
Spotify trying to lock-in users just after IPO (2018) - bartoszhernas
https://freeyourmusic.com/blog/spotify-trying-to-lockin-users/
======
mises
Spotify was salty after Apple was mean to them; this is a good example of the
fact that they aren't concerned about "fairness" as much about their own
business. Users that have poured time into Spotify playlists aren't going to
transfer if they can't move them. Spotify didn't even have to develop
something here, they blocked the work of someone who did it for them. This
isn't fair. Which is fine, but it is then okay for Apple to be "unfair" about
their business too.

~~~
bartoszhernas
That's exactly why I posted this with title "Developers to Spotify: Stop
Locking-In Users, Time to Play Fair" first.

Spotify is being hypocritical af :(.

Our users experience degradated a lot and every few weeks our hacks stop
working and we need to update user agents we use to simulate browser. Spotify
is actively trying to bring us down.

~~~
ucaetano
So you're just looking after your own interests while calling Spotify
hypocritical for doing the same?

We're all hypocrites, and we're all looking after our own interests...

~~~
bartoszhernas
Of course I am looking after my own interests. I am human, that's how we
evolved, that's how we made it to the moon.

How am I hypocritical? I am just in favour of not locking in users, and we do
not lock in users.

Spotify wants Apple to not change TOS to their favour while doing exactly the
same.

~~~
longerthoughts
>Of course I am looking after my own interests. I am human, that's how we
evolved, that's how we made it to the moon.

So why the surprise that Spotify is doing the same? Yes, it's hypocritical for
them to say "Apple locking in users is unfair" then do the same in a situation
that benefits them. But to your point, it is human to look out for one's own
interests and Spotify is a group of humans doing just that. That doesn't make
it right, but would you behave differently in their situation?

------
rchaud
I can't even recall the number of "music curation" and "share your playlist"
type services I used in the '00s, and how they all folded.

For that reason, I've never bothered to make Spotify playlists, because I
realized I might be locking myself in to begin with. The current generation of
streaming users are now discovering something similar to what I did back then.

I do have some playlists on Youtube (whose selection is far bigger when you
consider bootlegs, B-sides, unreleased tracks, demos etc), but I take a
screenshot of it every now and then so I'll have a copy.

I nearly always own a digital copy of what I listen to, so there's really no
reason to store your playlists on Spotify at all.

~~~
bootlooped
It's possible to take a full page screenshot of any of your playlists or saved
songs in the Spotify web player. That would probably be the easiest way to
save them, but not the most usable. For a little more effort a scraper could
be written that would generate simple text file with artist - album - song.

~~~
rchaud
I have a "full page screenshot" Chrome extension that does this. YT is
annoying though because they lazyload scrolling content, so a list of say, a
100 items would be tough to export. My playlists are around 15-20 songs each,
so it's not too bad.

------
bredren
Should be marked (2018)

It would be awesome if music licenses were portable. Holding collections
hostage reminds me of how carriers made it difficult or impossible to keep
your phone number when moving between them.

~~~
kgwxd
They are portable if you don't buy through those channels.

~~~
bredren
I acknowledge this point, though there are efforts to reduce the value of non-
subscription digital licensing. For example, exclusive or advanced content
only available to streaming subscribers.

While brand new exclusive content is hard to imagine being portable (since it
is often locked to a particular service) it seems to me that generic user
music collections should be made portable.

------
thiele
I built a tool for exporting your Spotify playlists and library to CSV
spreadsheets: [http://www.streamexport.com/](http://www.streamexport.com/)

It doesn't 'move' your playlists to other services but it gives you a record
of all of your playlists that you can control and store locally.

------
duado
Now you just need a tool that OCR’s screenshotted playlists and imports
them... at which point Spotify will start using a less legible font... the end
State will be that Spotify’s main font will be “Captcha”

~~~
fyfy18
For anyone wondering "would that actually work" there are helper tools for
PoGo that actually work like this:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cjin.pokeg...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cjin.pokegenie.standard&hl=en_US)

~~~
Aissen
Yup, even an open source one:
[https://github.com/farkam135/GoIV](https://github.com/farkam135/GoIV)

Unfortunately it's not as good as Calcy IV. There are also iOS apps, but they
require manual screenshotting.

------
solarkraft
> Stamp is in violation of Spotify’s Developer Terms, which prohibit
> developers from integrating Spotify Content (including metadata) with third-
> party services

So ... It's forbidden to use Spotify's API?

I currently stay with Spotify because of its decently good UX (despite
constant, nonsensical A/B testing) and because I had the impression they were
behaving well. This perception is fragile.

I'm not sure making your service less attractive to users will increase your
stock price either.

~~~
bartoszhernas
It's was always ok to use their SDK and make money as long as you did not make
money from music listening.

We make money from user playlists data (which we believe should belong to
user) and I don't treat our usecase as integrating with others, as we do it in
3 steps: download from Spotify, then import to somewhere else.

It was all fine for 2 year, but after IPO they changed their TOS for
Developers.

There was either making our service less attractive or removing Spotify all
together, so we had no choice. Don't really care about stock price ;), just
want to keep the project going and allow others to be able to migrate between
different services.

I like that with email on your own domain you can easily switch providers
(which I recently did with google to protonmail). But there are many other
solutions which are not so easy to switch which halts competition.

------
quotha
Amazing! If you want others to play fair, you should too

~~~
bartoszhernas
Thanks for the support ! :)

------
CharlesW
The worst aspect of this post that it lacks a call-to-action. Without that, it
didn't have a chance to make an impact.

The second-worst aspect of this post is that it proves Spotify's point. Not
only does the author attack and threaten Spotify from start to finish, but
they reinforce that the primary use case is to leave Spotify for competitive
services.

~~~
bartoszhernas
Replace Spotify with Apple Music in the article. Same case. If Spotify wants
others to play fair, it should start playing fair as well.

~~~
athenot
Not sure that is the case as your playlists are accessible from AppleScript.
Here's their titles, you can further iterate and get the info about the tracks
in the playlists.

    
    
        tell application "iTunes"
          repeat with p in playlists
            log name of p as string
          end repeat
        end tell

~~~
bartoszhernas
Funny you mention AppleScript, because before there was Apple Music API, we
were using it and pure applescript was exactly how we have started.

[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stamp-2](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stamp-2)

Bit of a history now, but it was just an applescript that used CSV to click
through iTunes.

------
taigeair
Google Play Music and Apple Music also do this. I don't think I'm able to move
any of my playlists off their services.

~~~
bartoszhernas
We (FreeYourMusic.com) support both Apple Music and Google Music, so you can
easily migrate ;)

Apple Music has official SDK for both web and mobile. (even on Android)

Google Play Music is same case now as Spotify. We mimic their web API, but
it's far from perfect as you need to use "app password" for login.

------
zihotki
Well, you can always issue a GDPR request for all your data. They're obliged
to comply, aren't they?

~~~
bartoszhernas
Yes, but the GDPR doesnt say “make it easy so apps like STAMP can exist”.
Spotify could create export process that takes 3 days, you get zip file of
JSON with format changing every day, and it would still be GDPR compliant.

~~~
stordoff
Arguably it does:

> The data subject shall have the right to receive the personal data
> concerning him or her, which he or she has provided to a controller, in a
> structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to
> transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from the
> controller to which the personal data have been provided

> In exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to paragraph 1,
> the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted
> directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible.

Whether that will be enforced in any meaningfully useful way is debatable, but
the format changing every day would seem to break the spirit at least.

~~~
bartoszhernas
Thanks, good to know!

------
have_faith
> Select all songs in the playlist

> drag into textedit or equivalent

Tada

~~~
corgiorgy
On Mac OS this just gives me a list of open.spotify.com links.

Not very useful for portability unless you plan on scraping the metadata from
each URL.

~~~
have_faith
True, but it is the playlist in Song - Artist format. I don't think Spotify
has any obligation to provide interoperability with other platforms, but
getting the basic song information out seems pretty straight forward. My off
handed solution wouldn't work for mobile though so don't know if there's an
equivalent.

------
IpV8
Who cares if you can't export your playlists. You probably used their
proprietary recommendation systems to generate them anyways. And its not like
I can't write down all of my playlists and recreate them elsewhere. Why should
Spotify go out of their way to make it easier for me to switch off of their
platform. I refused to get fired up over this non-issue.

~~~
wheelie_boy
Yeah, the context for this is that spotify recently launched a website & EU
legal complaint against apple for not opening up its platform sufficiently to
competitors (or not sufficiently prioritizing feature work desired by
competitors).

I assume OP found spotify's actions hypocritical, which is why they posted
this.

Then the question is whether we should see spotify's 'time to play fair'
website as a true statement of principle, or a cynical attempt to sway public
opinion against actions that harm it as a business, but that it would be more
than happy to engage in itself if it were in apple's position.

~~~
fjp
Making it so your data structures in a Saas platform can't instantly be ported
to a competitor is standard and a no-brainer business practice in my opinion.

Spotify's complaint against Apple is that they're abusing the App Store
platform to an anticompetitive end because non-Apple apps have disadvantages
on the platform that Apple's competing apps don't.

I think this owning-the-platform-while-also-selling-on-it situation we see
Apple, Amazon, and others in is something that we will see formal regulations
appear on in the coming decade.

~~~
wheelie_boy
So would it be similar if Spotify created some of the media that it put on its
own platform?

For example if it just bought two podcast companies?

~~~
fjp
I would assume there would not be the same application of antitrust law, if
any (IANAL) because Spotify isn't a marketplace that sells the podcasts.

That situation would be more comparable to Netflix since you're just paying a
bundled subscription and you're getting 3rd-party work as well as Netflix
originals. While openness would be awesome to have, they don't really have any
obligation to provide it.

Of course it's not exactly like Netflix since you can self-publish onto
Spotify so there's wrinkles. But my point is that it's a lot different than
operating a buying/selling marketplace.

~~~
wheelie_boy
Because spotify owns the podcast companies, and podcasts have paid ads,
spotify directly benefits if they are played more often. That is not the case
with netflix.

But they are doing some things the same as netflix, in that they are also
creating exclusive podcasts to drive traffic to their platform.

~~~
solarkraft
> That is not the case with netflix

It is. They do a lot of product placement ([https://www.whats-on-
netflix.com/news/is-product-placement-g...](https://www.whats-on-
netflix.com/news/is-product-placement-going-to-become-the-norm-in-netflix-
originals/)).

They also don't have to pay others for views, though I expect that to be less
of a motivation.

