Spotify re-invented the radio

ngl, I was expecting to enjoy roasting in downvote hell, so this has been a pleasant surprise haha.

I think a lot this stuff winds up people taking the bad feeling of paying for a thing, which is course completely normal, and twisting it into them somehow being personally wronged rather than simply accepting that yeah, spending money feels bad.

That said, if there is an obvious bad guy in this story, it's pretty clearly the labels, and given how unimportant radio and traditional music marketing is becoming, I would love to see more and more artists operate independently or with small labels and see the oligopoly of the Big 3 fall apart. They may have been somewhat necessary 80 years ago, but nowadays, they simply don't provide anywhere near as much value as they suck up.

Some subscriptions make sense for the consumer, or at least justifiable.

IMO a music service like Spotify is absolutely one of them.

Turning heated seats in a subscription? Burn in hell.

its not the subscription service that's bad its the implementation of the subscription services that suck and you 100% should pirate and adblock every piece of media you consume unless its directly profiting a small creator otherwise youre setting a precedent that 18 subscriptions should be required for me to follow a tv show.

pirating was dying down in popularity until this rise of the current shitty corporate media garbage. money is the only thing that matters on this god given earth do you really think your money is better off in a corporations mega stock with a super small portion actually being given to a creator?

and if you say more things in life matter than money then go on without money, youll be completely unable to enjoy anything. solely off the basis of youll starve because low and behold we've monetized eating and drinking. two fundamental requirements of survival.

welcome to earth where ur either bombed by powerful people or youre blackmailed by the cost of living (designated by powerful people) enjoy your stay (or die the world doesnt actually care they just want your money, and dying is pretty lucrative for funeral homes anyways)

The difference is that music streaming services actually offer a better experience to most people compared to movie/tv show streaming services for example.

Choose whatever music streaming service you prefer and you get pretty much the same huge selection of songs across the board. You can pick based on features and user experience. With movies and tv shows, most content is exclusive to a single platform. So you have to keep adding/removing subscriptions unless you want to pay north of $100 a month to have all of them at the same time. Every streaming app has a different interface and different features, and some might not work on all your devices. Piracy isn't only cheaper in this case, but actually more convenient. It's the better product, even when you leave pricing out of the equation.

Sure, some people will always resort to piracy, but there's a direct correlation between the quality of service offered and the amount of piracy.

I can completely understand tv content piracy for convenience alone (and sure, it's cheaper/almost free, that's definitely a factor), but I never even thought about replacing music streaming with pirated content, because it's just super convenient.

This is a type of comment i hoped would die with reddit. They are fucking awful.

The amount of it would still be dramatically reduced. Those people who are making music solely for the love of it already exist today and people are perfectly welcome to listen to them; nothing is stopping them at all.

I think it's probably safe to say that the vast majority of music that is listened to today would not exist if the artists couldn't financially support themselves from it. Do you really disagree with that?

Making money through the art, not making art for the money

Thank you for calling this out. Also, art is not about volume. What does it matter if I can listen to 10,000 tracks that sound like bunk vs 10 tracks that touch the fabric of your being.

Agreed, I have Spotify premium for the convenience, but I have no illusions about where that money goes, which is why I go to concerts and buy vinyl records when possible.

I personally would never pay for music it it weren't for Spotify.

Yeah, Spotify has supposedly been working on a lossless option, but it's been in the works for years now. Don't have a clue what the hold-up is, especially given that other services have it already. Tidal and Apple Music have it already if it's something particularly important to you.

Supposedly they have a hifi service on the way that will offer lossless streaming, potentially pretty expensive though - https://www.techhive.com/article/790882/spotify-hifi-release-date-when-is-spotifys-lossless-tier-coming.html

You'll hate to hear what is currently happening with Bandcamp.

It's not at all a coincidence that this happened at the same time interest rates were rock bottom. Lyft has never had a profitable quarter, nor has Spotify. I think Uber has had a few, but they've also heavily struggled. Netflix does well, but no other video streaming service has been profitable. Disney+ has already started to dial back on production as a way to cut costs. Reddit has been around for a long time and isn't profitable.

Capitalism isn't actually as easy as a lot of people think it is. To make sense of this, you have to realize that in extremely low interest environment like we had, the primary business objective is not profit, but rather, growth. Especially in the tech world, you're trying to sell a story to investors that you're creating an entirely new market that you're poised to absolutely dominate, and that if they simply give you money now, rather than getting some profit in the short-term, they're going to wind up owning a lot of extremely valuable shares in the next Microsoft, or Netflix, or whatever. Debt is very cheap, and so tapping into that stream of investor money doesn't cost you much at all, and you can build some cool new thing that people like a lot. The problem comes when the chickens finally come home to roost, and the investors expect to get something for their money. That is currently happening, now that debt is much more expensive and investors are much less willing to take big risks, which means that those services that were living off of investment money now need to either establish that they can actually make the numbers work or perish.

Spotify, for instance, is sitting on nearly two billion dollars of debt. Now, they're not in the worst position, because for better or for worse, the labels need some streaming services because that's simply how people consume music today, so the labels will have to keep it alive on way or another. But it doesn't change the fact that the numbers need to add up eventually. Reviewing Spotify's sheets, they're not in a terrible position though. They lost $453 million in 2022, but they also spent $1.48 billion on research and development. They've been doing a lot of development on podcasts and ML-based recommendations, which is probably where a lot of that went, and the kinds of engineers that work at Spotify don't come very cheap at all.

Now, you'd probably say that they could simply not do that and content themselves with being a perfectly adequate music streaming service, but if they announce that they're doing that, it opens a huge opportunity for a competitor to go guns a' blazing to try to develop a bunch of flashy new features to steal customers. Additionally, the labels, and indeed musicians as well, don't want music to be cheap. They want it to be valuable and so desirable that people are willing to pay a decent amount for it. Musicians aren't exactly selfless saints either; no one really is. Plenty of artists, of all genres, could easily make their music completely free to access, play free concerts, and personally cover all associated costs with doing that. But they don't, because at the end of the day, everyone wants a slice of the pie.

Those days were built on the backs of venture capital. They were never sustainable. Now you're on the other end, and it's either deal with more ads and more restrictions, or pay up and get rid of all of that (or use something else).

I assure you, Spotify would love nothing more than to reduce the label share - it's not as if they love giving away almost all the money they make - but they also have next to no real leverage, since the labels have all the power here.

Again, Spotify loses money with every single free user. There may exist some balance point where they can actually reach financial stability by converting a large chunk of them into paying users, and I don't think can really blame them for doing what they can to achieve that.

That doesn't mean it doesn't suck to lose features you liked, but an individual not liking something doesn't make in immoral.

Fundamentally, no industry can survive on VC money forever, so there simply has to be some kind of crunch eventually, either by reducing the product, increasing the price, or both.

We as consumers are not obligated to ensure healthy profit margins for random megacorps

I mean, this is a nice sentiment in the abstract, but in actuality, we kind of are if we want the product to continue to exist. Spotify is not going to be able to operate at a loss forever, and while there is a discussion to be had about what level of profit is warranted, I don't think it's a particularly wild thing to say that the answer is at least non-negative profit.

If it isn’t economically viable, it shouldn’t exist.

What I genuinely don't understand is how you can simultaneously say that Spotify shouldn't exist if it's not economically viable, and at the same time, you'll also criticize them for any attempt to make it economically viable. If Spotify shouldn't offer the free tier because it's not viable, and you'll also attack them if they stopped offering it, what do you actually want them to do?

If it isn't economically viable, it shouldn't exist.

If you're claiming this as an axiom, I disagree. Public transit isn't economically viable. Homeless shelters and soup kitchens aren't economically viable. Increasingly in the modern world unbiased news isn't economically viable. If you're handicapped in some way you're probably not economically viable. Honestly the human race isn't really economically viable. Some things are objectively good and should exist at any price.

Now, I'm not under any delusion that Spotify is one of those things. Lol nope. But the statement on its own isn't really a defensible one, and I think only the most strident Randian libertarians would try.

If you're not claiming this as an axiom, and just saying that if Spotify in particular isn't economically viable it shouldn't exist, then I can probably get on board with that. But for my family's mental health, I think a service like Spotify should. Or the return of a plurality of online mp3 storefronts.

Happy to have made an impact on you!

But their service is great if you pay for premium. Which is fine in my book.

None of those options are new. It's how Spotify free always worked.

But if you bought the CD you actually owned something. Stop paying for the services and you have nothing if all you used was spotify/YouTube/pandora. I gave up on paying for streaming years ago and spend the same amount monthly on purchasing music. I get CDs, either new or used. I’ve amassed a collection and I don’t need Internet or monthly charges to play them.

You owned the music when you buy it. With multiple backups the risks of losing it it very minimal but with spotify or other streaming services, if you have to reduce your expenses you completely lose the access to the music till you pay again. Spotify always grey out songs too so even when you pay you may not have access to the some of the music you want to listen to

I feel you, the value from Spotify is enormous. I can sift through ten different bands in no time just because I decided that I want to look up a new genre that I may or may not be totally into by the end.

Kid: goes to school

Police: THAT'S ILLEGAL

I remember cause I would spend half my paycheck on music

Lmao

Surely you have a better explanation for why Spotify isn't giving you the full service for free.

Yeah don't use it if you don't want to, idc. But you might accept the thought that there are people that think the deal Spotify puts on the table is good.

Spotify is not profitable nor ever has been. It accrued $4B in additional debt last year. The business is subject to high royalty fees. As a competitor, I just leave free Spotify running all day on mute since they lose money from every subscriber. The royalties are the same whether they make money or not on the customer. It is wise of them to more aggressively convert people to paid plans, but I’m sure that their margins are razor thin.

Except what YT Premium does is easily doable with free tools.

YouTube is basically the same price as Spotify in my country (only 12 cents more actually), so even more bang for my buck, specially for family plans.

I'm currently in a three month trial due to the value (music streaming and ad free you tube), but coming from Pandora YT Music's radio algorithm sucks sooooo bad. One of my first plays was a foo fighters album and now all the stations I create have alt/grunge in them. It's making it really hard to consider staying.

Surprising to see any suggestions on here for YouTube Premium. I have been lucky enough to be on a family plan for years and it's honestly great. Sometimes, it's just easier not to deal with having to hack around things to make them usable.

I did not agree when I had both premium, I did not agree when I had YT light and Spotify premium, and I do not agree today.

Context: I only use YT for its main service; streaming video. I never tried YT music because I already had music streaming set up in a way that worked for me.

I need 48-bit 96kHz raw PWM otherwise my ears can't tolerate it. I can hear the difference in the waveforms.

if only they’d pay the musicians worth a shit<

afaik that's mainly the fault of the music labels, they charge quite good money, but they don't give it to the artists: https://blog.groover.co/en/tips/loud-clear-spotify-2/

In this case, it's a good thing that Spotify is an European and not an US company. Less incentive for enshittification. At the same time, the main reason they fuck over musicians so much is not so much Spotify but because of record labels and ads themselves. The record labels are the ones with the financial power, holding the copyrights. It's not that Spotify doesn't pay labels, they do, then in turn the labels keep most of the money and fuck over the artists. At the same time, the record labels came last to the streaming game. Blinded on the madness that was the Napster and peak P2P era, a war they lost, they didn't want to even sell digital copies. Many awards and labels didn't considered digital sales, legitimate sales. An many rogue artists sold or gave their digital albums for free to protest this. So they were always behind the curve. When Apple forced the labels to sit at the table for iTunes, they had no bargain leverage and were forced to accept shit terms in exchange for the hope that streaming would stop piracy. As a result, the tech giants got to keep most of the revenue bag and that's been the status quo ever since.

On the other hand, adverts don't pay. We tend to forget this because the likes of Google and Facebook are so massive. But the only reason they make any money is because of how massive they're. Adverts are a shit form of payment. Too expensive and no one wants to advertise with you, too cheap and you can't cover even the platform maintenance, it's a delicate balance. The result is you need millions of eyes to make any significant amount of money from an advert. There's a reason cable and open air TV has devolved into 15 minutes of advertisement per every 20 minutes of entertainment.

Spotify pays a fraction of a cent for every play. It takes 150 plays of a song to make a dollar from advertisement, and most of that dollar is gonna stay with the record label. This is significantly worse for indie and small up and coming artists. They simply can't make a living out of Spotify unless they are already big and have a massive following. This hurts the whole industry as it becomes harder and harder to nurture new talent.

The up side is that, although they are getting shafted by Spotify and the labels, a subscription play is worth more than a free play. Up to ten times more than a free user play. So your subscription does help pay artists more. The down side is that less than 25% of Spotify users pay for a subscription.

As someone who was once a small artist on Spotify, they do actually pay really well. Better than most places.

oh shit we need to boost the quarterly numbers

It's actually "oh shit we're lighting hundreds of millions on fire every quarter and not even making enough to come close to covering our costs"

To each their own. For me, I really like the Discover Weekly/Daily features to discover new music and I can’t see how I would ever “already have MP3s of all the good music” since that’s an ever changing set. Heck, I still have a ton of old mp3s I used to rip and/or download, but I haven’t listened to them in a while.

I would gladly pay for a similar AYCE movie subscription, but I refuse to sign up for a ton of different services and play the “which service is that movie on again?” game. Instead it’s a very different approach for me.

Deep.

Not sure how this is emptily shilling though. Am I paying for a service? Yes. Will I stop paying for a service if they start “refusing features?” Also yes.

Like I said in another comment, I was happy with Netflix back in the day, but now, nope. I have self hosted alternatives.

If a service is not worth it for me, I stop paying. Different people have that line at different levels, and for me, today’s Spotify Premium is worth it. In the future it may not be.

No need to be so hostile.

/Iam14andThisisDeep

I know, how dare someone like something? What a loser.

See how they down vote you.

Let me try to give a voice to the people down voting.

I hope that in the future they make a separate subscription model for each of these services.

$2/month I get the pause feature.

$5/week I get to control my own volume.

$4/month I don't have to loudly shout the brand name of the commercial to go back to my podcast.

This is how websites keep the lights on and you shouldn't be so ungrateful. We all know the pursuit of infinite profits means all these companies will continue to find more ways to squeeze customers. So I'll go down with this ship even though just 5 years ago it was crazy to see a 2 minute unskippable ad but now there's 3 of them and you're an asshole for wanting to remove that.

What would the internet look like if we got rid of how companies advertise to us.

In the future you should consider what you're saying before speaking out against enshitificatin and encroachment of mass marketing into our lives. It feeds. It never stops feeding and I am meat.

Also as a service I think it’s much more polished and better working than its competitors, even if it is shiftier for free users.

Deemix and Deezer is better. Spotify streams in low quality.

I would also like to know if you're PMing him

Why do you think they aren't paying for it?

Literally the opposite. Pirating takes time, effort, resources, and I lose access to "everything" - I only get what I take the time to download and store.

If a product I pay for provides a great service, I'll keep using it. It's worth the money for excellent user experience and convenience. It's when they keep upping the price while reducing the features or content that bothers me, and that's when I'd rather spend the time pirating than paying them for a worse product.

Pick someone who doesn't pay for a product to unleash your own corporate bootlicking whine on, because the person you actually replied to said:

I pay for Spotify

I switched from Spotify back to Bandcamp and Apple Music. Fuck Spotify.

I pay for a service. They jack the price. They remove features. They add restrictions. They punish paying users.

The result is that I stop all of the above and do what's best for me. Fuck them. They did this to themselves.

When Sirius bought Pandora and started bleeding subscribers, that closed doors for Spotify. No way to increase revenues but by increasing ads.

Oh yeah, I should check out my last.fm, I set up scrobbling forever ago and then just forgot about it.

I was making that comparison, yes

For a company worth over a trillion dollars, there's this unmistakable layer of couldn't-give-a-fuckness to all their products.

From a store that ships blatantly fake products, through the video service that misses subtitles on like half the movies, or looks like it's been transferred from a well used VHS, to the music service that used to let you listen to full albums, but on playing you notice that a bunch of tracks are missing from it.

And the race to the bottom ain't even over yet.

YMusic