121–130 of 162 posts
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.
Another issue that's worth bringing up: Artists are getting screwed by these models as well as YouTube (2, 3). Only the largest stars can hope to make a lot of money on scale or exclusives. Everyone else gets scraps. While platforms struggle for dominance, we as consumers benefit from low-cost subscriptions or "free" music but I feel the bands and musicians who make the music we love are getting seriously short-changed. It's not right.
1. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7625650/are-album...
2. http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7408970/taylor-swift-...
3. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2015/01/28/songs-got-151781-...
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.
https://9to5mac.com/2017/02/13/apple-music-subscribers-past-...
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.
Spotify has partnered with telecoms, newspapers, and others to provide bundled subscriptions -- inflating their "paid" subscriber amount. A good chunk of those 50m aren't paying $10/mo; they've expanded their partnerships (in part) to inflate that number.
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 bri…
The more indies Spotify gets, the more it can tell labels to go screw themselves if they don't want to take a deal, in the future.
Alternatively, Spotify could also try to do what Netflix is doing with shows and movies and start funding indies through their own label.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spotify has partnered with telecoms, newspapers, and others to provide bundled subscriptions -- inflating their "paid" subscriber amount. A good chunk of those 50m aren't paying $10/mo; they've expanded their partnerships (in part) to inflate that number.
Very interesting. Can you give me some pointers on what kind of partnerships they have?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cheriehu/2017/02/13/spotify-new...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where can you pay a low one-time fee for such a vast amount of mainstream / popular music that you get to keep forever? Nowhere.
But what you pay for, you can't keep. So you are back to square one. And who said you are supposed to pay scraps for good music?
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 :)
I prefer DRM-free stores and musicians who release there.
I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month. I can see how it would be a fun hobby to curate your own collection, but for me it's really hard to beat services like Spotify, Steam, Netflix - DRM or not.
There's still a lot of stuff you can find on Beatport that you can't find on Spotify, for example, and most of the hipsters wouldn't even call Beatport "underground"
I wonder what Apple, Google, and Amazon Music can do to compete. They have advantages that Spotify cannot duplicate (large war chests, existing device/platform control, etc.) and one of them (Apple) is really strong when it comes to playlists. Apple is also doing a fair number of exclusive deals with music publishers and artists, although Billboard says the industry is moving away from this trend (1) although that co…
I think that Apple is much worse than Spotify in this particular point.