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The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

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Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#51

Can anyone give some insights on how it compares to Apple Music or Google Play Music. With 9.99 you also get YouTube Red and the selection for play music seems to be huge when compared with Amazon Prime Music (At least enough for me). If I don't have a song in play, I can use YouTube app and it plays in background. This is important for regional songs as Spotify does not have a huge library for non English songs but…

I've heard that the quality of google play music is generally lower than apple/spotify (apple/spotify are matched, apple may be slightly higher). As for youtube, on mobile there are third-party apps that give all of the youtube red features for free (except exclusives). Apple music requires a dedicated app for desktop playback (although spotify does too, if you want to play music offline) and doesn't work on linux (i…

I really like that Spotify has a Linux app.

... Since it's built on electron, though, it's basically the same as the web player. A chrome web app would do too, really.

But I guess it's a nod of appreciation.

There are also some nice single board computer based players based on this and that's nice.

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#52

As a customer since a long time I agree that Spotify should become a platform, but I doubt they will succeed due to how they shipped previous features. Anyway, the three features I want: - Lyrics, and integrating Genius for 1/100th of the tracks in the catalogue is not enough. - Concert tickets, in a smart and transparent way. A musician I'm listening to a lot is coming in Germany? I want a notification, a way to sha…

Number 2/3 sort of already exist. At least, the notifications part for concerts, and the "Spotify singles" for the exclusive tracks (it's not really the sense you meant, though). Being able to buy the concert tickets simply and easily would be killer though. Especially if it meant I wasn't paying $14 "convenience fees"

For #2 if they could partner with someone like Dice (possibly UK only) that would be great. Really easy to use app, no fees and the QR ticket only appears a few hours before the gig to prevent touts. I think you can even return tickets if there are people on the 'waiting list' although I've never tried that.

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that the quality of google play music is generally lower than apple/spotify (apple/spotify are matched, apple may be slightly higher). As for youtube, on mobile there are third-party apps that give all of the youtube red features for free (except exclusives). Apple music requires a dedicated app for desktop playback (although spotify does too, if you want to play music offline) and doesn't work on linux (i…

I really like that Spotify has a Linux app. ... Since it's built on electron, though, it's basically the same as the web player. A chrome web app would do too, really. But I guess it's a nod of appreciation. There are also some nice single board computer based players based on this and that's nice.

The SBC players are either based on libspotify, which has been rotting ever since Spotify deprecated it some years ago, or librespot, which is reverse engineered. Both of these break quite frequently. I don't think Spotify care much at all about Linux but I'm sure the user numbers make that decision easy for them.

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#54
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics point towards users wanting music from the big four labels. This may be one of the reasons they have double downed recently on their discovery products. If they can continue to divert user interest to artists from less expensive labels, it's a win/win. (Former Spotify employee, have no idea what I'm talking about).

I can't say in my 37 years of life, that I've ever considered what label a band was on, before I listened to them. I couldn't even name four big labels. The statistics point that way, because the four biggest, have the most artists under them.

Labels are a great way to find new music. Smaller ones typically have much tighter, more strongly thematic curation. Often, if I really enjoy an artist, I'll browse the rest of the labels offerings.

This doesn't work for Sony BMG of course, but consider a label like Ghostly International. Come for Tycho, find Com Truise, Lord Raja, Gold Panda, Shigeto, others).

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#55
post #45
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to pay for spotify, and I'm a semi-happy user. But I would pay double for better search/metadata and none of the idiotic suggestions.

I find good music on `Discover Weekly`. Why are suggestions idiotic?

Me too. I actually look forward to a new list each week. I have found so many songs there I had never heard of.

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#56

Can anyone give some insights on how it compares to Apple Music or Google Play Music. With 9.99 you also get YouTube Red and the selection for play music seems to be huge when compared with Amazon Prime Music (At least enough for me). If I don't have a song in play, I can use YouTube app and it plays in background. This is important for regional songs as Spotify does not have a huge library for non English songs but…

Play Music's apps are very immature and half-baked feeling compared to the alternatives. Apple is better in that regard, but its app distribution is massively limited compared to Spotify or even Google Play.

I agree. Spotify is very strong here in Europe and it's super convenient to follow friends who are better than finding cool songs than I am.

I was a free user for a long time and got the subscription last Christmas. You can tell they really spend time on UX. Clear examples of this are the running playlists that adapt to your speed. We can't really expect Google to match that, it's Spotify's core business after all.

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#57
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost opaqueness is Amazon's MO around services. AWS is a huge offender.

I've found it relatively easy to price out AWS projects, especially using their Cost Calculator: https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html Between that and https://ec2instances.info/ , I can figure out the vast majority of what I need to know about costs on AWS. What are the gaps that you see?

Tell me what your ALB costs are going to be next month.

“You are charged for each hour or partial hour that an Application Load Balancer is running and the number of Load Balancer Capacity Units (LCU) used per hour.”

Go here and see how “LCUs” are computed: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/pricing/

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#58
post #42
post #22

The article compares Amazon Prime music with Spotify... I'm a prime member and enjoy many of the advantages it comes with, but Prime Music is not one of them. It's horrible! A few months ago I thought I would give it a try and only use Prime Music because... why pay for two services? After about one month of use, I went back to spotify. The prime player UI is no good, the music selection is horrible, the music recomm…

After reading so many good things about spotify, I gave it a spin for the first time this past week. It actually is the best music streaming service I've used before, but I'm still not going to subscribe. New albums on CD are nearly universally under $10 now, and used CDs are even cheaper, so the price of Spotify is more than an album per month. That's a very steep price, and ultimately I think I'm happier buying 15…

The average music consumption case looks a lot different than 15 CDs per year. I've listened to hundreds of different artists this week and I consider myself a pretty light music consumer.

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#59
post #2

I don't understand why Spotify hasn't gone the Netflix way and started their own label to produce and release the music themselves. Their margins are severely cut by licensing and since the labels hold the rights to the content they might be convinced to sign better deals with competitors who have other revenue streams to subsidize a music venture that isn't making money.

Music is fundamentally different the video. Video is typically consumed and monetized once. A piece of music is consumed over and over again by the same individual. From an artist perspective, they want their music to be widely distributed so that they can monetize as many times as possible, and they also want to drive consumers towards their other lines of business (live performance, merchandise).

Re: The metrics behind Spotify’s IPO

#60
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost opaqueness is Amazon's MO around services. AWS is a huge offender.

I've found it relatively easy to price out AWS projects, especially using their Cost Calculator: https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html Between that and https://ec2instances.info/ , I can figure out the vast majority of what I need to know about costs on AWS. What are the gaps that you see?

If you spin up almost anything on GCP, you can see the monthly cost right there, with all the options you have selected.

A rather obvious gap is this one - How much will an i3.xlarge with an extra 2TiB of storage cost you per month on AWS?

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