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Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

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Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprise surprise, employees lose out again. But I guess they were already in danger of getting nothing if this is the deal management struck.

Ya - sucks. I said this in a comment below, but also relevant here: capital > labor

Well, in this particular case employees wanted to play the capital game. It's not a nice game it seems.

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#182
post #65

Can anyone honestly enlighten me as to why Spotify matters? I've used it once and never got past finding anything to listen to while on SoundCloud I was drawn in without even thinking about it and have nearly 60 songs that I wouldn't have found otherwise. Not trolling, I want to find what they offer since I hear about them in the news way more than SoundCloud.

See, I personally never understood SoundCloud … it’s completely opaque to me and I don’t understand how I would even begin to use it. I simply don’t get it.

But I also mostly use Spotify to listen to music I already know and sometimes get recommend stuff I like, but that’s not the primary function.

Maybe our music listening habits are just completely different? I don’t think there is anything wrong with Spotify or SoundCloud, I just think different people have different preferences.

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#183
post #56

Spotify waste so much money on their employees, who effectively do very little. I know a designer who has been there 2 years, basically sits in meetings and gets sent to different countries, and has added nothing to their portfolio. Yet gets reviews and raises and bonuses... Then there's all the parties they host for their employees, etc. It's not a company I would invest in if I had any money to begin with. Also tha…

The modern desktop app is at a point where it's pretty solid, but I still miss that old 0.80.x branch or whatever the final non-chromium verison was. But you know what? Google doesn't have a desktop app for Google Music. Amazon doesn't have a desktop app for Amazon Prime. Apple doesn't have a desktop version... so yeah, despite the fact that Spotify's only-one-in-the-business desktop app isn't perfect, it does exist.…

> Apple doesn't have a desktop option

iTunes?

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#184
post #117
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern desktop app is at a point where it's pretty solid, but I still miss that old 0.80.x branch or whatever the final non-chromium verison was. But you know what? Google doesn't have a desktop app for Google Music. Amazon doesn't have a desktop app for Amazon Prime. Apple doesn't have a desktop version... so yeah, despite the fact that Spotify's only-one-in-the-business desktop app isn't perfect, it does exist.…

Pretty solid is a bit of an exaggeration in my case. About once a day, my MacBook's fans start spinning like crazy. By now I know... oh, it's "Spotify Helper" stuck in a loop again, lemme force quit it. Before I reinstalled, instead Spotify would show me "there's a new version!" every single day, seemingly without upgrading anything. These serious quality issues, plus the horrifying visual ads (for playlists and new…

I started using Pandora purely because of Pithos (a native Desktop app). Uses next to no resources and has all the functionality. Hell, there's even pianobar, a command-line client. How I wish we had these for Google Music, my platform of choice. Spotify is right out unless I need to listen to a specific song.

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#185
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All out war for streaming customers with apple and google. Someone is going to collect $10 (plus $1 or $2 increase every couple years) per month for a huge segment of the music listening population for basically the rest of our lives. Spotify want it to be them.

Is there any reason to think that this market is a winner take all? The labels will do anything to prevent another Apple arising including backing any upstart that wants to challenge the big players. When you are just a middle man it is hard to create a monopoly.

That entirely depends on how the power balance between content owners and streaming services develops. If labels deliberately protect themselves from a streaming monopoly by fostering competition via good deals for smaller competitors it might become a very balanced market. But if a dominant streaming service manages to press for better deals than smaller competitors, then it could be very much winner-takes-all (with some irrelevant indie for indies sake alternatives sprinkled in between). Labels might actually decide to deliberately let a monopoly happen, to keep the total annual "music tax" per listener high. Spotify is in a business where more hinges on smoky backroom deals than in arms manufacture.

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#186
post #117
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern desktop app is at a point where it's pretty solid, but I still miss that old 0.80.x branch or whatever the final non-chromium verison was. But you know what? Google doesn't have a desktop app for Google Music. Amazon doesn't have a desktop app for Amazon Prime. Apple doesn't have a desktop version... so yeah, despite the fact that Spotify's only-one-in-the-business desktop app isn't perfect, it does exist.…

Pretty solid is a bit of an exaggeration in my case. About once a day, my MacBook's fans start spinning like crazy. By now I know... oh, it's "Spotify Helper" stuck in a loop again, lemme force quit it. Before I reinstalled, instead Spotify would show me "there's a new version!" every single day, seemingly without upgrading anything. These serious quality issues, plus the horrifying visual ads (for playlists and new…

Between windows and android I literally have had no issues using the mobile and the desktop apps.

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#187
I don't think Spotify can compete against Apple on this. Spotify's only revenue stream IS music, and they don't even make revenue from that. Apple and Google, on the other hand, have several cash cows that will keep them afloat if their Music services fail (which I doubt they will). Apple could afford to throw in super cheap monthly subscriptions (say, $4.99/month) to Apple Music with every iPhone/iPad/MacBook purchase and recoup the losses through additional product sales. Spotify doesn't have that option right now.

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's debt but it's pretty clearly meant to convert into equity not be re-paid.

Spotify will never be worth enough for that converted equity to be worth the cost.

Well if they ever IPO at all, it sounds like these guys get 20% off the IPO price so have a decent gain built in no matter what Spotify is worth at that time. Assuming the description in the article is correct.

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#189
post #57

Not sure why it's so devilish. They basically raised $1B in cash on a 20% discount, no valuation cap. Basically, they're agreeing with the investors that they can't figure out a valuation for the company -- so they're deferring that until an IPO and have the public market sets the valuation. There's a lot of bellyaching here about the dilution for the existing shareholders. But I don't see how that's any different fr…

> the reality is that no institutional investor can sell a 10% (or whatever) stake in a public company overnight They can, however, sell much of it during the 3 month head start they will have over everyone else.

Sure, but isn't this whole deal premised on the notion that if investors want to head for the exits 3 months after the IPO, Spotify (and its employee shareholders) are fucked anyway?

I agree it has to have some diluting effect, but if this capital is the difference between a successful IPO and a failed one, I'm not sure how you argue it represents a loss of value to employees.

Re: Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music

#190

Jesus Christ, that's not clickbait, those really are devilish terms. It's debt, they lose $200MM of shares at the time of IPO, and they very well could end up paying 15% interest yearly on this. And when the IPO happens, if it follows the general IPO trend and tanks at first, it's very possible TPG and Dragoneer will want to get out -- dumping 1.2 billion of Spotify onto the market and absolutely destroying the share…

It's very rare (ie likely unable to succeed) to see a "sponsor" dump all of their holdings in a stock when a company goes public so that is very unlikely to happen for the obvious reason that if you were a large institutional investor in the IPO, you would not appreciate an owner that understands the business to exit while you come in. There are also limits on how many shares owners can sell (lock-up periods).
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