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Audiobooks on Spotify

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Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#251

Post by nmz »

eduction wrote: post #150
mostlysimilar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software interfaces in general have regressed severely since the mid-2000s. Media players are a perfect example. There was 10x more functionality in Winamp or Windows Media Player than we get in Spotify or Apple Music today. What is going on? Why are things getting dumber? Are we just optimizing too hard for the lowest common denominator and the average user wants things to be dead simple? I don't want to believe sof…

>There was 10x more functionality in Winamp or Windows Media Player than we get in Spotify or Apple Music today. Except for the extremely useful functionality of putting a large percentage of the world's music at your fingertips ready for instant listening. Spotify also makes curated playlists ("This Is _[Artist Name]__" playlists), artist pages that show their most popular tracks and discographies, offers profession…

If we could legally do so, a p2p music player would do even more, so from an engineering perspective I'm not impressed, this is the price of doing things legally I guess and even with the legalities, there is still some pushback against spotify.

I suppose the only way forward to having an actually good application is to rent a catalogue. Streaming a set of things and the application tries to organize the best it can. Decouple the application from the provider. Instead of the mess we have now... but alas, that's just wishful thinking.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#252

Post by [deleted] »

waboremo wrote: post #166
amerkhalid wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, after getting screwed over by so many companies making one jump through so many hoops to cancel a subscription, I rather have Apple's way. Perhaps when law or credit card processors force companies to provide an easy way to cancel a service, as easy as it was to sign up for it, then I can worry about competition in IAP space.

That already exists, if all hell breaks loose for some reason you can talk to your credit card company and request that subscription be stopped. Asking for a new card does the same. Chargebacks also exist and is actually a handy way to get your account removed entirely as lots of companies hate chargebacks. Also both Visa and Mastercard have their own rules that apply to subscription services, for example Visa requir…

[deleted]

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#253

Post by tpxl »

Aachen wrote: post #144
Maxburn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with the first part, but how are they damaging it? Everything they are building is open far as I know.

Can I listen to paid shows in antennapod? Can I buy their podcasts from someone else the way I can get music or books from different stores?

If a vendor chooses to only sell on one platform, that's not the platforms fault (cancerous exclusives notwithstanding).

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#254

Post by plorg »

nomel wrote: post #81
plorg wrote: post #43

I think Apple is being abusively extractive here. I also believe that Spotify's audiobook play will be bad for consumers and worse for artists.

> I also believe that Spotify's audiobook play will be bad for consumers and worse for artists. Could you expand on this?

Spotify buying Findaway (a company that previously licensed audiobooks to many different distributors with varied business models), for example, centralizes the market in a way that at best, will result in both an oligopoly for consumers and an oligopsony for creaters. It is certainly good that Amazon/Audible has competitors, but if the only competitors it has have basically the same vertically integrated structure there will be less incentive and opportunity for authors and voice actors to create genuinely interesting works, and listeners will in turn have increasingly commoditized options, with creators making less money for their work and consumers paying more.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#255

Post by plorg »

plorg wrote: post #254
nomel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also believe that Spotify's audiobook play will be bad for consumers and worse for artists. Could you expand on this?

Spotify buying Findaway (a company that previously licensed audiobooks to many different distributors with varied business models), for example, centralizes the market in a way that at best, will result in both an oligopoly for consumers and an oligopsony for creaters. It is certainly good that Amazon/Audible has competitors, but if the only competitors it has have basically the same vertically integrated structure t…

And that doesn't even include the more specific concerns about the way Spotify uses contract labor to squeeze artists.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#257

Post by boxed »

JimA wrote: post #59

Regardless of the passionate feelings against Spotify, it's hard to dispute their basic premise that Apple is deliberately creating a bad user experience just to preserve their walled content garden. The same thing applies to not being able to buy a book using the Amazon app. It's ridiculous and there is no valid argument against it other than greed. Not a fan of overregulation, but in this area I can't wait for Appl…

The problem isn't that Apple forces IAP. The problem is that they have the outrageous cut of 30% (or even 15%). Apples IAP is awesome. Their greed is not.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#258

Post by AntonyGarand »

threeseed wrote: post #145
JimA wrote: post #59

Regardless of the passionate feelings against Spotify, it's hard to dispute their basic premise that Apple is deliberately creating a bad user experience just to preserve their walled content garden. The same thing applies to not being able to buy a book using the Amazon app. It's ridiculous and there is no valid argument against it other than greed. Not a fan of overregulation, but in this area I can't wait for Appl…

Spotify could just implement IAP. It's simple and has a great user experience. Seems like this is more about Spotify wanting to benefit from the channel without paying for it.

IAP take a 30% cut, which is unreasonable on things like audiobook

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#260

Post by eduction »

stavros wrote: post #167
eduction wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There was 10x more functionality in Winamp or Windows Media Player than we get in Spotify or Apple Music today. Except for the extremely useful functionality of putting a large percentage of the world's music at your fingertips ready for instant listening. Spotify also makes curated playlists ("This Is _[Artist Name]__" playlists), artist pages that show their most popular tracks and discographies, offers profession…

I agree with the GP. Yes, the infrastructure is great, but the client itself is trash. Winamp consumed 1% of my CPU twenty years ago, Spotify consumes 10% now . Not only do they mostly do the same thing, but Winamp did much more. This is a major, major regression, that we have machines thousands of times faster but the software is an order of magnitude slower and more resource-hungry than back then on the much faster…

You agree that Winamp has 10x the functionality of Spotify?
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