Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

mixmag.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 64 posts

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#51

Post by whatch »

knute wrote: post #24
coolso wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I canceled my premium subscription because of all of the Joe Rogan episodes they deleted.

I cancelled mine in part because of the Joe Rogan kerfuffle but mostly because I made the realization that Spotify is investing more heavily in podcasts than music, but I already have a podcast player that I like and I should subscribe to a music service that cares about the music.

Exactly. I just switched back from Apple Music to Spotify (I used Spotify before Apple Music, when podcasts were unavailable where I live).

I returned for missed recommendations. But now with all these podcasts issues I am really thinking about using mp3s again.

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#52

Post by wewtyflakes »

mdoms wrote: post #37

That seems like a very small increase to a page that presumably sees little traffic. Sounds like they're committing the base rate fallacy[0] where large percentage increases correspond to small absolute numbers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

You said presumably, though the article gives specific numbers. Can you elaborate on what numbers or analysis would be reasonable as to not fall into the fallacy you also call out?

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#53

Post by mdoms »

wewtyflakes wrote: post #52
mdoms wrote: post #37

That seems like a very small increase to a page that presumably sees little traffic. Sounds like they're committing the base rate fallacy[0] where large percentage increases correspond to small absolute numbers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

You said presumably, though the article gives specific numbers. Can you elaborate on what numbers or analysis would be reasonable as to not fall into the fallacy you also call out?

A significant proportion of the userbase would be a good start. If 118,000 users unsubscribed up from 40,000 then that's an increase of 78,000 people, or 0.04% of the subscriber base.

Also, now this is total speculation, I'd hazard that a large number of these "new unsubscribers" have clicked on social media links to the cancellation page without following through with the cancellation.

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#54

Post by wewtyflakes »

mdoms wrote: post #53
wewtyflakes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said presumably, though the article gives specific numbers. Can you elaborate on what numbers or analysis would be reasonable as to not fall into the fallacy you also call out?

A significant proportion of the userbase would be a good start. If 118,000 users unsubscribed up from 40,000 then that's an increase of 78,000 people, or 0.04% of the subscriber base. Also, now this is total speculation, I'd hazard that a large number of these "new unsubscribers" have clicked on social media links to the cancellation page without following through with the cancellation.

That seems reasonable, but isn't this data set a sampling, since it appears to only capture the page viewing habits of people who have opted to install various browser extensions? If so, wouldn't that imply that the non-sampled numbers would be larger, and perhaps by a fair bit, assuming that the percentage of users who install these browser telemetry tools is small? I agree that if the numbers did not represent a sampling, but were in fact reflected a complete data set, then yes, they perhaps are a drop in the bucket.

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#55

Post by mcdonje »

mdoms wrote: post #41
mcdonje wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main news item right now is about Joe Rogan disseminating misinformation about the pandemic, and saying racist things. Besides that, they're known for paying comparatively little per stream to musicians. They also engage in rent-seeking behavior. Their strategy around podcasts is to get exclusives, which they can do better than smaller players because of their market position, and it's money they're not spending…

> Besides that, they're known for paying comparatively little per stream to musicians. Compared to which service?

Tidal & Qobuz. Maybe others as well. But those are the ones I'm aware of that pay out more per stream.

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#56

Post by voisin »

altdataseller wrote: post #11
jdkjs wrote: post #2

What is SimilarWeb and how do they know that? Because I have a hunch that they are pulling the numbers out of their asses just so they are mentioned in articles from shitty blogs like this one.

They have a bunch of Chrome extensions that spy on what users are visiting online, and use that data to sell their product to marketers. Personally think Google should get rid of them as they are a travesty to online privacy.

> Personally think Google should get rid of them as they are a travesty to online privacy.

More likely that Google would buy them.

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#57

Post by SecurityLagoon »

barbazoo wrote: post #16

Unrelated to this (bad) story, I wish there was more competition in that field. AFAIK it's either Spotify, Google, Amazon or Apple. Am I missing any others?

Napster is actually a decent legit service now.

The best method though is to buy music direct through something like bandcamp. These streaming services all give tiny amounts of money to artists per play.

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#58

Post by SecurityLagoon »

mdoms wrote: post #41
mcdonje wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main news item right now is about Joe Rogan disseminating misinformation about the pandemic, and saying racist things. Besides that, they're known for paying comparatively little per stream to musicians. They also engage in rent-seeking behavior. Their strategy around podcasts is to get exclusives, which they can do better than smaller players because of their market position, and it's money they're not spending…

> Besides that, they're known for paying comparatively little per stream to musicians. Compared to which service?

They all give tiny amounts per play. In the realm of $0.003. Actually buy the music from artists if you want to support them.

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#59

Post by xtracto »

barbazoo wrote: post #16

Unrelated to this (bad) story, I wish there was more competition in that field. AFAIK it's either Spotify, Google, Amazon or Apple. Am I missing any others?

I don't... the market is so fragmented that the only way for me to have playlist with all my favourite songs is through piracy.

Re: Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week

#60

Post by WithinReason »

coolso wrote: post #14
Apocryphon wrote: post #8

Did not know there were that many Neil Young and Joni Mitchell fans. I wonder if there's any studies on the stickiness of cancellations. There were reoccurring pushes to delete Uber since 2017, but not sure how often people went back anyway.

I canceled my premium subscription because of all of the Joe Rogan episodes they deleted.

Didn't he delete his own episodes because he said something he was ashamed of?
Post reply on HN