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Spotify Form F-1

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Re: Spotify Form F-1

#131

Post by jonknee »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #80
jonknee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Facebook were both profitable when they went public.

“Going public”, not gone public. Dropbox, Spotify, Blue Apron, Cloudera, Twilio, Uber (expected) are not profitable.

What's your point? Blue Apron, Cloudera and Twilio have gone public already... Financials are secret until filing for an IPO and at any given point there are not many companies (tech or otherwise) who have filed, but not yet listed. We don't know who's profitable or who will go public, so the best we can go off of is past history.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#132

Post by Nadya »

p1esk wrote: post #119
stochastic_monk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Tidal more often because it has higher quality audio most of the time and a better UI, but fall back to Spotify prn. The emphasis on original music is nice. I subscribe to both because one is not a subset of the other, which I dislike. But hey, it’s been great, and I’ve actually found new music I love on Spotify/Tidal, unlike every other platform which has attempted recommendations.

Can you tell audio quality of Spotify vs Tidal in a blind test?

The default quality for the desktop app is in OGG Vorbis at 160kbps and for the mobile app is 96kbps. With a Premium subscription you can change these to 'Extreme' (320kbps). The web player reaches is 128kbps AAC or 256kbps with Premium [0]. Many users might be unaware they can change the quality at all (or they don't use the desktop app but use the web player so can't change the quality at all).

I can definitely hear the difference between 96/160/256. Between 256/320/lossless I'd probably fail an ABX test [1] and I'm very doubtful of anyone claiming to hear the differences between 320/lossless regardless of how much of an audiophile they claim to be if they refuse to take an ABX test. I'd maybe believe telling 256 and lossless apart but still be doubtful without any ABX results.

[0] https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/system_settings...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#133

Post by chrisseaton »

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 don't understand - I thought you could stream any audio from their collection that you wanted on Spotify? Do you have to add audio to your library first? Otherwise why does it matter what is in your library and what isn't if you can stream anything?

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#134

Post by stochastic_monk »

p1esk wrote: post #119
stochastic_monk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Tidal more often because it has higher quality audio most of the time and a better UI, but fall back to Spotify prn. The emphasis on original music is nice. I subscribe to both because one is not a subset of the other, which I dislike. But hey, it’s been great, and I’ve actually found new music I love on Spotify/Tidal, unlike every other platform which has attempted recommendations.

Can you tell audio quality of Spotify vs Tidal in a blind test?

I’ve compared the two, not blind, periodically. I seem to notice a bigger difference when using my higher-quality headphones and on certain albums (typically newer ones), but have not tested blind.

A confounding variable is that Spotify may use different bit rate heuristics than Tidal when streaming, so I’d need to preload the albums to be compared on both platforms, but I’m willing to conduct it blind.

A bigger complaint for me, honestly, is that Spotify’s navigation does not do what I want it to. (e.g., when trying to go to an artist’s page from a song, it just won’t do what I want.)

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#135

Post by tlynchpin »

on_and_off wrote: post #55
protonimitate wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I'm a Spotify lifer unless something catastrophic happens to their service or media availability. The only alternative service I even debated about was Apple Music when they first announced their streaming service, but there is no clear advantage to their service and I hate the Apple Music UI. I hope they find a way to help a bigger % of the revenue get into the hands of artists and start cutting out the big re…

disclaimer : I worked for a music streaming service for several years I don't really like the Play Music UI (but I don't hate it either, the new parts are very nice, but the album pages could use a bit more love). I dislike the spotify UI though (why is it THAT dark and depressive ?) and play music removes the ads from youtube (us user) and pays youtubers, so that's an easy choice. Oh, the winning feature of Play Mus…

I've been a subscriber to Google Play Music for a few years, initially I think my choice rested on being able to upload from my personal library, which was more significant back in the days when there was much less parity in music service catalogs - this was circa no Beatles. Then they added the youtube tie in where you don't get youtube ads - very valuable. I agree with the general UI complaint, it isn't great. To add to the crit, the branding is weak - 'Spotify' is meaningful, 'Play' is not. Despite all that, I've decided $100/yr for music on demand and no youtube ads is a good deal for me.

I tried Spotify a couple years ago and the experience was terrible and I haven't been back. I don't recall exactly: there was tons of hype, I had to download and run an installer, then create an account and validate email, and then I could play a song, so I picked a song and got some audio ads and subsequent more ads and suggested songs that were not at all related to the song I picked. It wasn't just not good enough to get me to switch, the onboarding was repellent.

I probably won't be their customer but I'm happy to see them succeed for a variety of reasons: customers love it, they aren't FAMGA, and that slide deck on their organizational squads and tribes [1] was significant in my work life.

[1]: https://blog.crisp.se/2012/11/14/henrikkniberg/scaling-agile...

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#136

Post by sincerely »

p1esk wrote: post #119
stochastic_monk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Tidal more often because it has higher quality audio most of the time and a better UI, but fall back to Spotify prn. The emphasis on original music is nice. I subscribe to both because one is not a subset of the other, which I dislike. But hey, it’s been great, and I’ve actually found new music I love on Spotify/Tidal, unlike every other platform which has attempted recommendations.

Can you tell audio quality of Spotify vs Tidal in a blind test?

spotify premium (if you select “high quality streaming” in settings) uses 320 kb/s ogg vorbis, whereas tidal streams in a lossless format. on most audio set ups those will be indistinguishable but my understanding is that people who know what to listen for can tell the difference on a suitably powerful/nuanced sound system.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#137

Post by character0 »

yash1th wrote: post #122
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…

For me it has to be Apple music because of library. AM has so many Indian songs (90s) library than Spotify. Otherwise the UI and app are awful with AM

You should check out Saavn for more Indian music. I worked at their parent company as an intern back in the day.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#138

Post by cbhl »

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.

... until Google Play Music goes the way of Google Reader :'(

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#139

Post by dopeboy »

kbouw wrote: post #118
dopeboy wrote: post #96

Spotify is the reason why I don't pirate music anymore. I say this as someone who used to be involved in the scene (low level FXP couriering in the late 90s and early 00s) and has gigs of release from the RNS, EGO, etc days. It's much faster and convenient to use Spotify. I also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. My only wish is they'd get off Electron (EDIT Chromium - tha…

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.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#140

Post by brnzh »

INTPenis wrote: post #108
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...

I like google play, also converted from spotify. But I don't like that albums disappear from google play. This happened at spotify too and I assume it's due to legal issues. When an artist released a certain album on one label and only that album disappears. It's very annoying and is pushing me back to good old piracy.

I've experienced all of these issues before, the 10k/disappearing albums is really debilitating for music lovers who like to collect full albums. I switched to Spotify from Google Music a few months ago, and my experience is mostly the same--mediocre, but functional enough.

At least Spotify has an open API, so you (maybe) can solve your own problems given some time.

(10k is really not that much at all if you're into a few genres.)

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