Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by adventured » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

dwighttk wrote: post #139

adventured wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know how much business 21st Century Fox does compared to your numbers, but Disney is buying "most of" them[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/14/media/disney-fox-deal/index....

If the acquisition goes well, it could keep Disney ahead of Netflix's scale for another three or four years (on an apples to apples basis). The Fox assets they're acquiring are substantial, however there's zero organic growth in the Fox business (it's closer to a contracting business with 2017 sales below 2015 sales).

An acquisition like that might be as likely to throw Disney into chaos as anything and give Netflix a leg up on stealing market share, given the corporate history of very large acquisitions.

That also of course depends on what the Netflix growth profile looks like over time as well.

For example, does Netflix routinely still generate 15%-20% annual growth after they're up over $20 billion in sales? If so, there's nothing Disney can do to stay with them short of continuing to buy up the rest of the entertainment universe.

The global subscriber momentum Netflix has now is incredible. By the time Disney figures out exactly how all of their streaming pieces are going to fit together, Netflix might be up to 250 million global subscribers.

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

#182

Post by lern_too_spel » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #141

lern_too_spel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't pay them as well.

I'm curious how you get to that conclusion, care to share your reasoning?

If they could do it and reduce costs that way, they would have done it already. In the Netflix case, licensing third party content was cheaper than creating their own and probably still is. Creating their own content acts as a differentiator for their service with the potential for future cost savings

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

#183

Post by philg_jr » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

chucksmash wrote: post #144

azemetre wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify has many "session" recordings from a variety of artists, they also have live albums from concerts that aren't available anywhere else on the internet. Trust me, I've been scouring every dark corner of the net for a recording of Run The Jewels Sxsw 2015 concert to no avail.

what.cd would have had it in FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, AAC and six different bitrates of MP3. Leaving legality aside, I was always really impressed with the level of curation people put into that particular private tracker. You could find every vinyl and CD release of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue in just about every file format you could hope for. I hope eventually streaming services become so low-friction and commonly used tha…

ugh I get legitimately sad thinking about how what.cd slammed its doors shut unexpectedly, never to be seen again.

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

#184

Post by whatok » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

lavezzi wrote: post #107

whatok wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is listening to all of this self-published music to get training data for Discover Weekly?

In-house positions or they scrape/steal from the blogs.

Definitely would necessitate something resembling in-house positions but I just don't see how you maintain any sort of consistency if you have a group of people reviewing thousands of tracks. And then at that point aren't they just functioning as a label?

Blogs, don't know how they're going to discover stuff if it's all published on Spotify initially.

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

#185

Post by exclusiv » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #149

DisruptiveDave wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify + extreme bias towards X # of artists due to rights ownership = potentially crap experience for listeners.

I don't disagree, if you look at the way Netflix pushes their own content over what used to be entirely studio movies and network TV shows you can see a current example of how this plays out. I was thinking that if Spotify kept the same experience for listeners that they had now in order to grow their subscription base, and just reported higher earnings for the artists they had signed versus ones signed to a 'differe…

Don't you think that as long as it's good users won't care? Netflix would likely have succeeded without originals but would have been nowhere near as pervasive. People were tired of the network crap and wanted content accessible everywhere. They delivered on those.

Good content is good content. For music - it's even better if it's not yet well known because for some reason people think more highly of themselves for being an early fan. Early discovery favors audio moreso than video. So pushing originals (newly signed artists) is a great strategy for Spotify. So long as it's good music.

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

#186

Post by matthewbauer » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

Skunkleton wrote: post #160

isostatic wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What that says about Spotify's valuation is another thing

This is something that has been bothering me. Doesn't it seem like stock prices are getting out of whack?

Yes although this mostly just applies to consumer tech companies.

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

#187

Post by bllguo » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

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)?

I use GPM, but that's because of the bundling with Youtube Red. I would prefer Spotify for a desktop app, nicer looking UI IMO, and so Google doesn't know my music prefs. But for now, ad-free YT is too nice to give up.

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

#188

Post by maxxxxx » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #143

ericwood wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at Blue Apron...sending people boxes of perishables is actually a very tough problem to solve and there was extensive tech powering the warehouse side of things. We had a fairly large engineering team working on these problems. At the end of the day who really cares what is and isn't a "tech company"? Every company has a tech aspect to it these days.

How's that different from, say, the logistics of grocery stores? Yet Wegmans isn't considered a "tech company."

If your company is in SF and funded by VCs you are tech by default, otherwise you aren't tech.

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

#189

Post by kgwgk » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #150

kgwgk wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple and Google could, but I doubt Spotify has a few billions around to make any acquisition.

Well, as of today, one could seriously consider an all-stock acquisition and the numbers probably could be made to work.

That would be fun to watch if they tried.

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

#190

Post by graphitezepp » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

_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 doubt the need to poach the people, just the strategy itself. Would likely be better to find people used to managing bands, or doing whichever relevant recording company position, at a high level I would suspect