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Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

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Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#91

Post by k-mcgrady »

refulgentis wrote: post #9
anotherthrow2 wrote: post #2

This is nothing more than PR fluff. Spotify is in big trouble, as waging war with Apple is proving to be far more costly than they expected. I want to know how much Techcrunch got paid for this advertisement.

My instincts feel that way, but Apple Music announced they crossed 20 million paid users in 12/2016, 40% of Spotify's 50+ million. Anecdotally, discover weekly is a tremendous hit. Makes you wish for functional public capital markets so we knew the real story.

Discover weekly is great but Apple Music now has the same thing (My New Music Mix) and an additional 'My Favourites Mix' which is kind of a weekly playlist made up of songs they think you already like but haven't heard in a while and one or two songs you don't know but by artists you already like.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#92

Post by tormeh »

thirdsun wrote: post #84
lucb1e wrote: post #79

As a paying Spotify member, practices like these only make me want to switch to DRM-free music more. Blackmailing artists with "we won't promote you if you don't lower your prices" and wasting half a million on 2 weeks of exclusivity. That's not what I'm paying them for; I pay them because I want to compensate artists.

> I pay them because I want to compensate artists. You're paying the wrong people then. If you want to help artists buy their music instead of renting it from streaming services, which may lose access to it at any time.

Labels take most of that as well. Spotify isn't the problem - the labels are.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#93

Post by StavrosK »

dom96 wrote: post #82
bergjs wrote: post #59

Spotify is the one service I'm happy to pay for. Their weekly mixes keep blowing my mind because it's such a great way to discover new music tailored to my taste. Plus, Spotify connect is a genius way to play music on loudspeakers. It works incredibly well with my Bose speakers. My impression is that they will continue to innovate in all kinds of areas so I think they have a good chance of winning. I needed to write…

While i have discovered a couple good songs in Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist, i do find it a common occurrence nowadays that songs which i have listened to in the past are included. Does anyone else have that experience? Perhaps Spotify is just having a really hard time finding music related to my tastes?

Same for me. It almost never finds anything I like (and no service does), so I suspect I'm just very particular about what I like?

I tend to listen to Spotify's Discover Weekly anyway, though, as the very first song it ever recommended to me was this amazing gem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2cGxy-ZHIs

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#94

Post by StavrosK »

tormeh wrote: post #92
thirdsun wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I pay them because I want to compensate artists. You're paying the wrong people then. If you want to help artists buy their music instead of renting it from streaming services, which may lose access to it at any time.

Labels take most of that as well. Spotify isn't the problem - the labels are.

Aren't the labels basically the VCs that enabled the artists to reach you in the first place?

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#95

Post by danieldisu »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #91
refulgentis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My instincts feel that way, but Apple Music announced they crossed 20 million paid users in 12/2016, 40% of Spotify's 50+ million. Anecdotally, discover weekly is a tremendous hit. Makes you wish for functional public capital markets so we knew the real story.

Discover weekly is great but Apple Music now has the same thing (My New Music Mix) and an additional 'My Favourites Mix' which is kind of a weekly playlist made up of songs they think you already like but haven't heard in a while and one or two songs you don't know but by artists you already like.

I think discover weekly is much more than that, and that is precisely what makes discover weekly so good!!

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#96

Post by yladiz »

quink wrote: post #66

Can't justify Spotify as I'm paying for YouTube Red/Google Play Music as I can stand YouTube ads less than the difference between Spotify and Google Play Music. I bet that'll come up more and more. One important differentiator might be to get the Japanese record labels a bit more aligned, all streaming providers have been faring terribly on that front.

Since I started using Spotify regularly I stopped using Pandora, but during the time I did it had a really large selection of Japanese music. It had songs and artists that don't exist on other platforms. Maybe it's due to the fact that Pandora is basically customized radio? On the flip side, Spotify has a ton of Korean music, so I'm happy.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#98

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

lucb1e wrote: post #79

As a paying Spotify member, practices like these only make me want to switch to DRM-free music more. Blackmailing artists with "we won't promote you if you don't lower your prices" and wasting half a million on 2 weeks of exclusivity. That's not what I'm paying them for; I pay them because I want to compensate artists.

If you want to compensate artists, buy their albums on Bandcamp. If they're not on Bandcamp, tell them to get on :)

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#99

Post by yladiz »

I would rather pay slightly more per month (let's say $12 USD rather than the current $10) than pay the artists less, even if the effect is relatively small due to the labels taking so much cut out of the payout.

But in any case, I do believe that the way Spotify will be able to have real leverage is for it to start being their own label, not just getting exclusive content. I feel like it would be cheaper to just bring on either independent artists or artists that are kind of not "into" traditional labels but are popular, rather than pay for exclusive content since it is probably less work but more expensive to do the latter, while the former would take a by of work but cheaper in the long run. It's subscriber base being so large may be a bargaining chip but I would guess that a lot of its current subscribers would move to other services were it to shut down, so it can't be that big? Sheer volume in a market with competitors that would be basically the same but with a different UI and maybe some different content can't count for that much can it?

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#100

Post by k-mcgrady »

danieldisu wrote: post #95
k-mcgrady wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discover weekly is great but Apple Music now has the same thing (My New Music Mix) and an additional 'My Favourites Mix' which is kind of a weekly playlist made up of songs they think you already like but haven't heard in a while and one or two songs you don't know but by artists you already like.

I think discover weekly is much more than that, and that is precisely what makes discover weekly so good!!

>> I think discover weekly is much more than that

I don't understand. The 'My New Music Mix' feature is exactly the same as Discover Weekly. It presents you a weekly playlist of music you don't know yet but might like based on your listening patterns. I've used both extensively (I have subscriptions to Apple Music and Spotify) and they do the same thing (although obviously with different algorithms).

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