So i bought in, who knows where this will go though :) One of my hopes it that just like NFLX, once the company focuses on producing / licensing it's own content they can do really well. I'm interested in hearing what others have to say on this! Did you buy, will you buy? Why?
Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
131–140 of 479 posts
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#132I do love Spotify as a product, however I don't think it will scale the same way Netflix does. Spotify is at the mercy of major record labels, and as their books become more transparent the record labels will squeeze every dollar they can for licensing. That is, unless they find a way to upend the record industry entirely. Spotify has a unique position with their amazing discovery/recommendations engine- they could p…
There's probably a danger that large record labels will threaten to revoke their licensing agreements if they think that Spotify may start competing with them on that front. Not sure if that will be a problem, though, I'm not familiar with the whole streaming market.
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#133I'm not quite clear on why people are choosing spotify over google play music - to me the google option is superior in UI and offerings (including ad-free youtube). Am I missing something? Is it just one runs better on iPhones or is more hip (like why people choose snapchat over instagram or something)?
Yeah, it's just because it's more hip. After all, you know best which UI is superior for all people.
My comment was an opportunity for people to disagree with me - what about the GPM UI do you find inferior to the Spotify one?
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who just made this choice, let me add some insight. - My friends use Spotify - Larger library - Well made playlists - Social feed In the end, they are very similar products. I feel that Spotify has a huge head start on Google here, and it shows. The more mature product is Spotify. I think Google can't really compete in terms of curation and popularity. Really, the edge cases of "music that is not on Spotif…
Larger library? They all use the same base library afaik.
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#135Maybe my perception is off, but it seems like we're getting lots of tech IPO's in a relatively short time. Stitch Fix, Dropbox, Blue Apron, Snap, and Roku to name a few. For a long time we weren't seeing too many big tech IPO's. Did something fundamentally change in the market to lead to this, or did all these companies just happen to make it to "market maturity" around the same time?
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#136Maybe my perception is off, but it seems like we're getting lots of tech IPO's in a relatively short time. Stitch Fix, Dropbox, Blue Apron, Snap, and Roku to name a few. For a long time we weren't seeing too many big tech IPO's. Did something fundamentally change in the market to lead to this, or did all these companies just happen to make it to "market maturity" around the same time?
Are blue apron and stitch fix tech companies? I thought they were just sending out boxes of stuff to subscribers, with a website/app for taking orders?
Stitch Fix has quite a team of data scientists working on their recommendation system. They typically send about 5 items per shipment, so they need to be very confident the 5 will fit, you'll like them, and you'll like the price.
With Spotify or Netflix, the user can browse around and can skip between songs or shows quickly. If their recommendation engine wasn't phenomenal, it'd still be a viable product. Stitch Fix typically has 1 shot per month to sell you stuff you care about.
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#137Contrasting this offering, where there were no underwriters and things proceeded spectacularly, with the Dropbox IPO, where the underwriters added negative value, speaks profoundly to the future role of private markets in the capital markets for technology companies. Disclaimer: I bet my career on private markets supplanting public ones, in respect of certain technology companies, many years ago.
Spotify paid bankers roughly 40 million euros to run this direct listing and did not raise any additional funding in the process (because it's not really an offering). Dropbox paid bankers about the same amount in fees and was able to raise a bunch of capital in the process. I wouldn't necessarily call one of these events spectacular and the other not spectacular. They are just different...
Agreed--the comparison is enough to spring a reasonable hypothesis, nothing more. That said, Spotify is a large foreign lister; Dropbox is a small domestic seller.
I'm not advocating the death of underwriters. They're a necessary part of the ecosystem. What we're seeing here is a broadening of the options available to the ecosystem. That's new, and that's good.
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#138I am a closeted hobbyist musician in a rather small niche (contemporary christian music in Spanish LOL)but I don't want to live off my music. I just want to be heard by somebody. And today, trough distrokid plus spotify this is sooo posible. Which wouldn't have been in my wildest of dreams 20 years ago when I wanted to start a band with my friends. Or even 10, when I toured with a small time ska band. And since my go…
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Netflix could be in the same position. With Disney launching their own streaming services next year, the situation could get dire for Netflix, too, if Netflix' own productions don't take off as much as they want.
It's very doubtful that Disney is or could be an serious issue for Netflix now. Netflix is approaching - or already larger than - the size of Disney's comparable entertainment business, and Netflix is growing relatively fast whereas Disney's business isn't growing much or at all. Disney's studio division does $8.3 billion in sales. Their media networks arm, which includes ABC & ESPN, does $23 billion. Netflix will hi…
http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/14/media/disney-fox-deal/index....
Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B
#140I'm not quite clear on why people are choosing spotify over google play music - to me the google option is superior in UI and offerings (including ad-free youtube). Am I missing something? Is it just one runs better on iPhones or is more hip (like why people choose snapchat over instagram or something)?
As someone who just made this choice, let me add some insight. - My friends use Spotify - Larger library - Well made playlists - Social feed In the end, they are very similar products. I feel that Spotify has a huge head start on Google here, and it shows. The more mature product is Spotify. I think Google can't really compete in terms of curation and popularity. Really, the edge cases of "music that is not on Spotif…
For example, I like some noir movies and the jazz within that genre. There isn't a specific genre that most music playing devices would realize but Spotify has lots of user made playlists that has the type of music I want. Compared to Google's lackluster results
https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/srst/noir+jazz/EAY
I don't really think that iTunes or Google Play has the same thing, I may be wrong though.