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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

#191

Post by rplnt »

staticelf wrote: post #180
rplnt wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not tied to the Spotify official app if you are a paying customer. There are alternatives.

Or I can simply pay for basically any other service that does the same job without facebook (even though I have an old account), without social features, without a shitty client that drains computer resources in mysterious ways. But finally, an app that doesn't require me to share my pictures with them. That was the spike in the coffin for me. I really enjoyed Spotify when it was new, but their clients has just been…

> [...] their clients has just been lowering in quality ever since beta.

> Honestly, I think the beta client was way better than the client today.

As a response to a post only stating that you don't need to use their client? Seriously?

Also, what has facebook to do with anything?

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

#192

Post by rplnt »

marbletiles wrote: post #177
rplnt wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not tied to the Spotify official app if you are a paying customer. There are alternatives.

Oh yeah? Any good ones?

Not that I know of really. I mean, I haven't tried any. I just stumbled upon their existence when searching for media servers.

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

#193

Post by wodenokoto »

criley2 wrote: post #56
philliphaydon wrote: post #50

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 version...

What? iTunes isn't available on the desktop anymore? When did that happen? I used Apple Music on my laptop when it was released last summer.

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

#194

Post by croon »

dexterdog wrote: post #171
tomjen3 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to have all, or almost all music, for people to sign up with you. I wouldn't be a paying spotify customer if it wasn't because they had almost all the music I wanted. What we really need are a change to copyright laws that requires a mandatory uniform-fee-only streaming license for all music, tv and movies.

But they don't have all and never will. That's why I will never pay them. For me, I already have all.

Not with consumers like you they won't. If you're expecting a market to grow from nothing to mature without paying consumers until they're perfect nothing will change nor evolve.

You vote with your dollar by supporting the kinds of market you would like.

I started using Spotify in 2008 because the concept was what I envisioned for the future and iTunes was an awful practice in buying music. I thought I'd still "download" music on the side, but I honestly never felt the need for it. Sure Spotify doesn't have _everyting_, but it has an impressively huge amount of fringe music that I would never have expected and more than enough music for me to listen to until I die. And it grows.

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

#195

Post by thirdsun »

staticelf wrote: post #178
thirdsun wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Sure, people value different things, but I'd rate that functionality as a pretty minor feature. As a compromise rdio highlighted popular songs within an album. Artist stations with the slider set to focus on the current artist (only?) might have achieved the same results too, I guess. So, it's not as if it couldn't be done. The almost complete absence of social features however, that's a big one in my opi…

Funny how people are different. It was big for me, since I stopped paying them money just because of that missing feature. Personally, I think the less social features, the better.

Sure, usually I'm not keen on social features either. Rarely touch them. However finding like-minded people and discussing shared interests. This is basically what happens here. With that in mind I always avoided following real life friends on rdio or Spotify as I didn't want them to ruin the recommendations, suggestions, feeds, etc. Well, it matters a lot less on Spotify since the features aren't there anyway. However rdio with a bunch like-minded people you never met was great. The good kind of social interaction.

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

#196

Post by criley2 »

mbrock wrote: post #117
criley2 wrote: 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 use PC, which runs it flawlessly.

* I pay for my streaming music which has no ads so I don't get a freebie AND complain about advertisements (really man...?)

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

#197

Post by AJ007 »

charlesdm wrote: post #161
f_allwein wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting for competition to affect prices. Eg I would be happy to pay 5$/month for limited, ad free access to Spotify/ whatever, but 10$ seems excessive. Given that we may indeed pay this for the rest of our lifes, it's strange nobody seems to mind the cost.

$10 seems like an amazing deal to me. Heck, I'd easily pay $20.

Consider that the previous music "streaming" technology was radio, which was free, and $10 sounds expensive. Except that $10 a month is now the final product, and basically presents a dead end to the music sales funnel outside of concerts/collectibles.

I am still paying for my downloads because I like weird artists and I think it is an important vote that I really like their music and want them to continue producing more. That is a luxury few afford anymore.

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

#198

Post by pacnw »

arrrg wrote: post #182
ibnaks wrote: 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 So…

SoundCloud (and MixCloud, not related) offers a lot of home-created content, but maybe more importantly, provide longer live and studio mix sessions by well known (and lesser known) DJs.

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

#199

Post by dexterdog »

ssharp wrote: post #179
dexterdog wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there's a problem. There is no reason music should cost more our even close to what video costs.

Are you comparing the price of Spotify to the price of Netflix? If so, it's not a remotely fair comparison. The percent of mainstream music Spotify doesn't have is miniscule to the amount of mainstream video Netflix lacks. Take Netflix and add in the cost of premium movie channels -- HBO, Starz, Showtime, etc. and you start approaching a modern catalog comparable to Spotify. Your monthly fees are now approaching $100…

But keep in mind that recent video releases are usually paywalled by movie theaters or pay channels while music is available legitimately on the radio and various online outlets. Also keep in mind that the typical cost of production for an hour of music is significantly less than an hour of video, not to mention the storage and bandwidth differences.

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

#200

Post by Retric »

twoodfin wrote: post #189
bentlegen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If 80+% of your assets are in just one company you don't control then you really should be heading for the exits.

Google quickly hit 6x there IPO, but if you had say 5 million at IPO and nothing else then selling 1 million of that would have been a really good idea. Or at least getting a put option to sell near the IPO price.

Granted, you must pay taxes ect. But taking 20% off the top is generally a really good idea.

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