
The clock is ticking for Spotify - open-source-ux
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38930699
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iamben
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.

~~~
ivraatiems
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.

~~~
zpr
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?

~~~
AbstractCache
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.

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danr4
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.

~~~
bogomipz
>"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.

~~~
GrinningFool
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.

~~~
bogomipz
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.

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bogomipz
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.

~~~
delinka
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.

~~~
bogomipz
Sure, I didn't mean in any kind of GAAP sense, just that the investment has
already borne fruit is all.

~~~
delinka
But it hasn't. Until they sell. They didn't need to make the investment to get
those licensing fees.

~~~
bogomipz
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.

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tresante
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.

~~~
disantlor
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

~~~
myfonj
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.

~~~
disantlor
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

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superplussed
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.

~~~
LoSboccacc
Labels already owns most artist past present and future works, distribution
channels doesn't really matter at this point.

~~~
superplussed
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.

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laurentdc
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.

~~~
x43b
"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.

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leoc
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.

~~~
NTripleOne
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.

------
sydd
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.

~~~
madebysquares
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.

~~~
binarymax
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.

~~~
lokedhs
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.

~~~
ldev
>That's mainly an Apple problem though.

And Google's/Spotify's problem is that they do not have any good or even
decent phones.

~~~
lokedhs
I think that answer tells us more about you than the state of the mobile
ecosystem.

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mattlondon
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.

~~~
puddintane
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).

~~~
rorykoehler
I use both. Soundcloud audio quality is way lower. Not suitable for all day
listening without fatigue.

~~~
puddintane
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.

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petval
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...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-
Ideas/Rearrange-tracks-inside-a-playlist-Android/idc-p/1579270)

~~~
ivraatiems
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

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tmalsburg2
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.

~~~
gumby
> 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?

~~~
tmalsburg2
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.

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yazbo_mcclure
Radio is awesome in my town. Radio feels better more connected than any stream
service long live radio

~~~
dest
Are there lots of ads on your favorite radios or are they OK?

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dano
Spotify's revenue model will not differ significantly from Pandora's. Same
cost structure.

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nik736
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.

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adzm
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.

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rurban
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.

