The clock is ticking for Spotify(bbc.co.uk)
bbc.co.uk
The clock is ticking for Spotify
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38930699
115 コメント
The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself.
Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.
Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.
I agree. Never cared much for the UI, and always found it too buggy to keep using. At my old job, we used it for office tunes, and it was often showing the wrong song that was playing, (so you never knew what you were listening to unless you used something like SoundHound), and going to previous or next tracks was inconsistent, so you might not get back to the last song ever again.
Pardon my ignorance but why is Google Play Music not worth mention here?
Pardon my ignorance but why is Google Play Music not worth mention here?
I actually used to have Google Play Music All Access, but the bugs would just drive me insane. I think the worst one was where it would play the censored version of a song, no matter if you chose the edited or explicit version. The only way to fix it was to delete your locally downloaded music, which I keep 60gb of my favorite tracks on my phone. I finally jumped to Spotify premium and I've haven't experienced any bugs. Plus, Spotify premium is half the price because I get a student discount. I think the only thing I miss is no ads on YouTube videos.
I recently switched from Google Music to Spotify because the Google music app was so bad. Buggy, slow, and just kinda hard to use. Spotify has its quirks, but it's a million times better.
The sad thing is, it didn't used to be this way. The first versions of Spotify (beta) were really performant. In fact, the same developer that wrote Open Transport Tycoon had a large part to play in the first Spotify desktop app. It was slick, simple and easy to use.
Now though... There's bloat every where, bugs everywhere, zero user feedback has been incorporated into the product. There are bugs that have been open for _years_ that still haven't been addressed.
From what I hear of the company culture, it's not surprising. International parties, organizational bloat, defunct acquisitions. What started as a really nice piece of tech quickly devolved into a hedonistic wannabe mainstream media company, and it shows.
Now though... There's bloat every where, bugs everywhere, zero user feedback has been incorporated into the product. There are bugs that have been open for _years_ that still haven't been addressed.
From what I hear of the company culture, it's not surprising. International parties, organizational bloat, defunct acquisitions. What started as a really nice piece of tech quickly devolved into a hedonistic wannabe mainstream media company, and it shows.
I have absolutely no issues with the mobile or desktop versions of the app.
The mobile app is pretty decent, but it's not well designed. It's easy to get lost in the confusion mishmash of navigation elements. For example, if I'm playing a song, I tend to hit the hamburger menu in the upper-right corner to find the "add to playlist" function, when it's in the tiny "..." icon next to the pause button.
I'm reasonably happy with the desktop app, although it's still as terrible at organizing your collection of music as it's always been. For example, if you save a single song from an album, that album shows up in your "Albums" view, which makes no sense. And if you go to that album, it's actually a weird, special virtual album and not the real album (there's a "View full album" link to get to that one).
I was using the "Save" function for quite a while until I met the 10,000 song limit. Which is a ridiculously low limit for any lover of music, especially when album counts toward that limit — "saving" an album is actually just saving the individual tracks. You can't raise this limit; you're done, or you have to go back and unsave music.
The "Local files" function is also pretty obviously an afterthought. You can only play them to a device if your device is on the same network as your desktop machine; this also goes for syncing. To play your "local files" on a device, you have to mark them for offline play on the device while the desktop Spotify is running. How ridiculous is that?
A final gripe: After 10 years, Spotify still doesn't categorize classical music by composer and performer separately. Apple Music does this correctly.
I'm reasonably happy with the desktop app, although it's still as terrible at organizing your collection of music as it's always been. For example, if you save a single song from an album, that album shows up in your "Albums" view, which makes no sense. And if you go to that album, it's actually a weird, special virtual album and not the real album (there's a "View full album" link to get to that one).
I was using the "Save" function for quite a while until I met the 10,000 song limit. Which is a ridiculously low limit for any lover of music, especially when album counts toward that limit — "saving" an album is actually just saving the individual tracks. You can't raise this limit; you're done, or you have to go back and unsave music.
The "Local files" function is also pretty obviously an afterthought. You can only play them to a device if your device is on the same network as your desktop machine; this also goes for syncing. To play your "local files" on a device, you have to mark them for offline play on the device while the desktop Spotify is running. How ridiculous is that?
A final gripe: After 10 years, Spotify still doesn't categorize classical music by composer and performer separately. Apple Music does this correctly.
For me the desktop app regularly seems to consume way too much RAM (memory leak?), and it regularly doesn't shut down properly or even crashes, and this is on two separate macs.
Could be that it's a MacOS Sierra issue, but considering the number of 'random weird shit' that happens when I have the app open (playback working fine but visually stuck on an ad, to name a recent issue), I'm inclined to think it's just a piece a shit.
On the one hand I am baffled by the terrible quality, but then I remember that even companies like Google aren't always much better. My Google Inbox app (on iPhone), for example, regularly gets 'stuck' on showing a badge icon of '1' even though I can't for the life of me produce the email that causes this. It's been this way for quite a while and I just don't get how it's possible that a big company like Google lets this happen. And again, I understand it's possible there's some weird edge case that causes this to happen for just me or very few other users, but considering that I run into a whole bunch of other weird issues using Google Inbox, I'm inclined to conclude, once again, that it's just a piece of shit.
Could be that it's a MacOS Sierra issue, but considering the number of 'random weird shit' that happens when I have the app open (playback working fine but visually stuck on an ad, to name a recent issue), I'm inclined to think it's just a piece a shit.
On the one hand I am baffled by the terrible quality, but then I remember that even companies like Google aren't always much better. My Google Inbox app (on iPhone), for example, regularly gets 'stuck' on showing a badge icon of '1' even though I can't for the life of me produce the email that causes this. It's been this way for quite a while and I just don't get how it's possible that a big company like Google lets this happen. And again, I understand it's possible there's some weird edge case that causes this to happen for just me or very few other users, but considering that I run into a whole bunch of other weird issues using Google Inbox, I'm inclined to conclude, once again, that it's just a piece of shit.
Here's an example of something utterly ridiculous that they still haven't fixed several years after first reported to them: despite music having flags to classify it as "mature", you can't tell the client to filter out that music. They have the music flagged already, so it's not like they're being requested to tag all of the music in their archives.
Pandora, and pretty much every competitor in the field can.
Pandora, and pretty much every competitor in the field can.
Still it's arguably better than the alternatives out there. When I cast music to my TV Spotify has a nice interface. When I cast Google Music there is this icon dancing around all over the TV. I think their web interface is superior as well.
It is, and I pay for a subscription still. I wish there were a good alternative.
I'm still shocked that the spotify desktop app won't let you output to anything other than the default audio device. There's an open request with thousands of votes on their tracker that has been in "not right now" state for half a decade. I know people with multiple outputs aren't a majority, but c'mon, it's gotta be less work to add than pretty much every other "feature" they've added in that time...
I loved the music discovery aspect of Spotify but bad software pushed me away.
Even to me it sounds counterintuitive. Finding new music I love should have been worth more to me than a player with a lot of features. But my instinct was to let foobar2000 pull me back. Something about sophisticated control of playback and playlists turns out to be really important too. But power users are the minority, I'm sure.
Even to me it sounds counterintuitive. Finding new music I love should have been worth more to me than a player with a lot of features. But my instinct was to let foobar2000 pull me back. Something about sophisticated control of playback and playlists turns out to be really important too. But power users are the minority, I'm sure.
I loved both LastFM and MusicIP (or MusicMatch as it was previously known) for their unique matching and recommendation ability. Both were neutered and gradually withered.
I still hope something out there will use my LastFM profile to offer something better than the laughably inaccurate recommendations that I get from every other service.
I still hope something out there will use my LastFM profile to offer something better than the laughably inaccurate recommendations that I get from every other service.
And adding playlists to your account without telling you. This was on a free account, but still, it felt like they had no integrity at all.
What I often find is that artists will have have everything on Spotify except their latest album, at least for a few months. Fair enough, they want people to buy their albums; it's just one area where I find Spotify consistently incomplete.
> it's just one area where I find Spotify consistently incomplete.
At first (especially some years ago when the catalogue was much smaller) this used to annoy me. But Spotify has made a lot of progress in side-stepping the issue.
The Discover Weekly playlist of recommended music in particular was a great invention. It doesn't matter that much if artist X's latest album is not on Spotify, as long as they can find some other music that satisfies what people are looking for. Some techno with no vocals to code to, something chill in the evenings, like a personally curated radio, not a perfect on-demand player.
Focusing more on recommending music instead of having people search for music means that they get away with missing some artists - and they can take the cost of licensing deals into account when picking the recommended songs.
At first (especially some years ago when the catalogue was much smaller) this used to annoy me. But Spotify has made a lot of progress in side-stepping the issue.
The Discover Weekly playlist of recommended music in particular was a great invention. It doesn't matter that much if artist X's latest album is not on Spotify, as long as they can find some other music that satisfies what people are looking for. Some techno with no vocals to code to, something chill in the evenings, like a personally curated radio, not a perfect on-demand player.
Focusing more on recommending music instead of having people search for music means that they get away with missing some artists - and they can take the cost of licensing deals into account when picking the recommended songs.
Personally, I fell in love in their Discover Weekly algorithm. If you in previous week listened music from artists which tracks haven't been listed in any user-made playlist nor played magical 10,000 times and there is a problem with getting a vinyl / CD you wouldn't expect any songs from such artists but in Discover Weekly you may found similar tracks - they match same genre, they are also from the same decade, they are not covers and they are unique - not only per week, but I haven't heard them in my whole life. If Spotify is going to close, please share access to it, because it is amazing.
Protip: You can generate a new random "Discover Weekly"-style playlist manually by putting a bunch of songs into a playlist, right-clicking the playlist (in the desktop app) and selecting "Create similar playlist".
Oh, thank you so much for that! I find Spotify to be an even bigger turd than iTunes (at least in the ways that matter to me), but I use it for the discovery. This tip is a good addition!
This is actually exactly how I do music discovery. I create seed playlists with maybe 5-10 songs and start the radio from that. Any songs that I like from the those stations get added to a separate playlist, unless I explicitly decide that I want that song to influence the future selection of songs.
Thumbs-up or thumbs-downing songs in a radio playlist will change the songs that show up, but I find just having a seed playlist is more reliable and repeatable and easier to fine-tune.
Thumbs-up or thumbs-downing songs in a radio playlist will change the songs that show up, but I find just having a seed playlist is more reliable and repeatable and easier to fine-tune.
Indeed, I would call myself as user who uses "Create similar playlist" on daily basis. Sadly, it isn't so awesome as Discover Weekly, because for certain tracks it won't generate any new tracks, i.e. When you put single track (Price - Controversy) and click to create similar playlist you may notice exactly the same track (Prince - Controversy). Also, it usually generate the same output for the specified list of tracks.
Exactly. Netflix streaming has proven how well this strategy can work with a limited library.
There are other big areas where it's seriously lacking content:
1) Modern contemporary electronic music, which is usually available vinyl only.
2) Classic albums in their original form. When there's a remaster, Spotify typically only has the remaster, original was either never there or will be removed when remaster is out.
Now, when you start to invest to your sound system even a bit (not talking about 100k wires here), you notice the lack of dynamics in many remasters. The originals just sound better with good soundsystem, not so much with below-average systems.
When I listen to music, I like to have the best possible master from it. And preferably lossless, or that I have the control of the compression parameters and format. I guess Spotify will take the masses, but I'm not the only serious listener who prefers my own files and physical copies.
Streaming is handy, but you can do a lot of things already with big hard disks with your computers, some syncing NAS system (as in Synology), beets[0] and a big enough microSD in your phone.
[0] http://beets.io/
1) Modern contemporary electronic music, which is usually available vinyl only.
2) Classic albums in their original form. When there's a remaster, Spotify typically only has the remaster, original was either never there or will be removed when remaster is out.
Now, when you start to invest to your sound system even a bit (not talking about 100k wires here), you notice the lack of dynamics in many remasters. The originals just sound better with good soundsystem, not so much with below-average systems.
When I listen to music, I like to have the best possible master from it. And preferably lossless, or that I have the control of the compression parameters and format. I guess Spotify will take the masses, but I'm not the only serious listener who prefers my own files and physical copies.
Streaming is handy, but you can do a lot of things already with big hard disks with your computers, some syncing NAS system (as in Synology), beets[0] and a big enough microSD in your phone.
[0] http://beets.io/
Honestly, if this is how you evaluate music, the current generation of streaming is not for you. Do yourself a favour, buy a good quality turntable and start collecting vinyl!!
PS - I've been collecting vinyl for over twenty years and consider it my one serious vice. This comment is the equivalent of a drug addict suggesting that you "just try it once." You've been warned...:)
PS - I've been collecting vinyl for over twenty years and consider it my one serious vice. This comment is the equivalent of a drug addict suggesting that you "just try it once." You've been warned...:)
I own plenty of vinyl, two Technics SL1200's and a mixer and I think it's a huge waste of resources. What I need is to just get lossless music effortlessly and with the right mastering. For new stuff it's pretty easy because you only have one option (or then some mega rare double vinyl versions, I'm looking at you Björk!). But for these old rock albums... In the 2000's their record labels wanted people to buy them again and so we got these super bad remastered versions, which are the ones you find from Spotify.
Yes, now I need to get CD's to have the best mastering, rip them to flac and opus and put the CD's to a box collecting dust. Or in some cases I need to buy the vinyl, record it to flac and opus and maybe play the vinyl a couple of times more when I do a house party.
Waste of resources...
Yes, now I need to get CD's to have the best mastering, rip them to flac and opus and put the CD's to a box collecting dust. Or in some cases I need to buy the vinyl, record it to flac and opus and maybe play the vinyl a couple of times more when I do a house party.
Waste of resources...
With all due respect, I think you're just looking for something to complain about. Generations of music fans would love to have the options that you clearly have...
> Modern contemporary electronic music, which is usually available vinyl only.
Oh, the irony.
Oh, the irony.
I am not sure what is ironic about this, unless you mistook electronic music for edm?
Almost all underground electronic labels offer their releases digitally, they just don't publish to steaming services.
And some don't. I'm looking at you SUED or Perlon. And that's totally fine! They sell enough and the dj's and producers are highly praised anyways.
Have you honestly done a blinded listening test, comparing 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis (Spotify Premium) to lossless, and concluded that there's a severe reduction in quality?
Audio compression is an old technology by now. Lossless CD audio is ~1200 kbps, and we're only compressing to something like 1/4th the original size. There really shouldn't be much room for error. Even completely lossless CD audio compression can still get to ~50%-ish of the original data rate.
Imagine if you had H.264 video at 50% the data rate of a completely lossless signal. That would be completely perfect.
And if you're listening on a speaker setup, your room will distort the sound orders of magnitude more than compressing an audio signal 4x will.
Audio compression is an old technology by now. Lossless CD audio is ~1200 kbps, and we're only compressing to something like 1/4th the original size. There really shouldn't be much room for error. Even completely lossless CD audio compression can still get to ~50%-ish of the original data rate.
Imagine if you had H.264 video at 50% the data rate of a completely lossless signal. That would be completely perfect.
And if you're listening on a speaker setup, your room will distort the sound orders of magnitude more than compressing an audio signal 4x will.
When I get my music, I want to use that for the next 20 years at least. It's stored in my NAS lossless and I can convert it to any format I want? For example, I use 192kbps opus files on my phone, which work nice while using A2DP to pack the sound even more.
But if I own music, FLAC is the proper format. I can go into any other format from it and re-pack my whole collection in the matter of minutes. Buying and storing content in lossy format doesn't give me this freedom.
And even if Spotify Vorbis sounds ok, it doesn't change the fact that many records in there have a very bad mastering and no other versions at all. Which was my original point here.
But if I own music, FLAC is the proper format. I can go into any other format from it and re-pack my whole collection in the matter of minutes. Buying and storing content in lossy format doesn't give me this freedom.
And even if Spotify Vorbis sounds ok, it doesn't change the fact that many records in there have a very bad mastering and no other versions at all. Which was my original point here.
I think Spotify's saving grace is that it's not owned by a big tech company. I think the music industry would prefer to negotiate with Spotify than with YouTube.
Isn't it a big tech company itself?
Well at least they want to be one. It's not like they want to be the good guys there. This is what disappoints me a little bit
Well at least they want to be one. It's not like they want to be the good guys there. This is what disappoints me a little bit
At least it's focused on Music industry. At least I'm comfortable as a patron that some egoist exec won't just shut it down out of nowhere.
>"I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify?"
But will it be the music industry ruining Spotify if that happens or will it simply be a failure of the business model? You could certainly argue the latter.
But will it be the music industry ruining Spotify if that happens or will it simply be a failure of the business model? You could certainly argue the latter.
Is dealing with the music industry, which cranks licensing costs up every year, a failed business model? Maybe. Spotify is allowed to live but not to thrive.
>"Is dealing with the music industry, which cranks licensing costs up every year, a failed business model?"
I think it could possibly be. Nobody has been successful yet at least that I can think of. I think the problem is the better you do the more those licenses will cost. I am trying to think of another industry that works that way. I guess cable is similar with content in that the more subscribers a cable operator has the more expensive licensing the content is. So maybe licensing entertainment content is just a very constrained business model?
I can't imagine if I ran a restaurant and my costs from my food purveyors increased with the success of the restaurant. I think it would be very difficult to make a go of that.
I think it could possibly be. Nobody has been successful yet at least that I can think of. I think the problem is the better you do the more those licenses will cost. I am trying to think of another industry that works that way. I guess cable is similar with content in that the more subscribers a cable operator has the more expensive licensing the content is. So maybe licensing entertainment content is just a very constrained business model?
I can't imagine if I ran a restaurant and my costs from my food purveyors increased with the success of the restaurant. I think it would be very difficult to make a go of that.
>with the exception of a few hold out artists
fuck you Tool. :(
fuck you Tool. :(
One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues. Only problem is that they need to do it before they burn all their cash, which won't be easy.
>"One strategy that makes sense to me is going for the Netflix model - become a "record label" themselves, sign some quality artists, help create quality music, win some grammy's and then you rid yourself of those pesky licensing issues."
I think if you were at the mercy of the traditional record industry for licensing and you went an signed an artist to your label whose contract was up with say Warner Bros Records you could expect some pretty unfavorable terms in licensing content from Warner Brothers in the future. This is just one example but its a slippery slope.
It would certainly be much better for artists to get paid directly from the streaming provider, no doubt about that. But I think if you are out promoting that business model you are going to find it harder to license content from people business model if based on the "old way" of doing things. I think would have to forgo licensing from them almost entirely and carry only original content. This is more or less the model that is/was Tidal. I don't think has worked out too well for them.
In this regard there has been some criticisms against most of the current streaming providers as simply "propping up" the oligarchy of the big 4 record labels.
I think if you were at the mercy of the traditional record industry for licensing and you went an signed an artist to your label whose contract was up with say Warner Bros Records you could expect some pretty unfavorable terms in licensing content from Warner Brothers in the future. This is just one example but its a slippery slope.
It would certainly be much better for artists to get paid directly from the streaming provider, no doubt about that. But I think if you are out promoting that business model you are going to find it harder to license content from people business model if based on the "old way" of doing things. I think would have to forgo licensing from them almost entirely and carry only original content. This is more or less the model that is/was Tidal. I don't think has worked out too well for them.
In this regard there has been some criticisms against most of the current streaming providers as simply "propping up" the oligarchy of the big 4 record labels.
But to GP's point - Netflix put themselves in the same situation in regards to their original content. While it has impacted their selection of titles from the companies they compete with, it wasn't in a catastrophic way.
I understand what you're saying and Netflix has been pretty spectacular in that regard. I think there might be a couple of differences between Spotify and Netlix though.
Record contracts are exclusive. Beyonce can't go and record an album for some other records label whereas in the Netflix model those actors aren't exclusive to Netflix. They are free to go out and make movies for Universal for 20th Century Fox when their series wraps for Netflix. As such it doesn't threaten the business model of the studios in the same way Spotify becoming a record label and paying artists directly from streams might.
The other difference I think is that consuming Netflix tends to be a concentrated experience in that you sit down to watch a movie or else you binge watch during a whole Saturday while the weather is crap. Music on the other hand is more passive. People play music pretty endlessly - while at work, on the train, at the gym. I think it would be much harder to be majority original content streaming service with music while keeping your existing subscribers satisfied.
Record contracts are exclusive. Beyonce can't go and record an album for some other records label whereas in the Netflix model those actors aren't exclusive to Netflix. They are free to go out and make movies for Universal for 20th Century Fox when their series wraps for Netflix. As such it doesn't threaten the business model of the studios in the same way Spotify becoming a record label and paying artists directly from streams might.
The other difference I think is that consuming Netflix tends to be a concentrated experience in that you sit down to watch a movie or else you binge watch during a whole Saturday while the weather is crap. Music on the other hand is more passive. People play music pretty endlessly - while at work, on the train, at the gym. I think it would be much harder to be majority original content streaming service with music while keeping your existing subscribers satisfied.
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Apple Music is becoming a record label now, they pay artists a few millions so that the album is only available on their platform for a month or so. Universal didn't like it much
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/23/universal-s...
The practice of "exclusive windowing" does not mean that Apple is becoming a record label. That article is about limited exclusives. I didn't see anywhere in the article that mentioned Apple becoming a record label.
The problem with this model, especially in music, is that music is way more reusable than a TV show.
So in the end, if everyone follows this trend, you'll have to subscribe to 3-4 different services at $10/month to get a complete library, and each will be trapped into different apps, so you could end up no being able to play songs together.
Unlike Netflix/Amazon/Hulu, where you could easily subscribe to or drop one month to month to watch different shows.
So in the end, if everyone follows this trend, you'll have to subscribe to 3-4 different services at $10/month to get a complete library, and each will be trapped into different apps, so you could end up no being able to play songs together.
Unlike Netflix/Amazon/Hulu, where you could easily subscribe to or drop one month to month to watch different shows.
You are right in music the older catalogue is reused more often.
Netflix can produce a series which you will watch once and seldom see again. New content is king.
In music you mix old with new. If you lose the old content you will greatly limit the listening experience.
Netflix can produce a series which you will watch once and seldom see again. New content is king.
In music you mix old with new. If you lose the old content you will greatly limit the listening experience.
They do this, albeit on a smaller scale, with the Spotify Sessions stuff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify_Sessions)
Its worth noting that Universal, BMG, Warner Bros and EMI are all investors Spotify. It's kind of an odd situation in that respect, the labels don't need Spotify to go public but their other investors do.
The big 4 record labels are the recipients of the $5 billion that the company has paid out in royalties to date. They've surely recouped any initial investment they put in by now. So they kind of have a vested interest at the moment anyway for keeping things just as they are.
The big 4 record labels are the recipients of the $5 billion that the company has paid out in royalties to date. They've surely recouped any initial investment they put in by now. So they kind of have a vested interest at the moment anyway for keeping things just as they are.
I wounded if this could be considered a cartel in this context?
With respect to accounting, you don't recoup your investment (where you purchased part of a company) by collecting licensing fees (which you'd have received anyway) from the same company.
Sure, I didn't mean in any kind of GAAP sense, just that the investment has already borne fruit is all.
But it hasn't. Until they sell. They didn't need to make the investment to get those licensing fees.
Their actual financial investment in the company was likely nominal if anything at all. Spotify likely offered an ownership stake as an incentive to get the labels to take a chance on an unknown company and an unproven model.
Whether Spotify goes public or not the labels have already made out very handsomely was my point. That's the $5 billion that Spotify often states that it has paid out to rights holders. So yes it very much has borne fruit, $5 billion worth. If the company goes public its basically gravy for them.
The record labels were decimated back in 2006/2007 when Spotify started. Things looked pretty bleak for the industry as a whole. So yes the labels needed to do something as their revenues has pretty much dried up comparatively to a decade earlier.
Whether Spotify goes public or not the labels have already made out very handsomely was my point. That's the $5 billion that Spotify often states that it has paid out to rights holders. So yes it very much has borne fruit, $5 billion worth. If the company goes public its basically gravy for them.
The record labels were decimated back in 2006/2007 when Spotify started. Things looked pretty bleak for the industry as a whole. So yes the labels needed to do something as their revenues has pretty much dried up comparatively to a decade earlier.
This is an interesting idea you put there, labels would like to see a weak Spotify.
That wasn't the idea I was trying to put though. I don't think the labels necessarily want to see a weak Spotify but only that the status quo is just fine for them. They would be happy to see the current situation remain in perpetuity I think. Spotify investors however do not.
I'm a long time Spotify fan using it on everything from my Mac to our Shield TV and Echo. Music is a staple of my life and I regularly spend my working day listening to Spotify.
Call me an optimist but I see a huge opportunity to capture additional $'s from less price as sensitive people like me. I'd happily hand over more money to the artists I actually like and listen to regularly but no platform gives me the means to do that (ala twitch cheer). They should start building premium features that connect subscribers more intimately with artists through gigs, merchandise or content. I see a lot of headroom in the price - $14.99/mo for 6 accounts (family plan) IMHO is very cheap.
Call me an optimist but I see a huge opportunity to capture additional $'s from less price as sensitive people like me. I'd happily hand over more money to the artists I actually like and listen to regularly but no platform gives me the means to do that (ala twitch cheer). They should start building premium features that connect subscribers more intimately with artists through gigs, merchandise or content. I see a lot of headroom in the price - $14.99/mo for 6 accounts (family plan) IMHO is very cheap.
yes, 1000% agree. i would pay an extra $10-20 a month, especially if there was some mechanism to select which receives the extra and showing who supports which artists, etc. basically some of the ideas from bandcamp
So … why don't you just support those artists at Bandamp?
In fact that is exactly my current pattern: wen lazy, conveniently discover [1] and browse more famous artists at Spotify and purchase their albums at Bandcamp. Very few IMPoW "good" artists lack BC page.
[1] "Discover" function at Spotify got really nice lately supposedly thanks to the last.fm integration (?). Last.fm used to be my favourite discovery page in the past, and even today I'm not able to ditch it completely.
In fact that is exactly my current pattern: wen lazy, conveniently discover [1] and browse more famous artists at Spotify and purchase their albums at Bandcamp. Very few IMPoW "good" artists lack BC page.
[1] "Discover" function at Spotify got really nice lately supposedly thanks to the last.fm integration (?). Last.fm used to be my favourite discovery page in the past, and even today I'm not able to ditch it completely.
i do! and my music is on bandcamp too. but i also want to support people on spotify (partly the convenience of spotify and partly just some artists are not on bandcamp).
that interesting/makes sense about last.fm integration, i have about 10 years worth of data on there and the discover recommendations are consistently great.
over the last year i've saved a 5-6 subset of the weekly discover suggestions into a super playlist, part also, part human. i'd love to proportion part of my monthly payment to those artists
that interesting/makes sense about last.fm integration, i have about 10 years worth of data on there and the discover recommendations are consistently great.
over the last year i've saved a 5-6 subset of the weekly discover suggestions into a super playlist, part also, part human. i'd love to proportion part of my monthly payment to those artists
Yes, I'm willing to pay more for a streaming music service that gives more money to artists that I listen to more, but I have not seen such a service.
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Yes, I'm willing to pay more for a streaming music service that gives more money to artists that I listen to more, but I have not seen such a service.
Don't the music labels own a big percentage of Spotify? Hasn't that been the whole argument that the labels are unfairly taking money out of the hands of the artists by owning a piece of the distribution? It seems to be that they have a vested interested in working with Spotify to ensure its long term health.
Labels already owns most artist past present and future works, distribution channels doesn't really matter at this point.
Of course distribution channels matter. If the labels own part of the distribution they don't mind if the distributors give a smaller cut back to the label and artist than another channel. They are able to keep that ownership of their distribution percentage away from the artist, it's the whole reason Spotify was originally so guilt-inducing to people concerned about artist's being treated fairly.
Somewhat unrelated but.. is the music industry expecting that we go back to buying CDs (or $0.99 tracks) if streaming services die out?
Because I'm pretty sure I won't. I can't see myself going back to physical media or DRM-laden files any soon.
Because I'm pretty sure I won't. I can't see myself going back to physical media or DRM-laden files any soon.
"Somewhat unrelated but.. is the music industry expecting that we go back to buying CDs (or $0.99 tracks) if streaming services die out?
Because I'm pretty sure I won't. I can't see myself going back to physical media or DRM-laden files any soon."
iTunes dropped DRM between 2007-2009. I don't think anyone is expecting you to go back to "DRM-laden files" anytime soon.
iTunes dropped DRM between 2007-2009. I don't think anyone is expecting you to go back to "DRM-laden files" anytime soon.
I don't know what the music industry expects to happen in the future, but I'm fairly certain that the best approach for supporting musicians would be for Bandcamp and/or similar sites to grow in popularity. They've got the right approach IMO; high-quality DRM-free digital files, with the majority of revenues going direct to the artist, as well as curated lists (made by Bandcamp and music fans) for discovering new music.
https://bandcamp.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp
https://bandcamp.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp
iTunes purchased music has no DRM. Ironically, we have moved to prefer services with DRM.
The thing that really vexes me about Spotify is how many listens they're giving away to YouTube by making it impossible to search for and listen to a song without losing your place in your current album or playlist: the interface has no concept of tabs or easily-accessible bookmarks. There's a back button, but it doesn't remember what time or even what track you were on, and even with that memory it would be a second-best alternative anyway. The upshot is that even if you're listening to Spotify at the time you decide to search for a particular track, the instinct is to pause Spotify, go to the web browser, open a new tab and search YouTube! YouTube has other things that Spotify lacks like video, song descriptions and (for better and worse) comments, but I think it's largely just the inconvenience of losing your place that drives you away from Spotify in cases like this. For a company which is scrambling to survive, and which I assume would be better off with more plays and more and happier subscribers, it looks like reckless or hapless squandering.
You need to start using the queue.
In the middle of an album but want to hear another track without stopping the album? right click -> add to up next (or tap-hold, add to up next, if you are that way inclined). It will then play after your current track and before the next track in your current playlist/album.
In the middle of an album but want to hear another track without stopping the album? right click -> add to up next (or tap-hold, add to up next, if you are that way inclined). It will then play after your current track and before the next track in your current playlist/album.
I think Spotify will die in 5-10 years, but not because of royalty fee woes. We will not go back to the "buy a song for $1" model of the early 2000s.
But it will die because of the moonopolistic and anti-competitive practices of the popular OSes: Apple preinstalls Apple Music, Google Play music, and Microsoft Groove (all 3 clones of Spotify). This agressive, monopolistic behaviour will kill Spotify, just like MS rival browsers with Netscape.
But it will die because of the moonopolistic and anti-competitive practices of the popular OSes: Apple preinstalls Apple Music, Google Play music, and Microsoft Groove (all 3 clones of Spotify). This agressive, monopolistic behaviour will kill Spotify, just like MS rival browsers with Netscape.
This is becoming my biggest annoyance with streaming services. The integration with your OS(iOS or android) makes it a much more attractive option when using those devices.
My second biggest annoyance is the increasing trend of "artist exclusives" if you pay a monthly fee and your favorite artist are giving exclusives to the other services I'm less inclined to continue using that service(Spotify) because I don't get the content I want. I don't want to pay for 2 or 3 streaming services. That fracturing of availability is more likely to people going back to pirating music in my opinion.
My second biggest annoyance is the increasing trend of "artist exclusives" if you pay a monthly fee and your favorite artist are giving exclusives to the other services I'm less inclined to continue using that service(Spotify) because I don't get the content I want. I don't want to pay for 2 or 3 streaming services. That fracturing of availability is more likely to people going back to pirating music in my opinion.
> The integration with your OS(iOS or android) makes it a much more attractive option when using those devices.
Let me guess, you use iOS? Play Music and Spotify both integrate roughly equally poorly with Google Now/Assistant. You can say "play some X", and it'll ask you which you want to use the first time.
Unless it misinterprets which you wanted to use, which happens 90% of the time for me. It consistently interpreted "Movits!" as "Movies", even despite having their whole discography favourited in both Play and Spotify.
Let me guess, you use iOS? Play Music and Spotify both integrate roughly equally poorly with Google Now/Assistant. You can say "play some X", and it'll ask you which you want to use the first time.
Unless it misinterprets which you wanted to use, which happens 90% of the time for me. It consistently interpreted "Movits!" as "Movies", even despite having their whole discography favourited in both Play and Spotify.
I completely agree with the OS integration annoyance. I use Spotify but it doesn't connect to Siri and the UX is abysmal on CarPlay.
That's mainly an Apple problem though. The integration with Android is very complete, and I don't think there are any features that Google Music gives you that Spotify doesn't.
And that's a good thing given the fact that Google Music (like most Google services that are not free) is only available in the US and a handful of other countries.
And that's a good thing given the fact that Google Music (like most Google services that are not free) is only available in the US and a handful of other countries.
Piracy is always better in terms of content. I know they should not be giving everything away for free, but as soon as there are more than two silos (or a world where the combination of any two silos compares to the offering you get with piracy) then piracy will be superior and hopefully force the industry to offer something better.
I personally hope that piracy is now viewed more as stealing than in earlier days. I think there is a greater understanding that the culture of music as a whole will suffer if we don't put any money into the system.
I at least hope that members of the HN community don't view relying mostly on piracy to get music as morally OK.
The problem is that digital music is a type of good that is mispriced by the free market: a public good. There needs to be just enough money to going to the artist to get the album recorded, and once that amount of money is there, there is no incentive for anyone to give more money. Giving more money won't make it easier for more people to get the music, because distributing it digitally is pretty easy/cheap. Kind of like a public park. Because this incentive is only there up to a point, the good gets mispriced.
The problem is that digital music is a type of good that is mispriced by the free market: a public good. There needs to be just enough money to going to the artist to get the album recorded, and once that amount of money is there, there is no incentive for anyone to give more money. Giving more money won't make it easier for more people to get the music, because distributing it digitally is pretty easy/cheap. Kind of like a public park. Because this incentive is only there up to a point, the good gets mispriced.
On the other hand, Spotify has an upper hand at the moment by having a client on absolutely everything. I have a spotify client built into my TV for example.
Apple might pre-install their app on iphones, but they don't support even 10% of the devices Spotify does.
Apple might pre-install their app on iphones, but they don't support even 10% of the devices Spotify does.
And creating a multiplatform coherent, attractive, and performant UI on top of an infinite catalog of music, with recommendations, shareable playlists, "radio stations", and on and on - is no small feat. Apple shows no capacity for doing this any time soon. Heck even Spotify is barely holding it together, and this is their entire business.
If it goes that way, I'd imagine it'll go like Netflix / Prime / Whoever. One deep pocketed music service will bid a load for 'exclusive rights' to [popular artists] and you'll need to subscribe to more than one service to listen to everything. Except eventually most will just pay for none and revert to whatever way lets you do it for free in one place (youtube / piracy / whatever is about then).
I think youtube is its biggest competition to be honest. Because youtube has a frictionless method of payment (ads), has a paid option if you don't want the ads and is massively useful for "discovery".
I could see youtube killing Spotify and all its competitors.
I could see youtube killing Spotify and all its competitors.
I don't think so. I use Spotify a lot on the go, and YouTube is not suited for that. (can it even play stuff if your screen is locked?)
Also Google doesn't want to cannibalize their own Play Music sales.
Also Google doesn't want to cannibalize their own Play Music sales.
I doubt very much google really cares about Play Music sales, it likely only has it because it wants to offer comparable services to apple in order that they don't switch away from android. By far and away Googles most important revenue stream is advertising, youtube fits into the advertising model far better than Play.
Ultimately a generation of kids are growing up right now who use Youtube as their primary source of entertainment and for whom downloading an mp3 is likely to seem archaic. I doubt they're going to switch to Spotify so long as google can figure out offline play for audio (which I've no doubt they can)
Ultimately a generation of kids are growing up right now who use Youtube as their primary source of entertainment and for whom downloading an mp3 is likely to seem archaic. I doubt they're going to switch to Spotify so long as google can figure out offline play for audio (which I've no doubt they can)
> can it even play stuff if your screen is locked?
Yes, with Youtube Red.
> Google doesn't want to cannibalize their own Play Music sales.
Youtube Red is free with a Play Music subscription for $9.99/month in the US.
Yes, with Youtube Red.
> Google doesn't want to cannibalize their own Play Music sales.
Youtube Red is free with a Play Music subscription for $9.99/month in the US.
> (all 3 clones of Spotify)
When Spotify first came out, my first thought when I saw the UI was this was an iTunes clone :) Of course it was much more than just that...
When Spotify first came out, my first thought when I saw the UI was this was an iTunes clone :) Of course it was much more than just that...
Too expensive for me. When I had the Google equivalent (now cancelled too) I found that I just ended up listening to the music I already know/own anyway, so what is the point of paying to listen to the music I have as MP3s?
I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.
I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.
Did you try the discovery features? Many people find them to be among the most valuable features of Spotify. I quite like the discover weekly playlist that is auto-generated every Monday, and the daily mixes are quite good as well. Or see in which playlists other listeners discovered an artist and see if there's anything else you like in there. There's also a "generate more like this" option in playlists' context menu.
I recently switched to SoundCloud free and the ads are really not that bad (only con for example if your playing off your phone and it hits a video ad you can't lock your device till the SD finishes). However if the device screen is locked you'll only get audio ads (short and sweet at that).
Like YouTube though it will suffer from take down notices on some stuff you book mark, as well as mainstream stuff you can only listen to the first 30 seconds (but I've never been big into what's radio popular).
Like YouTube though it will suffer from take down notices on some stuff you book mark, as well as mainstream stuff you can only listen to the first 30 seconds (but I've never been big into what's radio popular).
I use both. Soundcloud audio quality is way lower. Not suitable for all day listening without fatigue.
Very true, that is one thing I find replacing a lot of songs with others to get quality. Which can be frustrating when you don't have spare time at all during the day.
You know what? Company that silently ignores hundreds of its Android users requests to implement such a basic functionality like playlist reordering for more than 3 years maybe deserves to die. It's a book exanple of business and customer service fail and tremendous arrogance.
Hard to belive but still true: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Rearrange-tracks...
Hard to belive but still true: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Rearrange-tracks...
It's not hard to believe. It's one of many, many things Spotify has done to indicate how little they care about their users. Here are a few more, arranged somewhat chronologically:
* Forcing mandatory Facebook logins, only to walk them back
* Releasing a "version 1.0" of their desktop app with no CTRL-F support and dozens of missing features
* Breaking people's hardware with bugs that made hundreds of unnecessary reads and writes to drives, denying the issue existed until pressed to fix it
* Silently removing basic features from their apps, or pushing UI updates that make said features harder to use
* Forcing mandatory Facebook logins, only to walk them back
* Releasing a "version 1.0" of their desktop app with no CTRL-F support and dozens of missing features
* Breaking people's hardware with bugs that made hundreds of unnecessary reads and writes to drives, denying the issue existed until pressed to fix it
* Silently removing basic features from their apps, or pushing UI updates that make said features harder to use
I think it's more likely that Android represents a negligible share of their users than some kind of intentional malice.
Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists and yet they are not making money. Not sustainable, and it's not really suprising. If someone offers you all the music of the world for 10 bucks that is just too good to be true. I closed my Spotify account because I didn't want to be complicit in the exploitation of artists. I'm now using Qobuz ($20/month) and hope that they are paying more fairly (couldn't find any numbers, though). $20 per month still doesn't feel right to me, but unfortunately there are no better options.
> Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists
Many of my favorite bands love Spotiy, going as far as making it the platform they pre-release music on and back-catalog out of print albums. Why? It's an engine for discovery unlike anything else. A lot of people were pirating music not because they were cheap but because it gets too expensive to drop $20 to figure out if you like an album. Spotify also rewards the right behavior -- if you make the kind of album I want to listen to over and over you get a bigger return. It also automatically notifies your fans of new releases and nearby concerts which puts more money in your pocket. It's a different model than the record labels but it's far from "aggressive exploitation".
Many of my favorite bands love Spotiy, going as far as making it the platform they pre-release music on and back-catalog out of print albums. Why? It's an engine for discovery unlike anything else. A lot of people were pirating music not because they were cheap but because it gets too expensive to drop $20 to figure out if you like an album. Spotify also rewards the right behavior -- if you make the kind of album I want to listen to over and over you get a bigger return. It also automatically notifies your fans of new releases and nearby concerts which puts more money in your pocket. It's a different model than the record labels but it's far from "aggressive exploitation".
> Spotify are aggressively exploiting artists...
What do you mean by that?
And separately, is it better or worse or the same as how the music industry has exploited artists over the years?
What do you mean by that?
And separately, is it better or worse or the same as how the music industry has exploited artists over the years?
I'm not defending the music industry. They deserve to die. But, yes, Spotify is worse. At least that's what all musicians I talk to are telling me unison.
Radio is awesome in my town. Radio feels better more connected than any stream service long live radio
Are there lots of ads on your favorite radios or are they OK?
Spotify's revenue model will not differ significantly from Pandora's. Same cost structure.
I am still missing Rdio and hope Pandora Premium gets the UI/UX and the music suggestion part right. It's sad that Spotify is still years behind a product that died in late '15.
fwiw Spotify just offered to bundle HBO Now for a reasonable price, actually, but when I decided to go for it, I was told it was not available in my area. And it was never seen again. Apparently they have been testing responses to these bundles without actually following through, but it's a good indication of future movements.
The clock is ticking yes, but of course - click-baiting - the clock is ticking in a good way to the gigantic IPO. All the numbers do look fantastic.
They are earning the most, they are paying the most (by far, compared to all other streaming services), and they have 40M premium members already.
Every artist is hoping for Spotify to succeed, and all the others being crushed by it.
Spotify and music is like a library and books. It's fantastic and accessible for listening and discovery. I'm hard pushed to find a friend that didn't use napster or limewire that's moved to Spotify - it's just easy, there and the price is right. And with the exception of a few hold out artists (lost back catalogues, or smaller artists who are unaware of 100% revenue services like distrokid.com) it's pretty complete. It'll be such a shame if it slowly goes the way of the buffalo.