I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify? I'm sure it won't be deliberate, just a combination of stubbornness, greed and living in the past.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
[+] [-] iamben|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ivraatiems|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] patrick_haply|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Eridrus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bogomipz|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] NTripleOne|9 years ago|reply
fuck you Tool. :(
[+] [-] danr4|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bogomipz|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bjelkeman-again|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delinka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abe_duarte|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tresante|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] disantlor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dontreact|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dontreact|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superplussed|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LoSboccacc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laurentdc|9 years ago|reply
Because I'm pretty sure I won't. I can't see myself going back to physical media or DRM-laden files any soon.
[+] [-] x43b|9 years ago|reply
iTunes dropped DRM between 2007-2009. I don't think anyone is expecting you to go back to "DRM-laden files" anytime soon.
[+] [-] ZenoArrow|9 years ago|reply
https://bandcamp.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp
[+] [-] EduardoBautista|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leoc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NTripleOne|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sydd|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] madebysquares|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gambiting|9 years ago|reply
Apple might pre-install their app on iphones, but they don't support even 10% of the devices Spotify does.
[+] [-] iamben|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dageshi|9 years ago|reply
I could see youtube killing Spotify and all its competitors.
[+] [-] glitcher|9 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] mattlondon|9 years ago|reply
I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.
[+] [-] lorenzhs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puddintane|9 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] petval|9 years ago|reply
Hard to belive but still true: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Rearrange-tracks...
[+] [-] ivraatiems|9 years ago|reply
* 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
[+] [-] 467568985476|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmalsburg2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yazbo_mcclure|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dest|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dano|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nik736|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adzm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rurban|9 years ago|reply