
Spotify has been doomed from the start - prostoalex
http://pando.com/2015/06/12/is-spotify-doomed-because-of-apple-music-no-spotifys-been-doomed-from-the-start/
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sbt
Related to this - If European IT companies continue to lose against their
bigger US competitors, the Europeans will start protecting themselves. Indeed
this is what is happening right now with EU anti-trusting (remember Obama said
"they can't compete").

Spotify and SoundCloud are some of the European IT stories at the moment, if
they are both slaughtered by Apple, that will not go well for trade
negotiations. Additionally, like the Chinese, Europeans are getting
increasingly weary of reliance of US made hardware.

Upshot: Spotify and SoundCloud failing will give more fuel to EU
protectionists and will in the long run curb the reach of US tech
multinationals.

~~~
rehtona
The US and China both have the "unfair" advantage of a big homogenous market.
I think that's the main reason you don't see a Microsoft, Google or Facebook
in Europe. For example Spotify, headquartered in Stockholm, initially had a
domestic market of 9 million people. Spotify is growing fast, but again, not
enough engineers would move to Stockholm to sustain a Google. There's a
language and culture barrier between EU countries that just don't exist in the
US.

~~~
sbt
Yes. I happen to think Europe actually has somewhat better human capital than
the US, though the US has a clear institutional advantage (more homogeneous
market, different politics, etc.) which trumps everything else.

I was once a part of a medium sized European start-up that was bought by a
large US company. Even though everyone got rich off the acquisition, we came
to view this as a failure. If we didn't agree to be bought, we knew we would
be out spent/marketed by the much larger (though much more clumsy) US company.

At the end of the day, the Europeans will not consign themselves to US
dominance (and the Chinese certainly won't). The EU moves slowly, but there
are clear signs the past few years that it is moving to curb US tech
multinationals in order to nurture domestic alternatives. While I support free
trade in principle, I think this is a good development for Europe.

~~~
kryptiskt
Sure, the EU could get all huffy, but starting a trade war over that when they
are a huge net exporter to the US would be extremely stupid. Maybe even too
stupid for them.

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amouat
How did this sentence make it into the article: "In turn, the $41 million
people who pay to use services like Spotify was $1.6 billion."? It doesn't
even read properly.

(I think they mean "In turn, the 41 million people who pay to use services
like Spotify generated $1.6 billion").

In my view, the real problem is the music labels. Hopefully the future lies
with smaller and less malevolent labels, or even no labels at all.

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Nemcue
Meanwhile at Spotify HQ:

"OK guys — it's been more than a couple of months since we scrapped features
that people like. Let's spin the wheel of misfortune, shall we?"

"Maybe we should hold more talks about how awesome our processes are, and how
agile we've become — all the while letting our core product languish and not
listen to our customers needs."

"Hey, could you take a look at this? I've spent all weekend creating a better
version of the playlist-view. It uses twice the amount of padding from before.
Maybe this encourages more in-depth listening, since you have to scroll a lot
more. What do you think? It's nice, right? Perhaps we should also require the
users to click and drag the scrollbar?"

(I love Spotify though. I just wish they put a little more effort into their
applications — or at least made it customisable so I could make semi-permanent
fixes myself. The _only_ meaningful feature they have shipped that has
impacted me the last two years is detection of duplicates in a playlist. Like
seriously, what are you guys doing?)

~~~
rezistik
Tidal was the first promise of a decent competitor to Spotify and I jumped
immediately. Spotify has had so many requests for features that they have
completely ignored and consistently made their ux worse across every device
for the two...maybe three years I've been a paying customer.

A feature request to prefer explicit over clean and vice versa when possible
has been on their request board for nearly two of those. For a long time it
was difficult to even select or search for the version you wanted.

They ignore their customers, break their UI, fail to optimize for conversions
to paying customers, how could they expect to be profitable?

So far I've been extremely happy with Tidal. It's gotten quickly better and
I'm excited to see how the artist based model plays out. It's odd to me that
the author laments the plight of the starving and ignored artists while
calling Tidal a joke. Their stated mission is to improve the landscape for
artists, they have a real opportunity to build on top of and change the indie
scene and I think they'll take it.

~~~
inthewoods
I'd argue that Rdio is a pretty good product. On Android, Google Play is very
good. Both predate Tidal by a wide margin.

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inthewoods
A bit of poor analysis in my view. While I have no doubt Apple Music will be
popular in the long run (as new handsets become available), I saw very little
in Apple's offering that was differentiated from Spotify. Pricing and features
were more or less identical except for 3 months free (please correct me if I
missed something).

Anecdotal, I've heard no excitement from any of my normal Apple-obsessed
friends about using the new service. I find streaming music apps to more
sticky than I had anticipated - people have their playlists/history - and they
don't want to lose this. My wife was a user of MOG (one of the few), then of
Beats post-purchase. She hates the Beats interface/app, but she will not
change to another service. Spotify has another important sticky factor - the
desktop app - which allows you to play back both what is on your hard drive
with the streaming music.

This is not to say Spotify isn't doomed long term - they have, in my opinion,
a fairly unsustainable business model that continues to exist only because of
VC funding. They need to create a more multi-stream business - just working
with the labels will put them into the ground. My guess is that they continue
to evolve into a more complete media platform, and that they sign artists
directly to get to a real margin.

But to say that Apple will crush them reminds me of the whole
Netflix/Blockbuster comparison. Now Blockbuster was no Apple - but everyone
thought that they, as the incumbent, would crush Netflix. That didn't happen -
because Netflix was there first and Blockbuster launched a very me-too
competitor. Spotify is also focused on winning this - it's all they have -
whereas Apple Music is a tiny part of Apple as a whole.

Now, this could also play out like Google Maps - I believe Apple Maps now
crushes GM in terms of usage - so Spotify will likely have trouble going
forward if Apple Music is installed by default on every handset.

~~~
yen223
"I believe Apple Maps now crushes GM in terms of usage"

That's a bold claim. Are there any sources on this?

~~~
Oletros
Apple Maps is used a lot more than Google Maps on iOS.

It is the advantage of being the integrated application in the operating
system.

There is no way to make Google Maps/or any other application the default one
on iOS and any map link goes to Apple Maps

~~~
jacques_chester
I suspect Apple's claim is true _on iOS devices_. It's a good example of
marketing spin.

~~~
Someone
_" Apple's claim"_? I see no claim in this thread that Apple made such a
claim.

~~~
jacques_chester
See:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714686)

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return0
The tone of the article is horrible. Does the behemoth, errr, Apple care to
outcompete spotify or soundcloud? I though apple's strategy is just to provide
more content for their devices

~~~
dghughes
Maybe Apple is using it as a decoy to draw attention away from the Apple
watch.

It's funny though since Apple said "Hey Apple Records in England we want to
name our company Apple oh no we'll never be involved in selling any music" is
getting more involved in music each decade.

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Synthpixel
The author of this article appears to be unaware that the major record
companies have a significant stake in Spotify[1]. Of course they're not going
to support any attempts to undercut the market.

[1] [http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-
owner...](http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner-of-
spotify)

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patsplat
It's obvious that this analysis is shallow by the failure to mention Google
Play.

Don't have a particular opinion on the merits of these services, only that
leaving out Google makes the analysis incomplete.

~~~
dustincoates
I noticed that, too. I've obviously not got the numbers, but I wouldn't be
surprised if Google Play wasn't number two to Spotify right now in terms of
subscribers. To not mention it at all is a strange oversight.

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scelerat
Apple IMO has never really understood the social dynamics of the internet, let
alone "social networking." The company they bought to incorporate into their
music service (Beats) has the executive DNA of the major label music
entertainment business, which time and again has failed to understand why and
how people share and enjoy music.

Not long after Beats bought streaming service Mog, they laid off the big data
engineers building the "related things you might like" features in favor of
marketing-driven genre-based playlists built by internal "experts." They
killed one of the best features of Mog which was the ability to have the
player continue to play music you were likely to enjoy when your song or album
or playlist reached the end. Instead, the music just stops. It was a
noticeable shift from an individual- personality-driven music experience to a
top-down, father-knows-best experience.

My hunch is that Google/Youtube streams more music than any other dedicated
service, and that's almost by accident.

I have no idea how these past moves will play into Apple's new service, but I
wouldn't be naming anyone a victor quite yet.

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mhomde
I think Doomed is a strong word... Apple has lost this war over and over again
(remember Itunes Ping anyone). They also seem a bit out of touch with focus of
on mainstream artists, curated content and one-way "social networking".
Apple's coffers and integrated payment system makes them a very dangerous
adversary but no competitor has the reach, inventory and ecosystem that
Spotify currently enjoys.

That being said I think the writing is on the wall. Spotify is too juicy a
strategic asset to not be snatched up, it's just a matter of time and price.
It'd put my money on Google buying it within a year for a hefty price.

It's a pity because I'd rather see Spotify as an independent service rather
than platform leverage. If Spotify becomes a de facto monopoly in a walled
garden under Apple or Google it is we who are doomed. Better for the music
labels to own a part of Spotify (and perhaps demand more ownership) than
handing over control.

~~~
kaolinite
Ping was a complete failure but apart from that, what else? iTunes was their
only other attempt in the "war" and it absolutely dominated.

Regarding reach, inventory and ecosystem - I think Spotify should be very
worried by Apple. The iTunes library is one of the biggest and it seems that
most of it is available for streaming. Apple Music will be coming preinstalled
on all iOS devices (with three months of the service for free) and, to top it
all off, it'll be available on Android too. I'd be very concerned if I were
Spotify.

What's more, iOS users tend to be some of the more valuable customers, and I
wouldn't be surprised to see a higher portion of Spotify Premium subscribers
on iOS than other platforms. I suspect that Spotify Premium memberships will
take a big hit after it launches. I know I'll be leaving for it.

To me, Spotify is a perfect example of the power of a good UI (or rather, how
damaging a poor UI can be). I have subscribed to Spotify since pretty much the
beginning - for years and years - and yet I am completely disloyal to them. I
can't think of any other company, besides utility companies and such, where I
haven't become somewhat fond of them having been a customer for so long. I
can't stand Spotify. Whilst the service is great, the UI is awful and the apps
are slow, don't feel native and are annoying to use. That's why, having only
seen screenshots of Apple Music, I know I'll be switching to it from day one.
A good user interface is king.

(In case anyone brings it up, I've tried many competitors to Spotify,
including Rdio, and haven't been able to find anything better. Rdio looked
promising but their Mac app is actually even worse.)

~~~
mhomde
I see a lot of hate for the Spotify UI and on desktop & web I think it's kinda
justified just because they've flip & flopped so much and remove/added/changed
features constantly.

The Iphone & Ipad client I actually think is pretty well designed and I'm not
sure where the hate is coming from, would be interesting if you could go into
more detail

~~~
kaolinite
Best example I have is the whole navigation structure (this is on iPhone).
Let's say you were listening to a playlist and then you went into an artist,
maybe a related artist from there and played a song (basically, you've gone
pretty deep). You now decide to search for a song and play that. In order to
do that, you need to hit the back button repeatedly until the hamburger icon
appears. Then, you can search and listen to the track you wanted. If you want
to return to where you were previously, you need to hit the back button
repeatedly until you get the hamburger, then redo every step you took to get
there.

How is this fixable? Really easily! It's built-in! There's a
UITabBarController that is used in many apps, such as iTunes, for this exact
purpose. You can switch between sections of an app without losing your place
in each section.

~~~
mhomde
Ah that's a good point, thanks! Consistent navigation is the crux of many
apps. Though with the phone version i find 99% of my use is either listening
to my playlists or searching & placing specific song, so I seldom hit all
those use cases that I do on the desktop version. I can imagine it being quite
poor at those edge cases however.

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kristofferR
Spotify has nailed the social aspect of music sharing/collaborative playlist
creation through its great Facebook integration (at least here in Norway where
"everyone" uses Spotify).

From what I've seen of Apple Music it seems like they haven't bothered with
the social aspect at all. Is it even possible to share what you're listening
to and collaborate on playlists?

That may not be a big deal for some people, but I'm pretty confident that at
least my group of friends won't switch to a streaming service where
collabrating on playlists isn't super easy (or even possible).

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Oletros
Pando, they are always funny

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frik
It might be the subscriber model. Consumer would loose their access to music
and would have to restart from scratch with another service (favorites,
playlists) and maybe buy special hardware (Apple Music?).

An audio CD has a longer term value, legal backup are possible, it can be
resold, it has a higher audio quality and the musician ears more too.

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Immortalin
Hindsight always seems to be 20/20

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macspoofing
Apple is not Spotify's problems. The labels are. The labels have all the
control. They'll squeeze out all profits from that company.

//

Apple Music is not a problem because it is for Apple users. They won't be able
to help themselves, it'll be centered around their eco-system. There are a lot
non-Apple users. There are a lot of Apple haters (I got annoyed last week when
they restricted streaming of their keynote to Apple devices - seriously).

