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Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

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Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#251

Post by 6stringmerc »

slouch wrote: post #175
mbrock wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe nobody cares yet because nobody has made a sufficiently compelling alternative. Almost everyone I know has at least some bands they like that aren't one of the few acts at the top. Local bands, side projects, anti-establishment punk bands, whatever. My little working class town is a miniature hotbed for small bands. They don't all make weird punk or whatever, tons of them make music that would be really nice fo…

ReverbNation would need a lot of curation on top their rewards-for-uploads model to make it listenable. Unlimited skips wouldn't be enough for the early adopters to enjoy the stream.

I was thinking about this a little more and realized that ReverbNation already has a "pay-for-listens" model where artists/bands have to fork over cash to have 'a community' review tracks and give a rating on a 0-10 scale. If a song hits higher than 8, it's allowed to submit to big name outlets (CBS Radio, etc) through their platform. So, I think it's kind of a flipped model - the people who listen to ReverbNation as a curation function are, more than likely, paid to sit there and go through the submissions.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#252

Post by fredkbloggs »

cruelfate wrote: post #226
fredkbloggs wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such is the way of the world. 50,000 customers willing to pay $50 a month aren't worth the trouble, especially if they're even slightly demanding. Everyone wants the 50 million users willing to put up with ads that bring in $3 a month or are willing to pay $5 or $10.

Exactly. As if the only conceivable profitable business is a one-size-fits-all mono-culture product.

In fairness, it's probably the only way to get the coveted billion-dollar valuation. If that's your metric for success rather than operating margins or return on shareholders' equity, you don't really have much of a choice. A small company could serve those 50,000 very well and make its founders and investors quite rich, but very few people want to run a small company. It's all about getting to $1 billion and either selling out huge or going public. That status is more important to almost everyone than actually making money or creating something people like. So enjoy your Apple Music and your Pandora!

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#253

Post by cbr »

welly wrote: post #167
cbr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you enjoy music that features live instruments I just > don't see how it could be free. There's too many people > involved who need to eat. One model people talk about is where recorded music is free, this boosts popularity, you fund the recordings through more people coming to your live shows. If you do 40 live shows a year, and giving away your music brings in 30 more people at each show paying $20 each, that'…

But not enough to eat. Certainly not for two, three or four (or more) members of a band.

$24k is the marginal cost of the recording. In this model the band's living is paid for by touring.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#254

Post by Dylan16807 »

EwanToo wrote: post #245
Dylan16807 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a product rivalry, that's a deeper upset with how systemd is handling things. Nobody thinks vim is trying to take over the editor space.

But I would hope you'd still think that death threats over it are utterly ridiculous, and unacceptable?

Yes.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#255

Post by GBond »

mbesto wrote: post #159
rekoros wrote: post #151

I was one of Rdio's first employees (3rd) and have been a happy subscriber since Craig got billing to work. After FB employees got free Rdio, they gave Rdio employees free Rdio as well, but I kept paying—to retain the right to bitch. (I got a free account for my wife though.) My entire extended family have been paying for and swearing by Rdio for years. I was introduced to Erlang at Rdio (this shaped the future of my…

> "Are we really going to start using Spotify after so many years of hating on it?" —our 15-year-old. Genuinely curious here - why are so many techies desperately passionate (both positive and negative) about choice of unseemly unnecessary tech products? I feel like there is this peculiar subculture of tech-minded folk who defend at odds their tech choices. "Slack is the best" "Hell no, IRC has been around for years!…

Techies are generally idealist and strongly opinionated about stuff they think they know best.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#256

Post by derrickdirge »

p0wnd wrote: post #13
JonFish85 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's not enough listeners for the number of music services. If your service stumbles, it's easy to move onto something else, so you really only get one or no chances to convince your potential customers." I agree, and even feel more strongly about it. Even if you don't stumble, it's hard to compete with Google and Apple at this point, because they have their services tightly tied in with their other products. Buy…

I won't switch from Spotify though because it meets my needs and furthermore they keep innovating. One thing I can look forward to in getting back to the office on Monday is my new week's playlist that Spotify creates for me. I listen to a wide variety of music and they have helped me discover a lot o f artists and songs I'm really into.

'Discover Weekly' is the one feature keeping me with Spotify. Their UI annoys me on a daily basis, but I've got a lot of great recommendations from them. Frankly, I wish Apple would mirror this feature, though it goes against their whole 'human curated playlists' philosophy.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#257

Post by GBond »

rekoros wrote: post #191
trustfundbaby wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I realized that Rdio will never succeed due to lack of fanatical leadership—you can't have a company with absent founders, that's just not how it works—and left Can you elaborate on this? How was the leadership absent? and why do you think that was?

Rdio co-founders sold Skype (twice). When they co-founded Rdio, they weren't hoping to build their life's work, they just wanted to try something new (I guess), in the US. Rdio was run by VPs. That's OK when things are going great and there's lots of money in the bank. It's not OK when the ship needs some founder-inspired steering in a storm. It's not OK when the ship is taking on water. It's not OK if there are sign…

Do you think lack of founder attention negatively impacted lack of progress on the partnership/BD side? Seem to be key in the market (Spotify with Starbucks; Pandora in-car app).

Sad to see the "best" product in the market go under.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#258

Post by GBond »

repentsinner wrote: post #176
joefkelley wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last two points are extremely debatable. I have used Google, Spotify, and Pandora, and in my experience, Google's hands-off auto-generated playlists are extremely high quality. They also have great radio/curated playlists via the Songza acquisition. Spotify is a clear winner for a social experience, but I think you're really underestimating Google on the other dimensions.

Coming from Rdio, I'm genuinely curious where you find the social experience in Spotify. Is it all in FB? In Rdio I really enjoy the comments feature and how generally constructive it tends to be. In addition it's easy to find people with similar musical tastes in the list of recent listeners - I've followed people via this mechanism and found great music as a result. I don't see how to do the same in Spotify at all.…

I agree with your take on social with Rdio & Spotify. Rdio was the strongest in this category. Still, Rdio could have done more to emphasis finding your music "friend" - someone who has the similar preferences. It was the differentiator.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#259

Post by ubercore »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #210
mbesto wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Are we really going to start using Spotify after so many years of hating on it?" —our 15-year-old. Genuinely curious here - why are so many techies desperately passionate (both positive and negative) about choice of unseemly unnecessary tech products? I feel like there is this peculiar subculture of tech-minded folk who defend at odds their tech choices. "Slack is the best" "Hell no, IRC has been around for years!…

You have to keep in mind that this is a kind of game. Almost no one truly, really hates the other product. People don't get into fistfights over Vim vs. Emacs. It's just a community joke. So for instance I'm in the IRC camp of group communication, and I'll go to great length to use it over Slack, but if you really need me to use Slack and it makes sense, then I'll use Slack. But I will be doing cynical jokes so that…

I actually had a real-deal power struggle with an employee once about using hipchat instead of IRC. They refused to use hipchat, then left the company eventually. So it's not a game for everyone.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#260

Post by pyre »

spyder wrote: post #217
pyre wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's hard to get engineers making 6 figures to spend more than $50 on a tool they use every day of their working life. On the flip-side, why invest all of your time become accustomed (possibly married) to an ecosystem that is beholden to someone else? Just because you spend $100 on VisualStudio doesn't mean that MS will take your input to heart when some manager "on high" decides to change direction with the produc…

Depends on what are the alternatives: if there is an open alternative with the same features for free then sure use it, but if there is no alternative with the features you need then you have to invest your time/money to build that feature and very likely it's more time/money than to buy and learn an ecosystem.

If developers are currently using the OpenSource solutions, then they probably work for those people. Who are "you" to question what works for them and what features are a priority to them?

Many developers pay for close-source editors and IDEs, and the companies that support/develop them aren't necessarily going under. Heck BBEdit is still around despite falling out of favour as the de facto MacOS editor years ago.

Just within the Python ecosystem there are 2 or 3 IDEs that cater to Python developers despite the number of Python developers that prefer Vi(m) or Emacs.

The idea that developers don't or won't pay for an editor or that the OpenSource/Free alternatives are the equivalent of developers coding in Notepad on Windows just for save a few bucks is a false premise.

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