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Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

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Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had Spotify apps, the two most popular were lyrics apps. Then they removed the apps and added lyrics inside Spotify, and now there is no more lyrics at all. Obviously that's a very demanded feature so they must have a strong reason not to have it anymore (legal issues probably). I personally used it all the times for improvised karaokes so I'm very upset to not have lyrics on demand anymore.

They still have Behind the Lyrics for some songs on the mobile app, which shows a mix of lyrics and info about the song and artist.

I can't make it appear on my app (iOS) and the help link [1] shows that's it's enabling comments from Genius about the lyrics, so not the actual lyrics synced.

[1]: https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/beh...

Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#22
post #12

Spotify has achieved what no normal entity could. Go them for having a relatively decent free to play with, I'm assuming, a good pay to play model as well.

In Canada, one of the major wireless providers offers Spotify premium accounts bundled in with mid and high tier data lines (i.e. 2 years of Spotify premium "for free"). So I wonder what other providers around the world do this, and how many of the 40mm are part of this group.

Same in the UK, Vodafone include Spotify with some of their plans.

Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#23
post #3
post #2

So that's like ~$400M of income per month? Their expenses are mostly royalties and those are probably spare change compared to that income. Not bad!

Maybe now they can start building basic quality of life features like offline Last.FM scrobbling that have been in demand for 4+ years!

I use offline all the time?

Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#24
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine, they want people to do all their music listening on spotify, implementing scrobbling would seem counter to that goal.

They've already implemented scrobbling, I think the previous poster was asking for offline plays to be scrobbled too.

Oh I didn't know that. thanks.

Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#25
post #6

I'm happy their subscriber counts are up, but I've noticed a steep negative trend their library selection in the last month. I poked around a bit for more info. All I could find were complaints that they don't publish this information anymore. Does anyone know how to see if my anectdote is a trend? Perhaps they lost some contracts with major labels, or perhaps there is a way to probe their search API to estimate thei…

I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure I read that their contracts with all the major labels ran out a few months ago and they're still renegotiating. Maybe labels are removing small amounts of music in the mean time to force the issue?

Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that? EU wide? In the UK its £9.99 which I've always found too expensive compared to services like Netflix, NowTV, Amazon Video etc. Personally I feel the price point should be around £5 or less, otherwise I can buy an album every other month on iTunes and own it forever, so for me at least this price point doesn't work.

It is in Czech Republic, but I see now, that you can change the country in the footer and you will see different pricing.

Yeah Spotify pricing varies pretty drastically from country to country.

Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#27
post #6

I'm happy their subscriber counts are up, but I've noticed a steep negative trend their library selection in the last month. I poked around a bit for more info. All I could find were complaints that they don't publish this information anymore. Does anyone know how to see if my anectdote is a trend? Perhaps they lost some contracts with major labels, or perhaps there is a way to probe their search API to estimate thei…

Maybe the golden age* of music subscription services is ending, following in the footsteps of these services for video:

- A startup negotiates contracts with most/all content providers

- said startup becomes a sensation

- Google, Apple & Amazon enter the market, signing similar deals

- Content providers realize the value of their material and negotiations become more complicated

- The services want need differentiation and it can't be price because they all have more or less the same lower bound of licensing costs

- The startup's contracts are up for renewal. They don't have the financial background of Apple/Google/Amazon and loose a few contracts

- There are now 5-10 services and each one has some exclusive content, overlap in the libraries keeps shrinking

- I go back to bit torrent because 10$/mo is already more per year than I paid for music in the first 25 years of my life total.

* length: about 3 years or as it's commonly called "A good Netflix"

Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#28

I hope they add lyrics again. They ended their partnership with musixmatch a few months ago and haven't offered an alternative yet.

The lyrics were simple and great. I was surprised how much I missed them when they were gone. A Genius partnership would be perfect, but Genius seems to think they're god's gift to Earth so that will probably never happen.

Re: Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

#29
post #12

Spotify has achieved what no normal entity could. Go them for having a relatively decent free to play with, I'm assuming, a good pay to play model as well.

In Canada, one of the major wireless providers offers Spotify premium accounts bundled in with mid and high tier data lines (i.e. 2 years of Spotify premium "for free"). So I wonder what other providers around the world do this, and how many of the 40mm are part of this group.

Vodafone does this in Portugal.
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