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Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

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Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#191

Post by simias »

_zachs wrote: post #168
synaesthesisx wrote: post #27

I 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…

Starting their own label is exactly what they need to do to remain competitive. It's exactly what Netflix ended up doing and I think it's turning out pretty well for them. I wouldn't be surprised if Spotify tried poaching higher-level strategy people from Netflix.

I'm not convinced. You don't consume music the way you consume TV shows and movies, it's often a more "passive" activity where you start a playlist in the background while you do other things. You can do that with movie/TV shows of course but a movie will last you ~two hours while a TV show can literally last you days or weeks at a time without input if you really like having The Office in the background while you do other things. Assuming that you can afford buying subscriptions to various services it's not massively annoying to have to use HBO Go to watch Westworld and Netflix to watch Arrested Development. It's not as good as having a unified service but it does the job.

If like me you like composing playlists instead of playing one full album at a time then not having the vast majority of your music available on a single service is a huge deal breaker. When I hear a song out there and I want to add it to my playlist I expect that it will be available on Spotify and the vast majority of the time I'm right.

If I need to go hunt for songs on various services and I can't easily make a single unified playlist with all of it I think it'll be back to piracy for me, it won't be less convenient and it'll be much cheaper.

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#192

Post by softawre »

oh_sigh wrote: post #124
synaesthesisx wrote: post #27

I 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…

Small artists are great, but music and money to be made from music seems to be dominated by large artists. Could Spotify ever sign, say, Taylor Swift?

ask yourself 5 years ago:

Could Netflix ever sign, say, Adam Sandler?

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#193

Post by chime »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #146
atwebb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could look at purchasing Bandcamp, which has done a great job of promoting and selling independent music.

Bandcamp lets me download lists of people who've bought my music and of people who follow my profile. This is because they understand the business is mine , and they're simply a service provider for that business. Even their subscription system runs right through the musician's own Stripe account, so you can always take your subscriptions elsewhere. I don't have any reason to trust that a VC-fueled monster like Spoti…

Apologies if I come across as harsh but as a consumer, I would prefer my consumption activities to remain as private as possible. In light of FB news, I don't think even some Options > Privacy Settings on Bandcamp would be sufficient since most people wouldn't do it. I hope Bandcamp is opt-in for this info.

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#194

Post by fspacef »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #148
Asdfbla wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't record labels complain some time ago that Spotify had supposedly commissioned music for its instrumental playlists (presumably to save money on royalties)? 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 streami…

Spotify could then turn into a label + live music organizer, giving artists more of a cut and cutting out labels entirely.

This. The money in the game doesn't come from just direct sales and hasn't for quite sometime. In the same vein an artist can get a million streams and still make >$5000. [1]

In recent years artists like Drake have started their own labels and collaborated directly with tour organizers to generate different sources of income and cut out middlemen. While it's difficult to imagine Spotify generating hit music at the same pace as Netflix produces hit shows, there is nothing stopping them from becoming a tour organizer or bringing artists to perform at their own show (hint: iTunes festival).

If they are really serious about the long term they would be developing new ways to experience "live" music. Perhaps VR concerts and performances or features that let the audience send feedback to the artists.

The good news is that they have shown they are not afraid of trying new things (ex: Video player within the playlist and the RapGenius tie ins).

Time will tell but I am bullish on Spotify changing how we listen to music for the better because the industry is ripe for a new disruption (Records -> CDs -> Digital -> ???)

[1] - https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/05/26/band-1-million-s...

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#195

Post by calcifer »

Nullabillity wrote: post #88
komali2 wrote: post #47

I'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)?

For me it's: - Better discovery - Much cheaper (150kr/mo for 6 subscriptions, vs 100kr/mo for one with GPM) - A desktop client (even if it's a crappy electron one) - YTRed isn't available here anyway

Nitpick, but Spotify isn't an Electron app, it uses CEF [1].

[1] https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#196

Post by FreakyT »

_zachs wrote: post #168
synaesthesisx wrote: post #27

I 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…

Starting their own label is exactly what they need to do to remain competitive. It's exactly what Netflix ended up doing and I think it's turning out pretty well for them. I wouldn't be surprised if Spotify tried poaching higher-level strategy people from Netflix.

It would definitely be a good direciton to go in, but I suspect a major potential problem for Spotify will be the possibility that the major record labels pull their tracks off Spotify in retaliation.

This was less of an issue for Netflix as Netflix streaming already had an extremely limited selection of third-party licensed content.

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#197

Post by andromedaworld »

_zachs wrote: post #168
synaesthesisx wrote: post #27

I 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…

Starting their own label is exactly what they need to do to remain competitive. It's exactly what Netflix ended up doing and I think it's turning out pretty well for them. I wouldn't be surprised if Spotify tried poaching higher-level strategy people from Netflix.

The problem with this approach is that there's so much music out there because it is way cheaper to make music than it is to make films and shows. Even if spotify was somehow able to sign the top artists, they just couldn't keep up with the influx of new artists coming up every single day.

Music lovers also tend to be very particular and nuanced about their taste in music. Therefore, if I as a consumer don't find my music on spotify it means I'd have no reason to subscribe nor come back to spotify.

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#198

Post by amelius »

synaesthesisx wrote: post #27

I 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…

I like Spotify too. But in the end, it will just be another MegaCorp controlling music, especially when shareholders are involved. So I'd rather see the delicate balance between all parties maintained as-is.

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#199

Post by tomduncalf »

komali2 wrote: post #47

I'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)?

- Spotify’s UI is much cleaner IMO

- Better iOS app

- Native (well, Electron) MacOS app

- Playlist folders - niche feature but a big one for me

- Amazingly good music discovery on Spotify (not properly compared with Google but they get it so right a lot of the time even for niche genres)

I do wish Google Play could address some of these (most of all playlist folders! big one for me and how I organise music) as I do love the ability to store your own music along with cloud music that GPM gives, and it would be enough for me to switch with just a couple of changes.

Re: Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B

#200

Post by chimeracoder »

jedberg wrote: post #159
chimeracoder wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underwriters aren't gatekeepers by definition, because there's nothing preventing companies from foregoing underwriters. But almost every single company that goes public chooses to[0], because they gain significant value from the process. There are a few exceptions - Google is the most famous one. But they're rare, and even Google ran into trouble with theirs - they literally had to cut the size of the amount they ra…

> because there's nothing preventing companies from foregoing underwriters. Isn't that like saying "there is nothing that prevents you from using highways"? Like sure, you don't have to use an underwriter, but, as you pointed out with the Google example, it won't go well for you if you leave them out.

> Like sure, you don't have to use an underwriter, but, as you pointed out with the Google example, it won't go well for you if you leave them out.

Well, the original claim was that underwriters provide negative value. There's a tradeoff, but clearly they do provide positive value, on net.

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