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The clock is ticking for Spotify

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#41

Post by sydd »

dageshi wrote: post #26
sydd wrote: post #4

I think Spotify will die in 5-10 years, but not because of royalty fee woes. We will not go back to the "buy a song for $1" model of the early 2000s. But it will die because of the moonopolistic and anti-competitive practices of the popular OSes: Apple preinstalls Apple Music, Google Play music, and Microsoft Groove (all 3 clones of Spotify). This agressive, monopolistic behaviour will kill Spotify, just like MS riva…

I think youtube is its biggest competition to be honest. Because youtube has a frictionless method of payment (ads), has a paid option if you don't want the ads and is massively useful for "discovery". I could see youtube killing Spotify and all its competitors.

I don't think so. I use Spotify a lot on the go, and YouTube is not suited for that. (can it even play stuff if your screen is locked?)

Also Google doesn't want to cannibalize their own Play Music sales.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#42

Post by puddintane »

mattlondon wrote: post #39

Too expensive for me. When I had the Google equivalent (now cancelled too) I found that I just ended up listening to the music I already know/own anyway, so what is the point of paying to listen to the music I have as MP3s? I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.

I recently switched to SoundCloud free and the ads are really not that bad (only con for example if your playing off your phone and it hits a video ad you can't lock your device till the SD finishes). However if the device screen is locked you'll only get audio ads (short and sweet at that).

Like YouTube though it will suffer from take down notices on some stuff you book mark, as well as mainstream stuff you can only listen to the first 30 seconds (but I've never been big into what's radio popular).

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#43

Post by [deleted] »

GrinningFool wrote: post #22
bogomipz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues." I think if you were at the mercy of the traditional record industry for licensing and you went an signed an artist to your label whose contract was up with say Warner Bros Records y…

But to GP's point - Netflix put themselves in the same situation in regards to their original content. While it has impacted their selection of titles from the companies they compete with, it wasn't in a catastrophic way.

[deleted]

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#44

Post by pimeys »

patrick_haply wrote: post #13
iamben wrote: post #3

I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify? I'm sure it won't be deliberate, just a combination of stubbornness, greed and living in the past. Spotify and music is like a library and books. It's fantastic and accessible for listening and discovery. I'm hard pushed to find a friend that didn't use napster or limewire that's moved to Spotify - it's just easy, there and the…

What I often find is that artists will have have everything on Spotify except their latest album, at least for a few months. Fair enough, they want people to buy their albums; it's just one area where I find Spotify consistently incomplete.

There are other big areas where it's seriously lacking content:

1) Modern contemporary electronic music, which is usually available vinyl only.

2) Classic albums in their original form. When there's a remaster, Spotify typically only has the remaster, original was either never there or will be removed when remaster is out.

Now, when you start to invest to your sound system even a bit (not talking about 100k wires here), you notice the lack of dynamics in many remasters. The originals just sound better with good soundsystem, not so much with below-average systems.

When I listen to music, I like to have the best possible master from it. And preferably lossless, or that I have the control of the compression parameters and format. I guess Spotify will take the masses, but I'm not the only serious listener who prefers my own files and physical copies.

Streaming is handy, but you can do a lot of things already with big hard disks with your computers, some syncing NAS system (as in Synology), beets[0] and a big enough microSD in your phone.

[0] http://beets.io/

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#45

Post by petval »

You know what? Company that silently ignores hundreds of its Android users requests to implement such a basic functionality like playlist reordering for more than 3 years maybe deserves to die. It's a book exanple of business and customer service fail and tremendous arrogance.

Hard to belive but still true: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Rearrange-tracks...

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#46

Post by superplussed »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #17
superplussed wrote: post #10

Don't the music labels own a big percentage of Spotify? Hasn't that been the whole argument that the labels are unfairly taking money out of the hands of the artists by owning a piece of the distribution? It seems to be that they have a vested interested in working with Spotify to ensure its long term health.

Labels already owns most artist past present and future works, distribution channels doesn't really matter at this point.

Of course distribution channels matter. If the labels own part of the distribution they don't mind if the distributors give a smaller cut back to the label and artist than another channel. They are able to keep that ownership of their distribution percentage away from the artist, it's the whole reason Spotify was originally so guilt-inducing to people concerned about artist's being treated fairly.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#47

Post by gourou »

bogomipz wrote: post #20
danr4 wrote: post #6

One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues. Only problem is that they need to do it before they burn all their cash, which won't be easy.

>"One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues." I think if you were at the mercy of the traditional record industry for licensing and you went an signed an artist to your label whose contract was up with say Warner Bros Records y…

Apple Music is becoming a record label now, they pay artists a few millions so that the album is only available on their platform for a month or so. Universal didn't like it much https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/23/universal-s...

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#48

Post by bogomipz »

delinka wrote: post #31
bogomipz wrote: post #14

Its worth noting that Universal, BMG, Warner Bros and EMI are all investors Spotify. It's kind of an odd situation in that respect, the labels don't need Spotify to go public but their other investors do. The big 4 record labels are the recipients of the $5 billion that the company has paid out in royalties to date. They've surely recouped any initial investment they put in by now. So they kind of have a vested inter…

With respect to accounting, you don't recoup your investment (where you purchased part of a company) by collecting licensing fees (which you'd have received anyway) from the same company.

Sure, I didn't mean in any kind of GAAP sense, just that the investment has already borne fruit is all.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#49

Post by myfonj »

disantlor wrote: post #36
tresante wrote: post #29

I'm a long time Spotify fan using it on everything from my Mac to our Shield TV and Echo. Music is a staple of my life and I regularly spend my working day listening to Spotify. Call me an optimist but I see a huge opportunity to capture additional $'s from less price as sensitive people like me. I'd happily hand over more money to the artists I actually like and listen to regularly but no platform gives me the means…

yes, 1000% agree. i would pay an extra $10-20 a month, especially if there was some mechanism to select which receives the extra and showing who supports which artists, etc. basically some of the ideas from bandcamp

So … why don't you just support those artists at Bandamp?

In fact that is exactly my current pattern: wen lazy, conveniently discover [1] and browse more famous artists at Spotify and purchase their albums at Bandcamp. Very few IMPoW "good" artists lack BC page.

[1] "Discover" function at Spotify got really nice lately supposedly thanks to the last.fm integration (?). Last.fm used to be my favourite discovery page in the past, and even today I'm not able to ditch it completely.

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