
Spotify hits 83M paying subscribers, more than double Apple Music’s 40M - myroon5
https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/26/spotify-paid-subscribers-q2-2018/?pushup=1
======
simonbarker87
Spotify are about to loose me as a customer after the better part of a decade
as a paying premium subscriber for one reason: putting videos in the form of
mini documentaries and puff pieces in curated playlists and not adding a way
to auto skip them.

I have had Spotify in the background of pretty much all aspects of my life for
years but these videos discussing the inspiration of a song through to an
artist designing his own sneakers breaks my concentration and is driving me
mad.

Spotify don’t care, an option to block these videos has been asked for, a
“Community Idea” for the feature to block them has over 2,000 votes (the
threshold for Spotify paying attention is 100) so I am off to Deezer.

Spotify was in the category of non negotiable and alongside heating and
internet as a household bill so I’m pretty bummed they now want to be YouTube
but in portrait only.

~~~
Twirrim
I'm increasingly frustrated with their response to Community Ideas and feature
requests.

Here's a really dumb, simple one: They won't allow you to filter out explicit
songs. Even though they already have the metadata indicating a song has
explicit lyrics. Lots of customers have asked for it. It has been voted highly
on "Community Idea". Still no progress multiple years later.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
Spotify's UI and their response to features is the worst thing ever. I really
wish Play Music or whatever started integrating Youtube video music as well,
and that it actually stopped skipping during play so I could make the switch.

Like I can't re-size columns anymore. Used to be able to do this. Now it's
gone. It's super obnoxious for playlists that have classical music in them
because oftentimes the piece gets cut off.

Then there are SO many bugs in the UI. I had a super annoying one a few weeks
ago where I have shuffle on, and if I manually picked a song to play, that
would turn shuffle off. So any time I wanted to hear a specific song in my
300+ song playlist, I had to turn shuffle on again.

Oh and ANOTHER super obnoxious bug/feature: after a while, downloaded
playlists just aren't downloaded anymore. This is extra annoying for flights
because I KNOW I have playlists set to download, I KNOW they finished
downloading, I KNOW they were downloaded and playable for a few weeks, but
still every damn time I get on the plane, after a few weeks of the playlist
being downloaded, the files are gone. And I'm stuck on the plane in offline
mode with no music to listen to. Play music doesn't have this issue. In fact,
I don't have to tell it to download anything. Last weekend on my flight to LA,
Play Music had cached/downloaded the two playlists I use the most.

Spotify is such garbage. I hate it so much.

~~~
guidovranken
I've been a paying Spotify subscriber since 2010. Slowly I've grown
dissatisfied with their service.

They killed the instant notifications of new album releases of bands that you
follow. They replaced it with a weekly 'Release Radar' that comprises a
selection of new music catered to your taste. It seems that the feature has a
bias towards certain artists. I listened to Martin Garrix a couple of times
years ago and he seems to pop up every few weeks in my 'Release Radar' even
though all I really listen to these days is improvised jazz. It doesn't make
sense and it isn't in my best interest. Perhaps there is an ulterior financial
motive behind 'Release Radar' where record companies can bid for a place in
that list, but I'm not sure. What I really want is to get a notification the
minute my favorite artists release an album. Surely this shouldn't be too much
asked in this day and age.

Until recently you could use search operators like year:1968 genre:jazz and
now it's gone. I really like it when you can query repositories of data
(music, in the case of Spotify) as a database.

These things really irk me and I'd love to migrate to a (legal) service that
does this properly and is relatively free of "smart algorithms", and I
wouldn't mind paying $50 a month or maybe more for it.

~~~
noyesno
Try the combination of Roon[1] and Tidal[2]. It is expensive but the user
experience is unrivaled.

[1] [https://roonlabs.com](https://roonlabs.com) [2]
[https://tidal.com](https://tidal.com)

------
ohitsdom
I've tried Apple Music twice, both on a free one-month trial offer. Both times
I found the product to be so frustrating that I stopped using it within the
first day.

To me, Spotify is the clear winner in streaming subscription services with a
great UX and by doing a decent job of finding new interesting music. I'd rank
Google Play second, followed by Amazon Music. Apple Music is the only one I
truly dislike.

~~~
digikata
I still feel like Pandora does the best job of finding similar new music to an
initial set of tracks, but other than that I like most aspects of spotify
better.

~~~
pro_zac
I stumbled across a great Spotify feature the other day. If you right click on
a playlist, there is an option called "Create similar playlist". I did this
with a playlist I had created from a bunch of random tracks. It basically went
through track by track and found similar songs. It was a bit hit or miss on
some songs, but a neat feature. I think Spotify does a great job because they
give you so many options for finding new music, but sometimes you have to dig
into the UI to find them.

~~~
dom96
> I think Spotify does a great job because they give you so many options for
> finding new music, but sometimes you have to dig into the UI to find them.

While this is true it's ridiculous how often, at least for me, Spotify creates
a playlist with songs that I've listened to hundreds of times already.

At least 70% of my discovery weekly playlist is a song I've already heard. If
I create a "Similar playlist" it stuffs it with songs that I listen to
regularly. It's deeply disappointing.

~~~
stubish
Discovery playlists filled with songs I've already 'liked' or added to my
library. Discovery playlists with duplicates. And in other playlists, having
to 'do not play' songs I don't actually mind because they are generally
popular and the algorithm thinks I want to hear it three times a day, every
day. A great way to kill your love of a song.

While I love the concept of Spotify, I'm certainly not going to pay for it and
eagerly waiting for competitors to be available in my regions.

------
hobofan
I'm pretty surprised of the high number of Apple Music subscribers. As hinted
at the end of the article, geographic, but also age distribution would be
interesting to see.

Anecdotally in my mid 20 central European bubble, ~95% of my peers use
Spotify, with the rest using Google Play Music (including me). I don't know a
single person using Apple Music, and I wasn't even aware that it existed as a
paid service (though I think I've heard of it a few years ago).

~~~
cam3ham
This. Spotify should be worried about the growth of Apple music - which is
only available on iPhone's but already have 50% of the subscribers?

Then you account for the other big platform which is Google Music... I don't
see a play for spotify here.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Spotify should be worried about the growth of Apple music - which is only
> available on iPhone's

Say what now?
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.android.music)

------
jordansmithnz
If there are any Apple Music engineers reading this: My wife and I changed our
Apple ID country/region a few weeks ago. Without warning, we both lost our
entire Apple Music library.

I’m a little surprised that a service with 40M subscribers doesn’t seem to
consider that users might do this.

~~~
thesauri
Interesting. When I changed my Apple ID region I couldn't do it without
canceling my subscription first. Just canceling wasn't enough though, as my
current subscription period wouldn't end until later. I had to contact
customer support to have them terminate my subscription prematurely to switch
regions immediately.

After switching regions I also switched back to Spotify and I haven't bothered
using it since. I just went back to check in the Apple Music after reading
this—surprise surprise, all my playlists and songs are gone too.

~~~
jordansmithnz
Yeah, we had to wait until our Apple Music subscription expired too.

In general the country switching experience seems pretty sub par: if you had
just purchased a year long app subscription (I believe some apps can offer
that), your options for changing country would either be to forfeit your
purchase by calling up to terminate the subscription, or wait an entire year
for it to expire...

------
jqbx_jason
This is great news IMO. Spotify's platform is leagues better than apple music.
Also I know they don't have the best track record w/ third party apps but
Spotify also offers the most comprehensive API when compared to the other
major streaming services. This lets people like me make apps[1] which (I
think) attract more subscribers and create a stronger network. That being said
I don't know if I would run out and buy the stock... there's still serious
competition and the music labels run their business like the mob.

[1][https://www.jqbx.fm](https://www.jqbx.fm)

~~~
scarface74
How is this such “great news”? Spotify is having a Dropbox issue - in the
grand scheme of things, their only reason for existing is just a tiny line
item to their major competitors - Apple, Google, and Amazon. They are a
feature not a product.

Revenue means nothing without profit.

[http://fortune.com/2018/05/30/spotify-ipo-
profit/](http://fortune.com/2018/05/30/spotify-ipo-profit/)

 _bit bullied. Despite steadily increasing paid subscribers (75 million and
counting) and revenue (about $1.36 billion last quarter), Spotify continues to
bleed. The $49 million or so that it lost in the first three months of 2018
wasn’t because the company can’t keep a tight rein on its own spending, but
because it can’t keep a rein on its suppliers. Yes, that’s right: As Spotify
grows, so do its royalty payouts to record labels and other music providers.
And those marginal costs are an anchor on the Stockholm company’s profit
potential_

~~~
jqbx_jason
Okay sure the full picture isn't all sunshine (I didn't say I'd buy the stock)
but it's not bad news either. With the lions share of the streaming market and
low churn rate I would expect they can negotiate some better deals (or
possibly get enough of an edge to raise prices).

~~~
scarface74
Why would the music industry negotiate? If Spotify tries to play hardball and
doesn’t agree with the terms of one of the three major record labels, they
lose access to the music. Neither Apple, Google, nor Amazon really care if
their music streaming service is profitable or barely break even, they are
using music streaming to sell other higher margin products.

Apple is still growing faster than Spotify and YouTube is a bigger brand.

If they try to raise prices - Apple Music and the YouTube offering starts to
look a lot more attractive - it’s hard to compete against the default.

~~~
jqbx_jason
With a large enough differential between customer #1 and customer #2 it
becomes a lot of cash to leave on the table if you don't renegotiate. But I
don't know the numbers and you're right to point out that everything could
potentially go wrong, but IMO it's not a sure thing and at least this report
is a step in the right direction not the wrong one.

------
quxbar
Since there's so much Spotify hate in here, I'd just like to say, the service
is so good it has changed my life. Specifically, my music library has grown in
a thousand new directions because I find it so incredibly easy to discover new
music. I think I would have stagnated long ago if it wasn't for Spotify's
features. I'm 6 years into my subscription and it just keeps offering me more
and more value. Maybe Apple Music is equally good? I haven't felt any need to
switch.

------
remir
I guess Spotify (or Deezer) is the better option since they aren't trying to
lock you in their ecosystem and they're available on every platforms,
including Linux.

Also, I think they nailed the UI, Spotify Connect is great (also works with
chromecast audio!) and Discover weekly is amazing.

~~~
mekkkkkk
What blows my mind is that you cannot connect to a Chromecast from the desktop
client. Apparently there is no official desktop SDK for Google Cast (outside
of Chrome). So perhaps _that_ is what really blows my mind. Errhm.

~~~
yojex
You can actually get the desktop client connected to your Chromecast in a
roundabout way. What I do is connect to my Chromecast from the Spotify app on
my iPhone, and then the option will appear in the desktop client to connect. I
have no idea why you have to channel through the phone first, but it works
perfectly from desktop to Chromecast once it's connected.

------
djb_hackernews
I'm a paying customer but can anyone tell me why shuffle play is the default?
If i'm listening to an album I typically want to listen to it from start to
finish and the extra clicks to do that are annoying. But there must be a
reason it is designed like that?

~~~
spicyj
Do you mean the big green button? You can usually click the first track to
start playing in order.

------
nacho2sweet
All apple music did was ruin the interface for my own mp3's on my iPhone and
push me to Spotify completely.

Apple thought pop-stars and EDM chart toppers and anyone associated with BEATS
has good taste and to promote the playlists. It is top40 shlock.

~~~
djrogers
> Apple thought pop-stars and EDM chart toppers and anyone associated with
> BEATS has good taste and to promote the playlists. It is top40 shlock.

Apple music has over 45 million tracks, so if what you meant to say was
top40Million, then yeah - you're close.

If however you really think Apple Music only has top 40 type music in it,
you're waaaay off base. They even have curated playlists for super-esoteric
genres, and do a great job keeping those playlists updated.

Yes, if you only looked at a couple of "A-List" playlists, then you'd see top
40 type stuff - but that's the point of those playlists.

------
ibdf
I've been using spotify for a few years now. I don't mind paying for premium
given the amount of music available. Anything to skip ads.

However I agree with other comments here, Spotify simply does not listen to
their customers. Their community ideas are worthless as nothing there ever
comes to fruition, and yet we know they are working on their Apps as they
continue to receive UI updates.

------
wmblaettler
FTA: Spotify operating at a $460m loss up from $220m a year ago...

------
mk89
There is also deezer.com.

I don't know if the amount of tracks is the same, however, the service is
fantastic. The app is super easy to use, and the Flow they provide (a sort of
randomized playlist based on your likes) is great.

~~~
canuckintime
Deezer also aportions each individual's payments directly to the artists they
listen (unlike Apple Music, Spotify et al who distribute in aggregate to the
music labels)

------
drdaeman
Good for them. After some of my favorites were just gone (because license was
not renewed or something like that - no clue) I'd rather stick with having
files on my devices, like in old good days.

------
desireco42
Spotify is great, I couldn't care less about Apple Music, but you know what is
really awesome and I didn't see anyone mentioning it...

YOUTUBE !

Get on Premium so you don't have to listen to ads, and it is just amazing. I
paid initially so my kids would not be exposed to commercials, but I really
love it and most of the time it is the most convenient because it is always
there.

I marked few playlist I like for commute and roadtrips to be downloaded, so it
works offline.

~~~
genericid
> Get on Premium so you don't have to listen to ads

That's an ad blocker I haven't heard of yet.

------
tobyhinloopen
Last time I tried Apple Music I found it terrible... it messed with my
existing iTunes library and the damage could only be undone with restoring an
old backup that was done by copying my drive.

Never again I trust Apple Music application as long as it is the same app also
managing my "offline" music AND my iPhone sync. Like, wtf? 3 completely
different things in a single app? Why?

~~~
nfriedly
Hah, that reminds me of the first time I got an iPod - I let it spend a couple
of hours loading songs from my computer, and then a day or two later I tried
to add a single song from my dad's computer. When I hit "sync", it first
deleted everything on the iPod, and then added the one new song >_<

------
dja-io
I love Apple Music - the ability to control my music through Siri, add songs
to playlists via Siri, and I really have no problem finding what I'm looking
for in the catalog or via curated playlists. Also, my stations have become
pretty customized at this point, so I hardly ever have to hunt for music to
listen to.

------
whitepoplar
The one thing that frustrates me with both Apple Music and Spotify is the lack
of information density; it's really hard to use for people with large
libraries or who depend on extended album metadata. It's particularly
problematic for classical music.

------
habosa
I kind of think this is more impressive for Apple Music. Spotify had a massive
head start on streaming music, they basically invented the model that everyone
uses now.

If I worked at Apple and knew that I had half the subs of Spotify I'd be very
pleased with myself.

------
AcerbicZero
I've been using Google Play Music for years now, although it wasn't my only
music app until the Songza acquisition in ~2014, its now become the only thing
I listen to, except for the occasional XM radio in the car when I'm bored. The
YouTube Red thing seemed useless at first, but I've found myself consuming
more YouTube content these days, and while I wouldn't pay for it on its own,
as an add on feature its pretty useful.

At this point there is no way I'd go back to listening to music with ads in
it, and unless google ruins it, I don't see any reason to even try to switch.

~~~
sandyarmstrong
I'm confused by your last sentence. What music service can you pay for that
has ads in it?

Whether you pay for Spotify or Apple Music, there are no ads in your music.

~~~
ClassyJacket
This is wrong. There are ads in Spotify premium, in the UI. There was a
gigantic obnoxious one a few weeks ago for an artist starting with D and
ending with E.

~~~
sandyarmstrong
See my wording and parent's wording. We were very clearly discussing audio ads
that interrupt music.

Of course there are ads in Spotify. Music itself is full of advertisements,
too. That's a different problem, though.

------
fencepost
I'm only a very casual free user of Spotify, but the thing that has stuck with
me is that if I start it off playing from an album and just let it continue on
from there eventually it almost always ends up in very strange places with me
looking up and saying "What the H am I listening to?"

I'm also surprised that out of > 100 comments there's barely a mention of
Pandora - has it truly fallen so low?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Pandora has never been good if you listen to things that aren't so popular. I
tried it years ago, and eventually got frustrated at their sheer lack of
variety. It also wasn't available for some folks I knew. I considered re-
checking them to see if there was improvement. But alas, I had switched
countries and it simply wasn't available.

Pandora was never a robust enough service, so it is unsurprising that no one
mentions it.

------
wufufufu
If Apple Music had as many curated playlists as Spotify, I'd be in. And almost
solely for the Siri integration.

~~~
rwc
Don't know how the two compare, but my experience is there are countless
seemingly impossible to discover curated playlists in Apple Music. This helps:
[http://mixing.io/](http://mixing.io/)

~~~
mi100hael
Thanks for the link. Discoverability has been my biggest complaint with Apple
Music so far.

------
earenndil
I'm surprised apple music is that big! Most of my peers have iphones, yet 95%
of them use spotify.

------
farnulfo
Still no lyrics ! :-(

------
tnolet
Spotify conquered the living room.

I recently canceled my Netflix subscription. I was an early and long time
Soundcloud paid user. Also canceled that this year.

Somehow Spotify keeps me hooked. The Discover Weekly is great. Listening to
some Paul Simon on the Bose Bluetooth speaker thing as I type this.

------
eddieh
The only thing keeping me with Spotify is last.fm integration.

~~~
eddyg
Eavescrob[1] does a great job for me... as long as the tracks you want
scrobbled are in your library...

[1] [http://wil.dog/eavescrob/](http://wil.dog/eavescrob/)

------
electriclove
Are there any numbers for Google Play Music subscribers? I've been a user of
that for several years and I'm curious to see how they compare.

------
greggarious
I tried Spotify once but it was too complex for my tastes... I liked Pandora's
simplicity of training a station and being able to be hands off.

~~~
crazygringo
Spotify has a "radio" functionality that is very similar to Pandora's... but
vastly more flexible, and with a seemingly far greater selection of tracks to
draw from.

~~~
djrogers
When I was a Spotify customer, every 'radio' station I started eventually
wound up playing crass, offensive, and angry shout-rap, filled with words your
drunk uncle never even heard in the Navy. It was very disturbing, and
highlighted one of their biggest flaws - no way to specifiy 'clean' music
only.

Say what you will about artistic integrity etc, but if you're listening to
music with a 5 year old in the house and someone starts dropping n-bombs,
c-bombs, m-f etc and you have no way to prevent that, it's a problem.

~~~
crazygringo
Wow, that is pretty shocking they don't have an option to disable that. And
looking at the forums, it's been requested for years. Crazy.

------
fullshark
How do they get profitable? Won't the big three music publishers just squeeze
their margins cause they can?

~~~
notyourwork
My understanding is they have started trying to become publisher as well
similar to what Netflix is doing. Perhaps remove the middle man and have
content which can be exclusive on Spotify or content they can license to
others.

~~~
adventured
That's an interesting problem, because Netflix is unable to achieve any sense
of real profitability in their model either.

Netflix is pretending to be profitable, while they bury themselves massively
in debt to pay for content (ie they can't properly fund business expansion out
of operations after 20 years). A particularly inherently unsustainable model
when you've got single digit margins.

Here's the Netflix balance sheet the last four years:

2014: -$914m; 2015: -$2.08b; 2016: -$4.6b; 2017: -$6.7b; 1Q18: -$7.3b

They took on on roughly $5.7b in new debt in three years, at an accelerating
clip, versus combined earnings of $850m. While they might be able to sustain
that for some time, it's a dead-end model: eventually the whole stacking
scheme gives out, subscriber growth tails off (plausibly beginning now), and
you've got a mountain of debt that costs you ever larger sums of interest and
limits your ability to maneuver. Right now their annual interest costs are
eating the equivalent of a full quarter of their profits. They'll more than
double their debt in the next few years by necessity to keep up the content
spending, and their interest costs will ballon to a billion dollars per year.

~~~
macspoofing
Netflix needs to become HBO, i.e. a content creator. And it's clear as day
they are trying to be that. It's smart and they need to do that to survive, to
the point where they are willing to debt-finance this. If they don't do that,
publishers will extract every little bit of profitability from them.

------
alkonaut
Granted I’m from Sweden where Apple probably never even properly tried
marketing to displace Spotify, but I was still surprised to learn Apple even
_had_ a streaming music service. I had heard the name Apple Music but just
assumed it was a new name for buying songs on iTunes. Why is their service
having such a low profile? Is it for example that it isn’t yet launched in all
countries?

~~~
alienreborn
No, It seems like Apple Music's initial focus is mostly on US customer base
although its available in nearly double the number of countries(113) than
Spotify(59). It recently crossed Spotify in no. of paying customers in US.

[https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/06/apple-music-more-us-
subs...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/06/apple-music-more-us-subscribers-
than-spotify/)

------
notadoc
Spotify is a vastly superior service in my opinion.

