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Spotify Form F-1

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Re: Spotify Form F-1

#161

Post by fascinated »

dopeboy wrote: post #139
kbouw wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What performance issues do you usually run into on the current iteration of the app? Just out of personal curiosity so I can take note next time I'm using the application.

Mostly it's millisecond lag when changing songs or opening up new playlists. I get that everything is on the cloud but maybe more aggressive caching would be helpful. If it were any other application, I wouldn't care. But because this is the second most frequently piece of software I use (browser being first), I'd love for it to be as performant as possible.

I definitely miss the very old version of the app too. That one was written by the uTorrent creators - it was incredibly fast, felt great.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#162

Post by peapicker »

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 believe playlists don't count as library (please correct me if I'm wrong) - so you can effectively surpass the 10,000 as a limit by adding songs to playlists instead of the library.

I've actually changed my model primarily around playlists and don't actually use the library feature of spotify hardly at all.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#163

Post by firefistace77 »

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 thought this was a feature already?

https://support.spotify.com/is/using_spotify/features/listen...

Or are you referring to something different?

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#164

Post by lucb1e »

twostorytower wrote: post #149
extr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wrote a "persuasive speech" in college a decade ago about how to solve the problem the music industry was facing (piracy). I proposed an all you can listen subscription service, at a price point of say $10. Saying the record labels would work together to make this happen. My professor nearly laughed me out of the room when I proposed my thesis for the speech. I presented the speech anyways and got an A. Today, Spotif…

Could you link the paper? Reading a future prediction/expectation with such accuracy should be interesting.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#165

Post by debt »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #158
debt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this way about Soundcloud.

The subscription service of Soundcloud? Really? I am a Soundcloud Go+ (or whatever their premium tier is called by now) subscriber, and it is the worst. They don't have the same catalogue available like Spotify, the alogrithm constantly shows me outright garbage (young aspiring musicians? More like 15 year olds with a mic in the basement) and their app... I don't know how a company that old can have an Android app th…

I do agree, but I think they have a wider selection of truly indie music. It's very difficult to find, but it's very good when you do.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#166

Post by dabockster »

juicy-fruit wrote: post #49
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 had Spotify before and switched to Apple Music because of the student pricing. When I had Spotify, I would discover new music and new artists all the time. Since getting Apple Music, I really haven't discovered anyone new. Although I've graduated, Apple seems to think I'm still in school and is still only charging me $5/month. The moment that ends, I'm switching to Spotify. Also, the Apple Music app on iOS is ho…

I used Spotify until I realized that it was suggesting to me the exact same songs that my friends were listening too. So if I wanted to branch out and try something new, it became a chore. Also, I do enjoy the occasional 1970s rock song, which Spotify has been lacking in.

With Apple Music and human curators, I can actually find new music better. And I can get my rock fix when I need it.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#167

Post by oxymoron »

spyspy wrote: post #154
malshe wrote: post #116

A key metric not mentioned in the comments is premium average revenue per user (ARPU). It's consistently decreasing over the last 3 years: 2015: € 6.84 2016: € 6.20 (9% decline) 2017: € 5.32 (14% decline) Also, the number of hours consumed per MAU as of December of each year is also increasing. I should have taken the average over the year for both but I am interested in the trend. 2015: 191 hours per year (17.4 bill…

This probably just means that more people are using family plans instead of paying individually. I'm part of a family plan, as are pretty my everyone else I know. It only makes sense. The upside is that canceling a family plan is much harder than a single one just due to the increased number of people involved who'll be inconvenienced.

It may also mean that they’ve expanded the user base in countries that have lower purchasing power than western europe, and thus probably lower pricing. That’s surely a good thing?

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#168

Post by dabockster »

sp00ls wrote: post #113
jqbx_jason wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever get tired of Discover Weekly give JQBX[1] a try. I built it so that I could bust out of the same old genres Spotify tends to re-suggest every week. [1] https://www.jqbx.fm

This looks great, I'm definitely going to give it a try. Spotify has been slowly driving me crazy with the same exact songs in my daily mixes day after day just reshuffling.

This is the big reason why I switched to Apple Music. Spotify has an amazing UI/UX, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't want to listen to the same stuff each week. I have FM radio for that.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#169

Post by lucb1e »

underwater wrote: post #70
criddell wrote: post #67

I wonder if Spotify will become a music label for the same reasons that Netflix has been making their own shows? Spotify could be severely damaged if only a few labels were to pull their content.

Spotify would be severely damaged if any major label pulled their content. That’s very different from Netflix.

Well, not exactly. I don't have Netflix exactly because of that: not all major producers are on Netflix. That's the same as a major producer pulling something from Spotify.

There's no point if I'm still going to have to pirate half the stuff I watch or listen to, or pay twice for a subscription. (If you can subscribe in the first place, that is; last I heard one couldn't even watch game of thrones legally in the Netherlands if I wanted to.)

Well, and it also doesn't help that I've heard you need to unroot your android device (I will not be an unprivileged user on my own hardware) and enable DRM in firefox to watch Netflix. But the main reason is that every time I check, they don't have at around a third of what I would want to watch.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#170

Post by indescions_2018 »

tw1010 wrote: post #5
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…

If you'd have to bet, do you think it's going to go significantly up or down within the first few days?

At the risk of turning into r/wallstreetbets here. My bias is to the downside. Driven by a cacophany of pundits on CNBC post-IPO with negative outlooks. "There is absolutely no money to be made in streaming music on the internet" and "apple isn't into music for the profits" and so on ad infinitum. As well as significant short interest in the options market.

$SNAP is probably as nearest neighbor as any for price-action historical context.

Market timing (H1 2019) may also be ill-favored generally for anything tech related if we see significant correction.

But I certainly hope I'm wrong. And will be looking to add positions in Spotify, Dropbox, Uber, Lyft, Docker, Snowflake, AirBnB, SpaceX, WeWork, Stripe etc if and when they become available ;)

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