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Spotify Raises $250 Million, Valued Above $4 Billion
- cylinder 13y agoSirius XM is valued at $22 billion; I am not very bullish on their business model long-term. I would say Spotify has a brighter future.
- Yhippa 13y agoI am subscribed to SiriusXM and Spotify. The reason I still have the SiriusXM subscription is because of their DJs which are presently much better than any of the music discovery functionality of Pandora, iTunes Radio, or whatever. If someone can come up with a recommendation engine that would knock that out of the park, I can see SiriusXM being done.
- madsushi 13y agoSpotify makes an amazing product. I went from spending hundreds a year on CDs and MP3s to just paying their subscription fee. It's like Netflix for music, except they actually have EVERYTHING you want and it's there the minute it comes out in stores.
- samolang 13y agoI love Spotify, but they don't have EVERYTHING. Most notably they're missing The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
- makmanalp 13y agoAnd Tool. I think it's a conscious decision on part of those bands / rightsholders since they know that fans will go buy their music anyway, so they don't have to settle for the cheap stream fees.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mwilcox 13y agoThis is why I like Google Play Music, you can upload 20,000 of your own songs to fill in the gaps (which are increasingly few and far between)
- veverkap 13y agoI have Google Play and Spotify. I typically play local files through Spotify and that fills in the blanks as well.
- sbrother 13y agoAnd Thom Yorke. Which doesn't stop them from telling me "You haven't listened to much Thom Yorke recently, want to now?".
- madsushi 13y agoI should've said "EVERYTHING.... that I like to listen to". There are definitely gaps.
- mcone 13y agoHonestly, I still think Rdio has a better product.
- tcoppi 13y agoWhy do you think it is better? I recently started subscribing to Spotify, and really the only thing I could tell that was meaningfully different between them, Rdio, and Google Play Music was that Spotify has a native client on every platform I use.
- dominotw 13y agoJust compare streaming on mobile apps side by side you would know how terrible rdio is.
- bithive123 13y agoI have and I regret to inform you that your opinion is wrong. Things that Rdio does better than Spotify: - Ability to assemble a collection of albums instead of just playlists. - Ability to use the client on one device to control another, without having to configure anything.
- dominotw 13y agoI regret to inform you that you are a moron. Did you even read my statement? I am specifically talking about 'streaming'.
- dominotw 13y agoAfter using Rdio for 2 years I 've finally decided to move on ( to spotify). Here are the reasons why 1. Iphone app : a)one my major complaints was that the app never recovers from spotty connection. When network goes down music goes down which is expected ( kind of , why doesnt the app buffer music?) but when network comes back music never comes back. b) Non existent buffering: Please take a leaf from pandora's book and look at how fast their music streams under spotty(any) connection. I kept thinking 'hey they are new, they'll figure it out soon', but nothing after 2 years. c) App keeps crashing: i've had several incidents where app crashes and never recovers so i have to completely uninstall and reinstall the app ( and re download al the offline music). unacceptable. The app i have now on my phone crashes every time when it comes up( which was kind of the final straw). I can send you crash logs if you want. 2. Desktop App: Super flakey. It is gone for hours every-couple of days. All I see is a blank screen ( right click reload does nothing) . There was more than one occasion where I had to completly uninstall and reinstall the app. I could go on forever, but it boils down to this - stop doing constant/minor/useless UI improvements, UI is not as important as you guys think it is, if the apps are barely functional.
- wil421 13y agoSpotify needs to fix their android app I have been having major problems on my S4 recently. I am about to jump ship. I can see how they can be worth 4 billion but how can snapchat be worth almost as much.
- icpmacdo 13y agoAnd somehow still not available in Canada...
- a3voices 13y agoFunny how Bitcoins are available in Canada before Spotify.
- majani 13y agoIt is, if you Google hard enough ;-)
- Shebanator 13y agoBlame Canada! http://static2.fjcdn.com/comments/I+m+american+we+always+blame+Canada+_cce759cacbd20ad1150f8f730be3cb41.jpg http://static2.fjcdn.com/comments/I+m+american+we+always+bla...
- joeconway 13y agoI find myself torn with Spotify. I _really_ love the product and company and probably use it at a minimum 5 hours a day every single day. However I really wish artists actually earnt money from it. http://lowerdens.tumblr.com/post/34308869231/on-spotify-and-music-consumption http://lowerdens.tumblr.com/post/34308869231/on-spotify-and-...
- guard-of-terra 13y agoWhy don't you donate/crowdfund and sew that tear?
- joeconway 13y agoYeah, I try and do what I can to help artists I like. Unfortunately (and bizarrely) I think most people couldn't care less about the artist once they have the music.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoWhy not let them? Most people don't care much about music and don't get much from it either. That's the point of freemium/cheapium/dontcarium.
- evv 13y agoIf you really listen 5 hours a day, Spotify pays nearly 4x for your music as you pay to them. (calculated with 300hrs/mo, 3.5min/song, and $.0075/song) Good thing they have so much VC money to keep the lights on for a while.
- AhtiK 13y agoI am disappointed that the most expensive package (Premium) that was advertised for offline usage does not allow putting the music to iPod/mp3 players. They do advertise that you can sync your music with iPod but they fail to communicate that you can NOT put Spotify music on it. Spotify client works as an iPod sync client but syncs ONLY the mp3 files you have downloaded from other sources. So my only option is to take the music from Spotify to my training&walks by carrying an Android or iOS device. But those are way bigger than ipod nano etc.
- johansch 13y agoI think you have misunderstood things. There are two different ways of listening to Spotify on an iOS device a) iPod sync, like you mention - only your local mp3 files b) via the Spotify client, online or offline. see e.g. http://blog.laptopmag.com/people-follow-spotify http://blog.laptopmag.com/people-follow-spotify
- AhtiK 13y agoSorry, I wasn't clear enough. My issue is that in order to listen to Spotify songs offline users still needs a Spotify client. Whenever they advertise iPod/mp3 player sync one obviously thinks that one can transfer the music to a regular iPod. For me this is misleading. (1) But yes, I should have read https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/guides/#!/article/How-to-sync-iPod-with-Spotify https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/guides/#!/article/... first. They do warn about it. Yes, iOS supports also iPod sync for local mp3 files in addition to Spotify client but it's a rather useless feature for most. There is no clear reason why iPod sync in Spotify is necessary at all, it is confusing the offering as it has no relevance to the music that Spotify as a service offers. (1) https://www.spotify.com/us/#premium https://www.spotify.com/us/#premium Listen on all your devices Download music & listen offline
- johansch 13y agoI think they just added the local mp3 sync feature to avoid having to use the horrid iTunes client for that. Agree it's a bit out of place, unless you are a very particular kind of user.
- joelle 13y agoI happily pay $9 bucks a month for spotify. It's one bill I'm not bummed out to pay each month. I get at least that much value out of it - probably more. Love that they're gettin' after it.
- logicallee 13y agoNot only do you get more value out of it - even Spotify's cost is more than they're charging! From the article: > Spotify's losses have also widened amid expensive licensing agreements and hefty costs related to expansion into a bevy of new markets.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoI dropped Spotify in favor of Google Music because I could upload additional content I've purchased elsewhere and have it integrate in tightly with my playlists. Spotify doe
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mdellabitta 13y agoAlso, Google Music works a hell of a lot better on Android and Linux than Spotify ever did... I just wish you could keep Google from crapping free tracks all over your library.
- mkaziz 13y agoDoes GM have a free tier? That's why I've been sticking to spotify.
- nathcd 13y agoTheir free tier is uploading your own 20,000 songs and being able to access that from any device with your Google account. The only way to have access to their "All Access" catalog is to be a paid subscriber. Unfortunately there's no free tier with access to their full streaming catalog. Which I find a little strange, since Google's forte is targeted advertising.
- jlund 13y agoGoogle Play Music All Access (great name!) requires Flash in order to play any music. Unlike Spotify, they do not have a native Linux client. If you abhor Flash for security and performance reasons, GPMAA is much worse on Linux than Spotify. Rdio's HTML5 interface works perfectly without Flash. I recently switched from Spotify and I'm pretty happy so far.
- madsushi 13y agoSpotify premium lets you do this, including sync to mobile.
- jypepin 13y agoI don't know about real music lovers and underground people, artsy whatever you can be with music, but as a normal music person, listening to music at work, on the public transportation and at home, I just love spotify, and it's one of the rare product I pay for; It makes it so easy to share playlists with friends, find music (almost everything) and discover new things, it seems perfect for the normal person who listens to music. I'm glad they raised that and hope they'll do good use of it :)
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoSpotify routinely loses licensing and rips music out of my playlists. Case in point: They lost several artists on "The Great Gatsby" soundtrack less than a week after it was released. It was just gone one day as if it never existed. I moved to Google Music so that I knew when I needed to buy a song to add it to a playlist or I could simply purchase from Amazon and upload it. Playlists stay intact, and I don't have to worry about a transfer after the fact if I reformat or switch phones. Spotify had a shot.
- chatmasta 13y agoYou could just use Spotify and buy the songs it doesn't have on iTunes. Spotify imports your iTunes library.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoI don't use iTunes. Honestly I did think that would be a great feature, but being able to import what I already do own has been fantastic.
- ZoF 13y agoWhen music in my playlists loses licensing it just gets greyed out until I purchase it(expected functionality); yours actually disappeared from the playlist entirely?
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoIn the case of Gatsby, absolutely. It was ripped out of my playlists as if I had been insane. Normally it does get greyed out. Otherwise there is no notification (unless you are staring at the screen) that your music is gone.
- akx 13y agoThere's an option to show the unavailable songs in lists anyway, even if the song isn't playable for whichever licensing reason.
- EA 13y agoWhat if every person that heard a song over the radio had to pay $0.0001 per listen? If a wired music mass distribution system existed before wireless broadcasting (AM/FM), wouldn't the whole business model of the music industry be different?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- trendoid 13y agoAlthough its not available in India yet, it was trivial to figure out how to use it in countries where its unavailable. One of the best UIs you will ever see in a music app. My movement from one place to other is seamless. Their algorithm which recommends new songs based on my listening history has worked out brilliantly for me and I am consistently discovering new good artists.
- majani 13y agoThis thread was in the top 5 on the homepage just minutes ago, and now it's plummeting like nothing I've ever seen before. Cases of heavy handed moderation like these make me doubt the integrity of this forum.