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The observation that Spotify is in business solely to increase its own capitalization and not directly for music-related reasons ties in nicely to this post: h

by kenko 13y ago

The observation that Spotify is in business solely to increase its own capitalization and not directly for music-related reasons ties in nicely to this post: https://itself.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/like-a-business/ https://itself.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/like-a-business/ Spotify appears to be an organization related in some way to music, but in fact its purpose is merely to turn money into more money. This is not the way many businesses in the real world actually operate, and a good thing, too, because operating that way is pretty toxic.

blibble 13y ago
isn't that exactly what every single company aims to do? the music is a means to an end, the end being making money for the shareholders...
- kzrdude 13y ago
  Running a bubble of investment capital without breaking even is a broken model. Inflating a company to biggest possible size is a broken model too (the company does only become less effective with size).
- kenko 13y ago
  No, as the linked post points out. Many businesses do not have the goal of simply turning money into more money. For a long time, the goal of GM was to make cars. It would be insane to open, say, a used bookstore if making money were your sole goal. But some people are really into books and want to buy and sell them, not necessarily even running their businesses in the most ruthlessly efficient way for making money. That's not what they're into. There are businesses whose goal it is to make, say, quality hand tools, or knives. There are businesses that deliberately manage how many clients they take on in order to ensure that they can turn out a quality product, even though a less good product would probably not be detectable by their clientele and would increase their profits. This is known as having pride in one's profession or in one's craftsmanship. Of course they also have to make money to stay in business. There's a famous example of a largely technological company rejecting the mantra that their purpose is to turn money into more money---Craigslist. There's also a famous if apocryphal example of an individual programmer having the kind of pride in craft that would lead to the decision not to do something that would increase profits, namely the Story of Mel. The whole shareholder thing is a stupid myth that needs to die, anyway.

by kenko 13y ago

blibble 13y ago

isn't that exactly what every single company aims to do? the music is a means to an end, the end being making money for the shareholders...

kzrdude 13y ago
Running a bubble of investment capital without breaking even is a broken model. Inflating a company to biggest possible size is a broken model too (the company does only become less effective with size).
kenko 13y ago
No, as the linked post points out. Many businesses do not have the goal of simply turning money into more money. For a long time, the goal of GM was to make cars. It would be insane to open, say, a used bookstore if making money were your sole goal. But some people are really into books and want to buy and sell them, not necessarily even running their businesses in the most ruthlessly efficient way for making money. That's not what they're into. There are businesses whose goal it is to make, say, quality hand tools, or knives. There are businesses that deliberately manage how many clients they take on in order to ensure that they can turn out a quality product, even though a less good product would probably not be detectable by their clientele and would increase their profits. This is known as having pride in one's profession or in one's craftsmanship. Of course they also have to make money to stay in business. There's a famous example of a largely technological company rejecting the mantra that their purpose is to turn money into more money---Craigslist. There's also a famous if apocryphal example of an individual programmer having the kind of pride in craft that would lead to the decision not to do something that would increase profits, namely the Story of Mel. The whole shareholder thing is a stupid myth that needs to die, anyway.