
Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers - neilpeel
http://www.thenordicweb.com/dealflow/spotify-have-reached-40-million-paying-subscribers
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bearcobra
I wonder how many of these 40M users are like me and are searching for other
options. I'm using Spotify because of an intro offer, and my Google Play
account exists almost solely for the discount on other content. Both have
enough annoying design quirks that I've also tried Tidal and Apple Music, but
their recommendation engines left me wanting more. Based on my love of Rdio,
I'm really hoping Pandora's rumored new streaming service becomes a viable
alternative.

~~~
solaxun
I know it's easy for me to be an armchair quarterback but I have to say it.
Although I am currently and somewhat reluctantly paying for it (for now),
Spotify's UI makes me want to strangle someone every time I use it. I can
never remember exactly what ridiculous combination of screens I need to cycle
through in order to get where I want to go. It feels like I'm trying to enter
a fucking launch code for a nuclear submarine just to play a damn song. God
forbid I'm running and hit the wrong screen, then I have to stop, fiddle for 3
minutes, and start again.

Also the stations are incredibly shallow. If you pick a station on Pandora,
you will have 100+ songs that are generally well selected in my experience. If
you pick one on Spotify, you get maybe 20-30 songs.

The one major benefit to Spotify is that you can pick any song you want,
you're not forced into stations. However, if you pick a genre, you're likely
to be inundated with shitty cover bands that you have to painfully sift
through in order to find the actual playlist your looking for, because '70's
hits' could be anything from Led Zepplin to your next door neighbours cover
band.

TLDR - incredibly over complicated UI, shallow stations, too much spam music.

~~~
dandr01d
Google Play Music has the most frustrating UI as well. It takes 4 taps to
start playing the playlist I want to every time (most recently added).

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santialbo
I hope they add lyrics again. They ended their partnership with musixmatch a
few months ago and haven't offered an alternative yet.

~~~
dorianm
They had Spotify apps, the two most popular were lyrics apps. Then they
removed the apps and added lyrics inside Spotify, and now there is no more
lyrics at all.

Obviously that's a very demanded feature so they must have a strong reason not
to have it anymore (legal issues probably).

I personally used it all the times for improvised karaokes so I'm very upset
to not have lyrics on demand anymore.

~~~
davidsawyer
They still have Behind the Lyrics for some songs on the mobile app, which
shows a mix of lyrics and info about the song and artist.

~~~
dorianm
I can't make it appear on my app (iOS) and the help link [1] shows that's it's
enabling comments from Genius about the lyrics, so not the actual lyrics
synced.

[1]:
[https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/beh...](https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/behind-
the-lyrics/)

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hedora
I'm happy their subscriber counts are up, but I've noticed a steep negative
trend their library selection in the last month. I poked around a bit for more
info. All I could find were complaints that they don't publish this
information anymore.

Does anyone know how to see if my anectdote is a trend?

Perhaps they lost some contracts with major labels, or perhaps there is a way
to probe their search API to estimate their library size.

~~~
matt4077
Maybe the golden age* of music subscription services is ending, following in
the footsteps of these services for video:

\- A startup negotiates contracts with most/all content providers

\- said startup becomes a sensation

\- Google, Apple & Amazon enter the market, signing similar deals

\- Content providers realize the value of their material and negotiations
become more complicated

\- The services want need differentiation and it can't be price because they
all have more or less the same lower bound of licensing costs

\- The startup's contracts are up for renewal. They don't have the financial
background of Apple/Google/Amazon and loose a few contracts

\- There are now 5-10 services and each one has some exclusive content,
overlap in the libraries keeps shrinking

\- I go back to bit torrent because 10$/mo is already more per year than I
paid for music in the first 25 years of my life total.

* length: about 3 years or as it's commonly called "A good Netflix"

~~~
UlyssesSKrunk
I would say the golden age never even started. I've stuck with torrenting over
streaming with things like spotify because it's the only way I can guarantee
that I will hear things that I like. Sure it takes a bit more planning, but
for higher quality and customization I think it's more than worth it.

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te_chris
Good on them. Now can their stupid, over-zealous designers stop messing with
the product by removing actually useful features such as "Most Played"
filtering of your library, etc etc.

~~~
reitanqild
And can they sooner or later stop recommending vocal trance to me?

If there was any machine learning at all going on at that place it should have
picked out that peculiarity by now.

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helthanatos
Spotify has achieved what no normal entity could. Go them for having a
relatively decent free to play with, I'm assuming, a good pay to play model as
well.

~~~
JTon
In Canada, one of the major wireless providers offers Spotify premium accounts
bundled in with mid and high tier data lines (i.e. 2 years of Spotify premium
"for free"). So I wonder what other providers around the world do this, and
how many of the 40mm are part of this group.

~~~
nicolas_t
I have accounts on both Deezer and Spotify because of bundled accounts on
wireless providers. So far I prefer Spotify but only because of the Discover
Weekly feature.

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bogomipz
Between March(they announced 30 million) and now - roughly 6 months later they
added 10 million new paid subscribers? How is that even possible? That would
average out to 1.6 million new subscribers a month.

Reference:
[http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-3...](http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-30-million-
subscribers-apple-music-11-million-subscribers)

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Coincoin
They still haven't redownloaded their UMG library to fix the horrendous
watermark issue. Everything from UMG before 2013 is very low quality due to a
bug with their watermarking technology at the time. This includes all the best
classical music labels.

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ArtDev
I pay for Spotify but it sucks because:

1) I can't play it on multiple devices at the same time like every other
service I subscribe to (Netflix, Hbo, Hulu). If I ever upgrade to a"family"
account, I have to make new accounts for each person (including my kids).

2) The UI sucks. I can never find the queue list, so I never know what is
playing next. Adding items to a playlist is should be easier.

3) The web app is really broken. You have to install the Spotify software to
use the service.

4) Offline playlists randomly decide they have not been downloaded yet.

5) Nothing by the Beatles. Like every other music service, the only way is to
rip your old CDs or torrent them.

One feature I do like, listening to local music files on the Spotify software.
Like, for example, the Beatles.

I really wish Grooveshark was still around!

[edit] Now that I read that Spotify (and similar companies) are actually
losing money I realize that I shouldn't be so hard on them.

~~~
vel0city
The Beatles are available on Spotify, have been for several months.

[https://open.spotify.com/special/thebeatles](https://open.spotify.com/special/thebeatles)

It make a lot of headlines when it happened.
[http://www.recode.net/2015/12/22/11621674/the-beatles-are-
co...](http://www.recode.net/2015/12/22/11621674/the-beatles-are-coming-to-
apple-music-spotify-and-everywhere-else-on)

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sc90
How many of these were gained via discount promotions?

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bogomipz
Does anyone know what percentage 40 million is of their total subscribers?
From what I know thats the number they need/want to see growing.

~~~
gtirloni
They have north of 100mi users in total.

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exmuslim
So that's like ~$400M of income per month? Their expenses are mostly royalties
and those are probably spare change compared to that income. Not bad!

~~~
nerdponx
Maybe now they can start building basic quality of life features like offline
Last.FM scrobbling that have been in demand for 4+ years!

~~~
bpicolo
They already have offline for anybody with premium. It's a slider on any
playlist to download it to disk.

Though I may misunderstand what you're asking for, as I don't quite get the
Last.FM comment.

~~~
gaadd33
He's asking to have offline plays saved and submitted to Last.FM when you go
back online vs attempting to send them to Last.FM even when offline

