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There's a fundamental reality that shapes both Netflix and Spotify's trajectory: content licensing. 2012 Netflix had access to vastly more of everyone else's li
by dswalter 1y ago
There's a fundamental reality that shapes both Netflix and Spotify's trajectory: content licensing. 2012 Netflix had access to vastly more of everyone else's library, so it was closer to an indexed search of what was available that one could watch and then getting that video onto your screen. Over time, other companies understood that they were underpricing their content and Netflix was reaping the benefits. Once external forces adjusted, the TV/film bidding wars began. Today, netflix doesn't have nearly as much content as they used to have.
That risk (losing all content and facing extinction) is what pushed Netflix in the direction of being a content-producer, rather than a content aggregator. I agree with everyone's points on the influence of the median user in diluting the quality of the content Netflix produces, but that's not the only forced that pushed us here. Spotify faced a similar crossroads and decided to broaden beyond music once they started losing bidding wars for licensing.
Being a faster horse wasn't an option available to either Netflix or Spotify; there is no path for a 'better 2012 version of netflix or spotify' in 2025. They each had to change species or die, and they chose to keep living.
- esperent 1y ago> Spotify faced a similar crossroads and decided to broaden beyond music once they started losing bidding wars for licensing. I wasn't aware that Spotify lacked much in the way of mainstream western music. Are they having licensing issues?
- barbazoo 1y agoIf they do then it's not noticeable by the average user.
- VanTheBrand 1y agoIt’s less obvious than with Netflix because the songs don’t completely disappear. Spotify pays different rates for different songs depending on the label so there are certain songs they’d rather you not listen to and other content it’s much cheaper for them if you listen to so they push you to that content.
- stavros 1y agoLots of songs do completely disappear.
- lazystar 1y agodidnt neil young pull his stuff from spotify in protest?
- esperent 1y agoYes but only for a couple of months.
- mrWiz 1y agoJust today two of the albums Spotify recommend to me as "Discover this" were unavailable, so they seem to be having some sort of issue with that.
- al_borland 1y agoApple Music still offers library management, with their entire catalog to choose from. They try to play all sides, with algorithmic playback, radio, add to library, and playlists. Adding to library and playlists do seem to be core features, but I’m curious how many people put in the effort when it’s not explicitly required.
- bloppe 1y agoIs that different from Spotify? Am I using Spotify wrong? I mostly just curate and listen to my own playlists
- cpmsmith 1y agoApple Music's library features much more closely mirror the iTunes style, i.e. you have a library you can browse outside of just the "liked songs" pseudo-playlist. For instance, in Spotify (AFAICT) there's no way to browse all the songs in your library by artist; you can only list the artists you've followed, which is unrelated to whose songs you've liked, and go to their general artist page. Personally, this is the top contender for a reason for me to switch away from Spotify.
- al_borland 1y agoDoes Spotify have a library option? I haven’t been a heavy Spotify user, but last time I tried it, it seemed like I could “follow” artists as a proxy to adding something to a library, but I found it all pretty confusing. I know they have playlists, but I was looking more of the feature like, “these are all the songs I’m interested in, that I will use to build my playlists or shuffle… because I don’t want to try and remember everything as I wade through a 60m track library of all the songs available on Spotify.”
- mr_mitm 1y agoYou can like songs, which will then be added to your playlist of liked songs. Sounds like that's waht you want.
- titzer 1y agoSo glad I collect physical media of all the good stuff.
- crote 1y ago> They each had to change species or die, and they chose to keep living. Did they, though? 2025 Netflix is extremely close to having a worse UX than piracy, and it's already far more expensive. Are people going to pay a fortune for Netflix when their handy nephew can hook them up to his far superior Jellyfin instance for a sixpack of beer? It's a tragedy of the commons, really. The whole value is in having a complete catalogue available for the casual viewer, and making $10-$20 from someone wanting to watch a random decade-old movie twice a month or so. Break up that catalogue into twenty different services each charging $15, and that same casual viewer isn't going to subscribe to a single one of them. If the streaming industry doesn't get its shit together they are either going to lose viewers to piracy, or to a completely different medium.
- kowbell 1y agoYou are overestimating how many people have access to a piracy nephew by a very, very large margin. And even if we all knew a privacy nephew, they're very quickly going to stop responding to incessant requests for more content. And they won't be available 24/7.