, regulation to make it less addictive, reducing usage). As with other things capitalism, eventually an industry will grow to tackle this, it will be like Ozempic but for people with short attention spans low self-control. Regarding your "you simply don't own anything". Leaving aside the financial aspect of it, this is a purely philosophical matter. You could say that owning and streaming are means to experiences. You have more individual control over one than the other. But at the end of the day, for most people, not being able to have a say on whether they can access a given movie or song is not a big deal. Mass media is mostly a commodity. And especifically a commodity they are happy to pay someone else to manage. Sure, a pop artist might remove her music but there is thousands of other pop artists there. You can replace pop for any niche style you might fancy. If you are one of those who finds a specific media artifact not a commodity, then you have the ability to acquire and preserve a copy of that artifact. That carries its own problems of course (loss, corruption, access issues, reliability, etc). In the age of internet, if Spotify collapses, a competitor will fill the market with pretty much the same functionality. Makes no difference to you. A company removing a song or a movie from your service means you have to search for it in the bay of the pirates instead of your favourite streaming service. Either way, you will have access to it. When folks talk about owning your email server or having your own customised OS. Most people are not interest in the benefits that the ownership entails and are happy to pay directly or indirectly for a third party to manage it for them. The things people care about are the same as 2000 years ago. Their friends, their family, their love life, their work. The consequences of ownership of media ranks very low in the vast majority of the population.