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I had to check: I became a paying member of Spotify in 2009. That's a lot of money spent on music I never would have done if not. Before that, I had maybe bough
by maaaats 11y ago
I had to check: I became a paying member of Spotify in 2009. That's a lot of money spent on music I never would have done if not. Before that, I had maybe bought 2-3 albums in my entire life, growing up when piracy was at its peak.
At the same time, I think it's weird raising this kind of money so late in the lifetime of the company?
- k-mcgrady 11y ago>> "At the same time, I think it's weird raising this kind of money so late in the lifetime of the company?" They need it to survive as their losses are continuing to grow.
- namenotrequired 11y agoDo you have a source for this?
- cncool 11y ago"However, Spotify recorded an operating loss of €165.1m (£119m) in 2014 compared to €91.2m (£65.7m) in 2013, while its net loss nearly trebled from €55.9m (£40.3m) in 2013 to €162.3m (£117m) in 2014." http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/11/spotify-financial-results-streaming-music-profitable http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/11/spotify-fi...
- puranjay 11y agoI fail to see how these companies will ever turn a profit. I can't imagine their market growing exponentially bigger than it already is. I'm an entrepreneur in the non tech domain, and profitability is the first thing we look for, not the last. Somehow, tech companies manage to survive for years without making any profits, which is weird t me
- justincormack 11y agoThey only have 15m paying customers, so if it was a matter of scaling there is a long way to go. Of course they may not be profitable at any scale due to the pricing model of the labels, but thats a different matter.
- ticksoft 11y agoExpecting Spotify to make a profit is like expecting a blockbuster movie to generate a profit. Show business isn't normal business.
- rhia 11y agoDon't blockbuster movies make dozens of millions on a regular basis?!
- kibibu 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting > According to Lucasfilm, Return of the Jedi, despite having earned $475 million at the box office against a budget of $32.5 million, "has never gone into profit".
- namenotrequired 11y ago..because they're redefining profit "creatively".
- chimeracoder 11y agoNot really. Spotify is partly owned by the labels[0], so you have to think of it like Hollywood accounting. It makes sense for them never to make a profit, because as long as they let the labels extract money from them in terms of licensing, they fulfill their purpose. It's like how so many blockbuster movies make a "loss" on paper to avoid paying taxes on their revenues which they end up distributing to all the people who are involved with the movie. [0] http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner-of-spotify http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner...
- petercooper 11y agoIt's funny because I think the other way. All the money Spotify has saved me because I used to buy albums all the time. I wonder how it balances out overall. I imagine it works out the same but a wider variety of bands now make the money.
- eueueu 11y agoIsn't everything available on youtube for free these days? Or radio etc. I can't imagine paying for music. Unless it's an extremely rare CD I can't find anywhere else.
- weavie 11y agoIf you are willing to put up with the ads.
- varmais 11y agoI pay Spotify for usability and UX. Google Music might be couple of euros cheaper but the UI is worse (especially on mobile). Piracy and saving files to different devices takes time and effort, streaming is easy. Hunting down good quality uploads and creating playlists based on albums on Youtube? No way.
- mattmanser 11y agoI had to use Google Music as the wifi at my old work, which was supplied by the local uni, had blocked Spotify. This means I'm pretty invested in it right now, but god damn they just totally fucked up the desktop interface too with a material redesign. Everytime you open it, you have to click the burger icon just to see the menu. You can no longer view your present playlist in a permanent window, only in a popup. I add a lot of artists to my thumbs up playlist on a whim and then listen to it on shuffle, so like to see what I just listened to/is coming up. And now it's loads of clicking instead of an alt-tab. All the artist photos are now inexplicably circles making it hard to distinguish them by scanning. Google cannot design anything. They keep getting worse, even as they employ designers. Everything they touch recently they make the UX worse in their quest to turn everything into a tablet interface, aka material.
- interesting_att 11y agoAt a $120/year for 6 years, you've basically spent $720. That is amazing. I, on the other, have spent $0 on all music in my entire life (excluding concerts).
- pestaa 11y agoYou're listening to music available for free or...? (Assuming you're listening to music at all because otherwise why go to concerts...)
- rplnt 11y agoI'm in the same boat (not $0, but certainly in the tens of dollars, not more) and for me it is the "or". That is pirated music. Nowadays I either listen to youtube playlists (with ads) or something like Spotify (with ads). So in a way I pay, but just with my time, not money (unless the ads work).
- m_eiman 11y agoThe sad thing is that those $720 have provided no lasting value for the user; had it been spent on albums it would have been enough for 50-ish CDs that will last "forever" (at least if you rip them). Or 720 individual songs. That wouldn't have given access to as diverse music as Spotify does, of course. But on average, how diverse is the music taste of random people?
- jmccree 11y agoAs at least one study and plenty of anecdata has shown, music helps a lot of people with their work performance. The ROI on that $10/mo should be pretty good for your average developer. Spotify radio and playlists make easy to discover new music or listen to music you like without spending any time curating playlists etc. If you think of the time spent to find and buy 720 songs, at just one minute each, that's 12 hours spent just buying songs. The value of spotify is wasting no time or money on acquiring or managing a music library.
- namenotrequired 11y ago
- adventured 11y agoThe stock market is out of steam, it hasn't budged since QE ended, and won't go any higher unless the Fed restarts QE or GDP growth jumps a lot higher. That's going to start to have a negative effect on exit opportunities for tech companies, and will begin to sooner than later squeeze valuations. This is a window of opportunity for Spotify to grab a massive amount of capital at a rich valuation (Pandora is worth $3.6 billion). How much longer is the easy money party going to last? Who knows, it's just preferable to not bet on it lasting a lot longer. At this point, start-ups should be looking out six months max on the easy money, and not assuming it's going to be around any longer than that. I think this is Spotify's 'we have decided to not try to IPO near term' money.
- philippnagel 11y agoIt makes sense. Apple entered the music streaming market with introducing Apple Music at WWDC. Spotify needs the funds to compete against a now even more competitive market.
- robinwauters 11y agoThat's obviously true, but a round of this size was likely several months in the making even for a company the size of Spotify.
- justincormack 11y agoSo was knowledge of Apple's announcement.
- ssharp 11y agoI'm 100% going to give Apple Music a good try during their three month free trial period. I've been loyal to Spotify since they opened to U.S. customers and I left from Rhapsody, but Apple Music will have better integration into the iPhone, will hopefully have more selection (we'll see during the trial), and is cheaper for my household because we use three account, costing us $20.00 / month. Apple Music will cost $15 per month and I can use up to 6 accounts if I want to.
- 72deluxe 11y agoJust because piracy was at its peak didn't mean you had to join in... :-) I have hundreds of CDs that I bought. I think I single-handedly kept the music industry alive. It's a pity when your tastes change though (and you find you can't sell any of them, other than obscure guitar music which I still like)
- _spoonman 11y agoIf you like good, somewhat hard to find guitar, try to pick up George van Epps' "Mellow Guitar."
- 72deluxe 11y agoThanks for the suggestion, I will look into George van Eps. I have always been into rockier stuff (think Satriani, Vai, Johnson) and blues stuff but have recently been getting into some fusion stuff (Niacin, Planet X etc.) so thanks!