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The clock is ticking for Spotify

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#51

Post by bogomipz »

abe_duarte wrote: post #34
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…

This is an interesting idea you put there, labels would like to see a weak Spotify.

That wasn't the idea I was trying to put though. I don't think the labels necessarily want to see a weak Spotify but only that the status quo is just fine for them. They would be happy to see the current situation remain in perpetuity I think. Spotify investors however do not.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#52

Post by ProblemFactory »

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.

> it's just one area where I find Spotify consistently incomplete.

At first (especially some years ago when the catalogue was much smaller) this used to annoy me. But Spotify has made a lot of progress in side-stepping the issue.

The Discover Weekly playlist of recommended music in particular was a great invention. It doesn't matter that much if artist X's latest album is not on Spotify, as long as they can find some other music that satisfies what people are looking for. Some techno with no vocals to code to, something chill in the evenings, like a personally curated radio, not a perfect on-demand player.

Focusing more on recommending music instead of having people search for music means that they get away with missing some artists - and they can take the cost of licensing deals into account when picking the recommended songs.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#53

Post by ivraatiems »

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…

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself.

Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#54

Post by dageshi »

sydd wrote: post #41
dageshi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I doubt very much google really cares about Play Music sales, it likely only has it because it wants to offer comparable services to apple in order that they don't switch away from android. By far and away Googles most important revenue stream is advertising, youtube fits into the advertising model far better than Play.

Ultimately a generation of kids are growing up right now who use Youtube as their primary source of entertainment and for whom downloading an mp3 is likely to seem archaic. I doubt they're going to switch to Spotify so long as google can figure out offline play for audio (which I've no doubt they can)

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#55

Post by 467568985476 »

petval wrote: post #45

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...

I think it's more likely that Android represents a negligible share of their users than some kind of intentional malice.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#56

Post by ivraatiems »

petval wrote: post #45

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...

It's not hard to believe. It's one of many, many things Spotify has done to indicate how little they care about their users. Here are a few more, arranged somewhat chronologically:

* Forcing mandatory Facebook logins, only to walk them back

* Releasing a "version 1.0" of their desktop app with no CTRL-F support and dozens of missing features

* Breaking people's hardware with bugs that made hundreds of unnecessary reads and writes to drives, denying the issue existed until pressed to fix it

* Silently removing basic features from their apps, or pushing UI updates that make said features harder to use

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#57

Post by bogomipz »

gourou wrote: post #47
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…

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...

The practice of "exclusive windowing" does not mean that Apple is becoming a record label. That article is about limited exclusives. I didn't see anywhere in the article that mentioned Apple becoming a record label.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#58

Post by Micoloth »

Eridrus wrote: post #5
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…

I think Spotify's saving grace is that it's not owned by a big tech company. I think the music industry would prefer to negotiate with Spotify than with YouTube.

Isn't it a big tech company itself?

Well at least they want to be one. It's not like they want to be the good guys there. This is what disappoints me a little bit

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#59

Post by rak00n »

ivraatiems wrote: post #53
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…

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

Still it's arguably better than the alternatives out there. When I cast music to my TV Spotify has a nice interface. When I cast Google Music there is this icon dancing around all over the TV. I think their web interface is superior as well.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#60

Post by ivraatiems »

rak00n wrote: post #59
ivraatiems wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

Still it's arguably better than the alternatives out there. When I cast music to my TV Spotify has a nice interface. When I cast Google Music there is this icon dancing around all over the TV. I think their web interface is superior as well.

It is, and I pay for a subscription still. I wish there were a good alternative.
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