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Spotify Form F-1

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Re: Spotify Form F-1

#101

Post by conradfr »

kaftoy wrote: post #36
protonimitate wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I'm a Spotify lifer unless something catastrophic happens to their service or media availability. The only alternative service I even debated about was Apple Music when they first announced their streaming service, but there is no clear advantage to their service and I hate the Apple Music UI. I hope they find a way to help a bigger % of the revenue get into the hands of artists and start cutting out the big re…

I really don't want to change this discussion into a "which is the best music streaming service" debate, but I am really curious, why haven't your considered Google Play Music? Interface? Songs count? Price? I am subbed to GPM for a few years now. I did it first because Spotify was and still isn't available in my country, but I don't think I would switch if they become available tomorrow.

I was using Spotify 3 years ago but it was killing the battery life on my Nexus 4 so I switched to Google Play Music (chose it because of the upload feature).

I like the service but there is many things in the UI that I don't like:

- No desktop app

- Album listing is a mess: . It doesn't differentiate between singles and albums so the album list is sometimes very long for no reasons . You can't mentally filter them yourselves as the number of tracks and the album's length are not displayed for each "album" . It is somehow sorted by release year, but not entirely (you can't chose anyway). . On mobile the year is not even displayed so if you want to quickly see if an artist has a new album or simply listen to the more recent one, you can't really be sure of what is displayed.

- On mobile the search button is not always accessible, you have to navigate / "go back"

- Features disappearing: . You used to be able to filter new releases by genre. Now it's a general category of just popular artists. . Same for popular tracks and albums. For my tastes this entire feature is basically useless.

- Radios: the UI used to suggest auto-generated radios based on artists you listen to, it was my favorite feature that helped me discover many great artists and songs. Somehow it got moved and it took me a long time to find it again (it's now only a link on the artist page I guess ? I never think to do that)

- Bonus nitpick : the upload feature is great, sadly your music is not available to other people on the family plan

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#102

Post by debt »

extr wrote: post #59
steve-benjamins wrote: post #4

I really hope Spotify succeeds. I've mentioned this before on Hacker News, but as an artist, the algorithmic playlists are amazing. On a good week I get ~4,000 new listeners. It's incredible. Discovery Weekly drives the most but Release Radar and Radio also send a good chunk. Apple Music on the hand hasn't even verified my artist profile— which I need in order to view analytics. So I don't even know if people listen…

I've said it before, but Spotify is the single most valuable subscription service I pay for. Video streaming is convenient, but some of the music I've come across on Spotify has literally changed my life and that would never have happened if I was still forced to torrent everything. It's just so easy, it's everything they said the steaming model would be.

I feel this way about Soundcloud.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#103

Post by oflannabhra »

adventured wrote: post #84
52-6F-62 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada, one of the largest telecom companies gives new accounts to their services/Spotify free 6 months of Spotify. That may have helped boost the numbers recently. https://www.rogers.com/customer/support/article/share-everyt...

Those offers seem to be all over the place. They're common in the US as well. The challenge for Spotify will be the next few years, seeing how they withstand the substantial onslaught coming from Apple's music subscription service (which is booming as well). I'm skeptical Spotify can stay in the fight financially over time. There's nothing they can do in music that will ever produce the kind of profit required to sup…

Yep. Spotify is in an un-enviable position of having a superior product, but with competitors who don't need to earn a profit.

Your last paragraph is one of the best takes I've read on this.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#104

Post by wweidendorf »

jonknee wrote: post #3

By far the most interesting part of this is that they are doing a direct listing. There is no IPO underwriter (the bankers that the HN audience loves to bash). The shares will just start trading, pricing should be fun to watch. Update: This nugget from the F-1 [1] alludes to the interesting to watch pricing > Moreover, prior to the opening trade, there will not be a price at which underwriters initially sold ordinary…

Per a WSJ article in January, Spotify has retained investment bankers (reportedly paying them $30MM) to help ascertain interest from large institutional investors, tell the investment story, et cetera. Given that, I imagine that they will advise the company and its pre-IPO shareholders on an indicative price or price range.

Also, I would be hard pressed to imagine that they would not nominate a stabilization agent to help deal with the issues that you noted so that they manage price volatility in initial trading.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#105

Post by wufufufu »

Am I reading this right?

> No public market for our ordinary shares currently exists. However, our ordinary shares have a history of trading in private transactions. Based on information available to us, the low and high sales price per ordinary share for such private transactions during the year ended December 31, 2017 was $37.50 and $125.00, respectively, and during the period from January 1, 2018 through February 22, 2018 was $90.00 and $132.50, respectively, in each case excluding the Tencent Transactions (as defined herein).

> As of February 22, 2018, we had 176,976,280 ordinary shares outstanding. Except as otherwise indicated, the number of ordinary shares outstanding excludes (i) 14,095,254 ordinary shares issuable upon exercise of stock options outstanding as of February 22, 2018 at a weighted-average exercise price of $49.02 per ordinary share, (ii) 191,985 ordinary shares issuable upon the settlement of restricted stock units (“RSUs”) outstanding as of February 22, 2018, and (iii) 6,720,000 ordinary shares issuable upon the exercise of warrants outstanding as of February 22, 2018, at a weighted average exercise price of $59.92 per ordinary share.

So their private valuation is somewhere between $15B and $23B?

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#106

Post by arctangent »

pyronite wrote: post #66
saym wrote: post #18

They've gone from 28 million to 71 million premium subscribers in 3 years with a declining, single digit, churn rate. I'm impressed. I'm a happy Spotify customer, I hope they continue their growth and become a pillar of the music industry.

I was a Spotify lifer until I butted up against their 10,000 song limit. [1] Now, I'm using Google Play Music. There's no doubt in my mind that everything else outside of this limit is better on Spotify. Please, Spotify, fix this! Let me help inflate your valuation! 1. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Library-Song-Limit...

This happened to me too, so I'm in the process of switching back to Apple Music.

I scrobble to last.fm so I can still get decent recommendations over there.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#107

Post by cheeze »

tomhschmidt wrote: post #85
pyronite wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a Spotify lifer until I butted up against their 10,000 song limit. [1] Now, I'm using Google Play Music. There's no doubt in my mind that everything else outside of this limit is better on Spotify. Please, Spotify, fix this! Let me help inflate your valuation! 1. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Library-Song-Limit...

+1. Ability to upload music on Google Play Music is also keeping me from switching to Spotify. I have a lot of tracks that simply aren't in the Spotify catalog. If they add that, I'd switch tomorrow.

I'm blown away that the solution for this has been the shitty "local playlist sync" solution for years at this point.

I guess I'm in a niche? For me, there are tons of hiphop mixtapes that will never be on Spotify that I definitely need in my music player of choice.

Hell, Spotify won't even let me import local MP3 files from my phone!

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#108

Post by INTPenis »

pyronite wrote: post #66
saym wrote: post #18

They've gone from 28 million to 71 million premium subscribers in 3 years with a declining, single digit, churn rate. I'm impressed. I'm a happy Spotify customer, I hope they continue their growth and become a pillar of the music industry.

I was a Spotify lifer until I butted up against their 10,000 song limit. [1] Now, I'm using Google Play Music. There's no doubt in my mind that everything else outside of this limit is better on Spotify. Please, Spotify, fix this! Let me help inflate your valuation! 1. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Library-Song-Limit...

I like google play, also converted from spotify. But I don't like that albums disappear from google play.

This happened at spotify too and I assume it's due to legal issues. When an artist released a certain album on one label and only that album disappears.

It's very annoying and is pushing me back to good old piracy.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#109

Post by dag11 »

iamjk wrote: post #79
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have already known this but Spotify had the same $5/mo student discount but they may be more diligent about checking your enrollment. Def loved the 5 dollar plan :)

And it now comes with Hulu for free! (At least in the US)

And they have a deal with my credit card where it's 50% off, so I pay $2.50/month for Spotify and Hulu :D

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#110

Post by s_ngularity »

gautamnarula wrote: post #68
alehul wrote: post #54

I remember reading how Spotify charges ~equal to Netflix, and their expenses will likely be much lower due to not needing to fund 'originals' and all. While Netflix's originals also offer a distinct advantage over their competitors and increases the cost of switching, Spotify will likely have a very profitable future as a company, and I'm curious to see if their market cap will ever approach that of Netflix.

I was thinking that Spotify would actually need to go in the Netflix direction and have the music equivalent of "originals" (that is, signing artists and having their own label) because otherwise record companies would try to spin off their own services and take their content with them (which has happened in video streaming), or the moment Spotify gets too profitable they'll see an opportunity to increase content pri…

The difference here is that presumably fewer record companies have the money to fund the development of their own streaming service. The movie industry has much bigger players in the game.

Additionally I don't think anybody's cracked the code on how to make reliably well-received music yet. You can't distract the audience with good visuals and special effects if the plot is no good like in a movie.

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