
Spotify preps to go public with 60M subscribers - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/31/spotify-vs-apple-music/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
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DarkTree
I've had Spotify for 5 years or so, and mostly used it to look up songs I
already liked, and to create playlists to listen to while
studying/working/programming. It was already pretty awesome for that. Then I
started checking out the "Related Artist" section, and started discovering new
music after such a hiatus of music discovery since my younger years.

But where Spotify has really just excelled, and dare I say changed the way I
listen to music, is their newer ways of discovering music. Now I can make a
playlist with all of my favorites, and then just check out the "Recommended
Songs" section to find new favorites. And now I start most work weeks off
listening to the "Discover Weekly" playlist and drag the songs I like over to
my playlists. The amount of new music I've discovered hasn't been this volume
since middle school.

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twotimestuesday
Yeah I agree that Spotify is the best in the game right now. Discover weekly
has been spot on consistently since it was released but for me 30 tracks is
barely enough. I've been using turntable inspired
[https://www.jqbx.fm](https://www.jqbx.fm) for a little while. The social part
of it gives it the extra push of randomness I need to discover music I
wouldn't have stumbled on otherwise.

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jlewallen
Thank you for mentioning JQBX!

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factsaresacred
$10 a month for a never-ending stream of joy, nostalgia and discovery. The
easiest purchase I'll ever make.

In addition to all that, Spotify never bugs me. Discover weekly lands every
Monday without fanfare, I rarely if ever receive an email, and - with the
exception of some licencing issues - the library of music just keeps
expanding. So yeah, hurrah for their growth.

One question though: what happened with the purchase of Soundwave? I'm
guessing some of their ideas went into making Discover weekly as good as it
is.

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teekno
Spotify has become one of the few subscription services that, barring a large
price increase, I have no plans to cancel. I listen to content for at least 4
hours each day and I'm more than happy pay $10 a month for offline storage and
no ads. The additions of Discover Weekly and daily mixes made losing What.CD
slightly more bearable.

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scarface74
Spotify is nice, but do they really have in chance of being decently
profitable on such slim margins? They are competing against two large
companies that don't live or die by whether their music subscription business
is profitable - Apple and Google.

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ksec
That is assuming Apple or Google has a product that even tries to complete on
quality.

Both of their Music product is far inferior to Spotify. And this is speaking
form an Apple Fans who really wanted to paid Apple some money but cant.

~~~
scarface74
Whether or not Apple Music and Google's offers are inferior, are they inferior
enough that Spotify can overcome the "power of defaults"? If I'm all in in
either ecosystem, the integration benefits of Apple Music may make up for any
inferiority. The same could be said about Youtube Red.

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RileyJames
I wish they would focus on the "Your Library" side of the app & search.

1\. Connectivity. I am online, maybe check and retry a few times, rather than
tell me I've done something wrong. No other app makes this as painful as
Spotify. This makes searching a horrible experience.

2\. Visit artist page, visit album page. All these options are hidden behind
buttons that say ". . ." Nothing! Browsing through my collection of saved
music to find something to listen to should be JOYFUL and fast. Not slow and
confusing.

3\. I can see what's in my queue, but what did I just listen to? Why is not
available in one touch from the same screen?

It seems like their UI has a long way to go. It currently gets in the way of
an otherwise excellent experience.

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pgeorgep
I love Spotify and will happily continue to pay a few bucks a month to use
their services. Is going public really their best move though?

It really seems logical that Apple would have acquired them by now and just
merged them into Apple Music, once again giving Apple control over the online
music industry.

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JamesMcMinn
I'd rather Spotify went public than got bought by Apple, Google, Microsoft or
Amazon. The competition is good for everyone.

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adventured
Going public is guaranteed to end in them getting acquired by a US media or
tech company.

Once public, it won't take long for the present owners to lose control to far
more powerful financial entities. The VCs will all liquidate out, leaving a
power vacuum that will be gradually filled by those new parties, and they'll
do the same thing they always do.

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andy_ppp
So buy spotify shares then, they’ll go up?

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Cthulhu_
Or they go down until a party just buys all of their shares. It's pretty much
a gamble.

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ProfessorLayton
As much as I love competition, I can't see this ending any better than it did
for Pandora. Its hard to make money by selling someone else's content, and Big
Music seems content with leeching as much as they can from music providers,
short of actually killing them.

Perhaps if they went with the Netflix model and signed artists themselves, but
thats also extremely capital-intensive. Netflix is apparently 20B in debt [1]

[http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-
netflix-d...](http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-netflix-debt-
spending-20170729-story.html)

~~~
dano
^^^^ This

For the future of Spotify, look no further than $P
[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/p?ltr=1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/p?ltr=1)

They pay the same royalties.

Their cost structures are very similar.

Their differences are in capabilities, which can be mimic'd (see Instagram vs
Snapchat stories)

Buy for the pop, sell before its too late.

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anilshanbhag
Google recently started aggressively marketing Youtube Red. When you watch a
youtube video, a small popup asks if you want an ad-free experience, consider
upgrading ..

This is worrying as Spotify has no moat. Youtube Red is definitely a better
value as you ad-free + offline youtube with music. I am a paying Spotify
customer and if they improve their client, I might jump ship.

~~~
nikanj
For me, Spotify's moat is the music that keeps on playing when I lock my
phone.

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ClassyJacket
Youtube Red and Google Play Music _both_ have that, and both come together for
the price of just Spotify.

That being said, I'm a Spotify subscriber, because its apps are the best.

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elfchief
Cool, maybe this means they'll finally be able to afford to implement the
ability to play through a non-default sound device on Windows. You know, like
the USB DACs a lot of music lovers have.

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AbstractCache
Am I missing something here? Can't you just change the default sound device to
the DAC?

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philsnow
Maybe elfchief doesn't want chord.wav to play on the hi-fi system, so doesn't
set the DAC as the default device

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elfchief
Pretty much this. I have a pair of studio monitors set up for music and tuned
for music. Game audio and random youtube videos don't sound so great with that
setup, so I don't want it to be my default.

Sure, I could change the default every time I fire up Spotify, but that's
annoying and I really shouldn't have to do it -- this kind of setup is not
that unusual for music lovers, and it's not a difficult feature to add.

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true_religion
Have you heard of this [http://www.chevolume.com/](http://www.chevolume.com/)

It lets you set an app to use a default audio device, which _may_ solve your
issue with spotify. Some apps just ignore it, and only play through the system
default though.

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znedw
I'm using spotify through mopidy & mopidy-spotify, i can use ncmpcpp to play
playlists and search spotify just like a local MPD server with a lot of music,
it's excellent.

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bananaoomarang
Have been meaning to set something like this up.

My only issue with Spotify is that it doesn't integrate with my local
collection very nicely/at all on Android.

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kayman
I use spotify. Love it. My family uses Spotify, loves it. I hope they go
public.

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darkstar999
Why do you hope they go public?

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elmar
he loves it so much he wants to buy shares, I can't think of other reason.

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kayman
Yes. Its a company I'd invest in long term as long as I stay a delighted
customer.

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jsjohnst
I wonder if the reason for the non-traditional IPO was due to the raise they
did a while back under rather predatory terms?

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parr0t
Was a paying Spotify user for about two years and recently jumped ship to
Google Play Music to give it a shot and I'm pretty happy about it thus far.
Haven't been any songs that I had on my Spotify playlist that I couldn't find.
There is a few things it is missing that's not ideal (no podcasts in
Australia) but the bundling of YouTube Red with the subscription + the ability
to upload my bandcamp-downloaded tracks that I can stream back that aren't on
either Spotify or Google Play Music is fantastic.

Podcasts is just the main thing I am wanting at the moment, but I can still
access them via the Spotify free account.

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hycaria
I'm still angry at Spotify and don't use their service as a consequence. I got
Spotify during the beta. Then the advantages were gradually revoked (first a
"free" account with less ads iirc, now no perks at all). Nothing surprising
but there are way too many other ways to listen to music (and needed to use
others for some tracks anyways) for me to comply and subscribe.

Mostly using HypeMachine now. Although it is probably gonna shut down, and all
there will be left will be subscription based music services :(

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simonswords82
Love Spotify.

Now if only there was a Spotify equivalent for films in terms of depth and
breadth of the available library and spot on recommendations of new films.

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jamesmattis
60M subscribers and still not profitable, why?

Would you buy a stock in a company that has been in business from last 11
years and cannot make a profit yet?

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Cthulhu_
Still heavily investing in acquiring music licenses and expanding their
business I guess?

That's the modern time, businesses don't aim to make a profit anymore, they
aim to grow. AMD is a good example of this practice, it usually ends each
quarter with a half a billion in losses [1], with some exceptions here and
there. It goes from an almost 4 billion loss to a 1.3 billion profit. It's
amazing it still exists, but that's what investor money is for I guess.

[1]
[https://ycharts.com/companies/AMD/net_income_ttm](https://ycharts.com/companies/AMD/net_income_ttm)

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dirtylowprofile
I love Spotify but their Mac app is so slow and won't load anymore.

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dan1234
Their Mac app randomly consuming an entire core was the reason I grudgingly
switched to Apple Music (though iTunes has different issues, it usually
behaves itself when in the background).

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nodesocket
Nice. Maybe they can purchase SoundCloud with the IPO proceeds.

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elmar
_Spotify is gearing up for what’s being called a “direct listing,” where the
company intends to go public without doing an IPO. Insiders, not the company,
will be selling shares to the stock market._

No proceeds, only investors caching out.

