Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing in particular that grinds my gears about a lot of software is how limited the actions I can perform on data are. Take Spotify for example, a fantastic product by many measures, but which even so does suck in some ways. Being able to create playlists and to enqueue songs is a start, but think about a list as a special case, limited kind of graph, and think about what kinds of operations we are missing out on…
Arbitrary data querying are literally the problem databases exist to solve. It's a monumentally hard problem. And there's another issue on top of it, the company 'crown jewels' problem. If Spotify makes it too easy to query Spotify, then it becomes ridiculously easy to compete with Spotify. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but not something we should expect Spotify to expend millions of dollars to enable.
Yeah that's true. But mainly the data I want to be able to query is the data that is directly connected to my own activity. If Spotify made it possible to get access to metadata about my activity and the songs that were involved in my activity then it's useful for users but still limits somewhat what a would-be competitor could do. Combine that with a ToS that forbids redistribution of the data and I think Spotify could provide this without helping would-be competitors too much.
Even if a would-be competitor had access to various data from Spotify they would still need to both negotiate agreements about streaming rights with the IPR owners of the music itself, and they would need a lot of marketing in order to get users. In other words they would need a lot of capital. Where would a would-be competitor even get that kind of money? I don't see why any VC or startup accelerator would be willing to fund someone to build this given how big Spotify is and how limited the group of people probably is that would decide to leave Spotify for this feature.
Whereas on the other hand, this kind of access to data could be a premium feature, and then it could be another reason for users that cared about these things to pay for Spotify Premium. Open source third-party clients could implement query engines, building on exactly what you mentioned in the first paragraph;
> Arbitrary data querying are literally the problem databases exist to solve.
Open source clients exists today, and using them with Spotify requires premium. If Spotify provided the data, someone would follow suit in making use of the data in open source clients. Which could further boost sales of premium membership, while at the same time like I said would still not make it too easy for would-be competitors.
Actually, the client wouldn't even need to be open source, it could be a commercial product, and by integrating with Spotify Premium they would still not be a competitor, and they would not need to go through licensing, and marketing might be easier as well. "Enjoy advanced interaction with your Spotify Premium listening experince by using our client."