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Spotify loss widens despite higher revenue

mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com

11–20 of 21 posts

Re: Spotify loss widens despite higher revenue

#12
post #10

How can a company have income like that and still be that far in the hole? Where are the costs coming from? Obviously bandwidth is going to cost, but I can't imagine it takes that big a hunk of their profits. Obviously the top expense is going to be licensing which tells me the studios are really the ones killing Spotify. Does anyone else find it odd that the ones who determine how much of a profit or loss the compan…

Likely it's minimums to rights holders.

Re: Spotify loss widens despite higher revenue

#13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing the classic example of a parasite that is so virulent it kills its host. A more pragmatic music label will charge as much in license fees as they possibly can without killing Spotify.

But... Spotify is the parasite and the record labels are the host.

Spotify is a parasite with a captive audience of opportunistic feeders that funnel "nutrients" back to both them and, subsequently, the host.

It's not parasitism, it's symbiosis.

Re: Spotify loss widens despite higher revenue

#14
post #7
post #4

Spotify is a really bad deal from an investment point of view. For each dollar they stand to make profit, the record companies will up their license fees a dollar. Thus, there's no room for profit in companies like Spotify.

That is exactly their problem. Spotify owns neither the customer nor digital contents. They can play their "music discovery arbitrage" game till it grows big enough that their partners have enough incentive to step in and take over their business. No different than what happened to Facebook app makers. Even Zynga's profit outlook is questionable as it is crystal clear from their latest filing... Spotify's best bet is…

I don't think Spotify can easily sell themselves. It would immediately void all their current licensing agreements.

Re: Spotify loss widens despite higher revenue

#15
post #3
post #2

I can only wonder how much of the costs are fees to the music companies. Is there any way to figure out at all what Spotify , Rdio, etc have to pay to provide their selection?

I think it's 3 cents per a stream. 33 songs for a dollar. 330 for 10 dollars. Let's say 11 hours of music for $10 a month? I think they're losing money on how many songs people listen to vs subscription cost. The advertisement isn't offsetting it.

You must be joking. Spotify paid out 0.003 per play on my last royalty statement. Pathetic. The sooner Spotify goes under, the better for the music industry.

Re: Spotify loss widens despite higher revenue

#17
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's 3 cents per a stream. 33 songs for a dollar. 330 for 10 dollars. Let's say 11 hours of music for $10 a month? I think they're losing money on how many songs people listen to vs subscription cost. The advertisement isn't offsetting it.

You must be joking. Spotify paid out 0.003 per play on my last royalty statement. Pathetic. The sooner Spotify goes under, the better for the music industry.

What makes you think you'd have made more money if Spotify didn't exist?

Re: Spotify loss widens despite higher revenue

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be joking. Spotify paid out 0.003 per play on my last royalty statement. Pathetic. The sooner Spotify goes under, the better for the music industry.

What makes you think you'd have made more money if Spotify didn't exist?

You would buy the CD, or pay for the download. Doing that is way less justifiable when it's available on Spotify.

Re: Spotify loss widens despite higher revenue

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think you'd have made more money if Spotify didn't exist?

You would buy the CD, or pay for the download. Doing that is way less justifiable when it's available on Spotify.

Do you seriously think people would buy the CDs of all the music they listen to in Spotify if it went offline? And go from spending $10/month to hundreds?

That kind of assumptions is what leads the RIAA to calculate losses bigger than the entire world's GDP.

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