Can’t even seek through songs.
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https://medium.com/brain-labs/why-spotify-struggles-to-make-money-from-music-streaming-ba940fc56ebd
For anyone wanting to rage at Spotify, I’d remind you that Spotify has never actually turned a profit. They lose money on every single paid user, and even more on free users. Tl;dr of the article (sorry for the account-wall) is that Spotify is contractually obligated to give around 70% of every dollar it makes to the labels, who then eat most of it and give a few crumbs to the artists. If you want to support artists, buy their merch, their physical albums, and go to their shows. If they’re independent, they may actually see some non-trivial revenue from streaming as well.
Spotify may also be contractually restricted in what level of access they can offer for free - licensing can be very messy - and they also do need to create enough incentive to actually make the paid tier worth it. Given that a month of access to essentially all music ever costs about as much as a single CD did back in the day, it feels like pretty incredible value to me, personally. Yes, you can of course always pirate if you want to deal with the hassle of that, but you should at least keep it in the back of your mind that, if everyone did that, we wouldn’t have any music to enjoy at all. If the cost of streaming or buying music is genuinely a burden, I wouldn’t blame you that much for pirating, but if you can afford it, I do think the value really is there, if only to avoid the sheer hassle of pirating and managing a local library. And if you really think that streaming is just uniquely corrupt and terrible, CDs haven’t gone anywhere.
But if you can easily afford to pay for music and you still refuse to, at least have the honesty to just admit that you want to get things for free and you don’t care about anyone involved in creating it getting paid for it, without dressing it up as some kind of morally righteous anti-capitalist crusade. It’s normal to be annoyed about having to pay for things; we all are, and we all want to get things for free. Just admit that instead of pretending your true motivation is anything deeper.
Holy shit, an actually reasonable take on Lemmy regarding subscription services. I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was reading and was waiting for the “LOL, JK! Pirate everything, they don’t deserve my money and fuck every ad and paid service ine the universe.”
Thank you!
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.
For sure. Subscriptions have to have some sort of value add, and in a world where I was king they’d be illegal otherwise. Spotify: songs you don’t own are being delivered to you. Value add. Dropbox: storage you don’t own is being provided to you. Value add. BMW’s heated seat subscription: you already own the heaters, the controls, the vehicle, and are paying for the battery that energizes those heaters and the gasoline that charges the battery. No value add. That’s just rent-seeking.
And speaking of rent…
I would also even say that a show/movie subscription makes sense. Except all of the services have already preenshittified themselves to the point where it’s literally more convient to just pirate everything.
So far spotify hasn’t done that so I’ll continue happily paying for spotify even though I’m a filthy pirate. Hell, spotify could double in price and I would still be perfectly happy with the service I’m getting.
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.
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This is a type of comment i hoped would die with reddit. They are fucking awful.
Yes, you can of course always pirate if you want to deal with the hassle of that, but you should at least keep it in the back of your mind that, if everyone did that, we wouldn’t have any music to enjoy at all.
This is bunk. If people pirated the record labels out of business we would have less music sure, but there will always be people who make music for the love of the craft, rather than just to line an executive’s pocket.
I’m all for directly supporting artists (and I buy albums and merch directly from the band wherever possible), but let’s not pretend like the people pulling the strings aren’t also responsible for the shitty situation they’re in.
Fuck the recording industry and how they treat artists. And I say that as a premium streaming service customer.
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?
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?
Of course not, and I clearly called out that there would be less music if there wasn’t an monetary incentive to do so. But at the same time, record industry titans falling would leave a massive vacuum that would be filled by more independent artists and labels. In the end, there would be less music overall, but there would still be some way for artists to get their cut.
Industry titans aren’t music, they’re merely the middlemen who craft what they think the public wants to hear and leech money from artists. Them falling would be a boon to the smaller and more niche acts who don’t get the chance to explode because they don’t have the weight of a major label to push them into the spotlight.
Making money through the art, not making art for the money
If you still have to work a full time job to live, that’s a lot less time available to create art. You sound like you’d expect artistic friends to give you a discount on their work “to get their name out there”
It’s a quote from a rap song.
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.
But how do you find those 10 if you don’t listen to 10000?
Also, what if you genuinely love a lot of music? We do exist.
I would feel drastically unfulfilled music-wise, if I only had around 10 songs to choose from. I listen to music way too often for that. I would absolutely start to get bored of the same songs after a bit. That’s only about one album’s worth.
For me personally, using a music subscription service just makes sense right now. I am very busy, so I don’t have time to pirate everything anymore. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do it again if push came to shove, but I’m not at that point.
I like that I don’t have to worry about things being hidden in the files. I like that I don’t have to worry about suspicious websites. I like that almost everything that I want to listen to is right there, in the same place. I like that it comes with a music player. It might not be the absolute best sound quality out there, but I also don’t have to sort through a ton of apps to find an app that works.
You take me too literally. Just as there is not only 10000 songs there would be more than 10 songs that do it for ya. So that’s not even a concern.
I didn’t take it literally lol. I was just stating my experience in response to someone else’s comment. If I see “1000” and “10” in the parent comment, I’m probably going to use “1000” and “10”. It would feel weird if I threw in random new numbers, I guess.
To me, all of this is more of a “you do you” thing. I’m sorry if I made it seem like I was angry or upset with you. I actually think that it’s cool that both are options, honestly. Freedom of choice, and all that.
I didn’t think you were angry anything. I just wanted to say in proportion there would still be tons of music to consume. I’m similar, I will break into a new genre even when everything starts sounding stale… except, I know of the hundreds of songs I listen to there is only so much time in the day to find new music and I go back to the stuff that really hit me.
The ideas is you can literally create thousands, hundreds, millions of songs but if the people churning them out are no talent hacks you may never find 10 songs that move you. If anything you are helping my argument.
But I first need to be able to listen to a shitload of songs to identify the ones I want to hear over and over. Without streaming services, I would be heavily restricted regarding discoverability.
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.
we have a family subscription (12€/mo.?) in our household, and i would probably not go back to pirating music anytime soon. they offer genuinely great features and from your post, they don’t seem to be the bad guy here. anyway, if it’s not shutting down in the next couple of months, i’ll keep using it. but they do neet to get some FLACs onto there soon.
if there existed something like spotify for video streaming, i probably wouldn’t even pirate movies right now.
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
These aren’t the only options. I’ve gotten into Bandcamp and it’s great because I can listen to an album multiple times before deciding if I want to buy it. Then when I do, I get a DRM-free FLAC copy to keep forever, and a much larger portion of money goes to the artist.
Sure it doesn’t have the extreme catalog of Spotify or things like social playlists. It’s very album-based (which I like personally) and takes a little more effort to choose what you listen to. But I’ve had no difficulty discovering new artists and great tunes.
Of course the company has problems too. The new buyer just laid off half the staff and says they won’t recognize the union, so we’ll see how it fares. But even if it goes under, I keep the music I bought.
You’ll hate to hear what is currently happening with Bandcamp.
“This one time at band camp…”
Can you elaborate? I can find articles that say there have been layoffs but what does that mean for the platform and how it supports the artists? Is it basically dead and not worth using anymore? I want the large majority of my money to go to the artist not the label or platform shareholders, is there something similar to bandcamp in that regard? Don’t suggest physical media please a lot of artist either don’t make any or are extremely difficult to find and buy.
They were bought last year by epic games. Now they were sold to songtradr, probably because it wasn’t profitable enough for EPiC. As part of that more than half the people were let go.
They’ll want their money’s worth, so prices fo up, or in this case the percentage cut. My bet is also the enshitification is starting soon. For now it’s fine, the future, probably not. But that’s just my guess.
As for alternatives, I’ve got none.
I seriously do not believe that companies running major online services continuously for over a decade have not made a profit. This must be Hollywood accounting.
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.
So they would rather take in more debt at an unfavorable time than to maintain a profitable leading business or even to limit research investment to a sustainable level? That really makes it sound like being unprofitable is a choice rather than an inevitable reckoning with a fundamental unsustainability of the business.
Yet ultimately they make up for those excesses by squeezing the customers more.
If investors, knowing all that you do for this long, continue to approve this approach, then it seems like it’s itself a mechanism to try to extract more out of a market that could have been stable. In which case referring to it as an inevitability to be blamed on customers who aren’t really paying its worth doesn’t seem quite accurate. After all, if they were, the investors would be seeking to expand in some manner, right? Which means these businesses aren’t allowed to simply be profitable, and customers will always be on the hook for that.
But still they can’t be quite so unprofitable to be unsustainable or they would just fall apart. If hollow hype was enough to keep investors in, we wouldn’t see tech fads come and go so quickly. Seems to me that most tech companies don’t get to survive their “unprofitability” for so long.
That really makes it sound like being unprofitable is a choice rather than an inevitable reckoning with a fundamental unsustainability of the business.
Yeah, for a while it is a choice. Finding an audience, finding a customer base, finding product/market fit, all of these things take time. But after a while that choice gets taken away. If Spotify doesn’t start making money soon, its investors probably won’t stick around much longer.
Seems to me that most tech companies don’t get to survive their “unprofitability” for so long.
A massive subscriber number absolves a lot of sins. Not unprofitability, though; at least not for very long. Hence
.
It’s still not a good justification for making the free version completely useless. Those limitations are just ridiculous; I miss the days where paying for a product only meant getting rid of ads and gaining some exclusive features. Maybe they should also reduce the label share instead of always making the customers pay more. I refuse to pay a subscription for non-trivial things like music; they can still make money off me with ads when I use the free version. They can increase their profits with other features like they are already doing by allowing people to buy merch from Spotify.
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 pay for albums i can afford by buying them and pirate the rest
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.
I doubt major labels can live without Spotify as much as Spotify need major labels. They can push users to pay for Spotify by adding more cool features for payed users instead of removing fundamental features of the free version. Forcing people to pay is never the right solution
The labels could murder Spotify in a day if they decided to simply stop offering them licenses and went exclusive with Apple, Amazon, Tidal, or anyone else.
The labels of course do get quite a lot of money from Spotify so they don’t have much of a reason to do that, but again, they really are the ones that hold the cards.
This is business. The only right solution is the one that gets them closer to financial stability. They have been developing features for the paid tier and have been exploring other revenue streams (hence the deep dive into podcasts), but ultimately, they have absolutely zero obligation to give away content for free.
Ok, forget about reducing the labels share. I think the other points i made about finding new ways to generate more profits are still valid and better than making the free version almost useless. If spotify wasn’t profiting from free users too they would shut down the free version completely
Spotify isn’t profiting at all; that’s the entire problem.
It’s banking on the hope that offering a limited free tier will encourage some amount of users to become paid subscribers, while offsetting the cost of operating that at least a little bit by serving ads. It’s unfortunate that you can’t make sufficient revenue by just operating a free tier that’s truly sufficient, but those numbers quite clearly do not work.
I mean, are you saying that you would be complaining less if Spotify simply killed the free tier? I rather doubt that.
You said that spotify isn’t profiting at all then explained how they profit a bit for it. I’m sure they would make more profits by finding alternative way to make money like artist subscriptions than from pushing people to subscribe by making the free version almost useless and yes I would complain less if Spotify killed the free version. I only use spotify on desktop to support artists by playing a playlist of artists I want to support on repeat with almost inaudible volume. All music I really listen to is locally either from music i bought or pirated music
I definitely did NOT post a comment, read this comment, then delete my comment for feeling foolish.
Jk i did.
Great take 12/10
I used to not mind paying for Netflix because it was better than trying to pirate things. That has changed 😅. It’s still easier to pay for spotify premium than try to pirate music. However, I would be cautious as they may try to make additional changes to the premium tier (price hikes without actual useful additional features) that would make it not worth it. Looking at the year in review that spotify does every year, and I listen to a TON of spotify between work and personal use I probably listen to 12+ hours a day so it would take a lot for me to ditch it but not impossible.
This is ridiculous. Spotify has been effectively doing dumping as an economic policy, and now that they have a sizeable portion of the market share, they’re turning to enshittification to make a profit. I see nothing defensible in that. The fact that they can’t turn a profit means that they’re trying to drive out competitors with less VC money.
We as consumers are not obligated to ensure healthy profit margins for random megacorps, and especially not ones engaged in anti-competitive behaviour, and it’s embarrassing to defend that. I’ve never used Spotify and I never will, but the idea that they lose money on every user tempts me. I second the other guy in the comments: If it isn’t economically viable, it shouldn’t exist. It’s just wannabe monopolism otherwise
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?
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
Except what made the product attractive to the consumer are the very things making it unprofitable. Minimal ads, unlimited streaming of any and all music you want. Without that might as well stick to terrestrial radio, at least that doesn’t use up your mobile data.
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?
The point you dismissed as a “nice sentiment in abstract” applies here: it’s completely irrelevant to the consumer. If Spotify dies we will just go to Apple/Amazon/Youtube Music, and if they all die that’s then iTunes and MP3s get to make a comeback.
Spotify’s profitability is Spotify’s problem, no-one else’s.
Yes we’ll all go back to those services and be worse off for it. The reality is, nobody outside of this congregation of websites wants to go back to downloading mp3s. Truthfully, most people on here don’t either. I have a TB SD card that’s over half full with flacs and I still use Spotify because the features it has are more convenient than setting all of that up myself, let alone trying to pirate older music that’s relatively obscure. You ever felt what it’s like to sit on 6 different torrents for the same album for 2 weeks with no seeds?
I was a young child during the napster days, and by the time my parents had anything better than dial-up iTunes had already taken off.
Maybe I’m less into music than most people, maybe most are music enthusiasts who actually take full advantage of all the music, all the time, for a low monthly rate thing but i mostly listen to the same small handful of artists with only the occasional breakout towards newer things. If Spotify and YouTube Music were both to die all I’d have to do is spend a larger amount upfront but then I’d be back to pretty much the status quo, and without the monthly bill. So for me any sort of significant changes in price or quality of service completely negate the sole reason I bother with music streaming and that is convenience and cost.
There’s a lot to the features that Spotify provides. First, there’s the social side: collaborative playlists, “jam sessions” that let your friends add songs to the queue, Spotify wrapped, etc.; then there’s the functionality side: I can play a song on my laptop and pick up right where I left off on my phone, or even switch to my phone while it’s still playing, the recommendations are great and, increasingly, people are turning to Spotify-curated playlists rather than making their own or selecting songs individually. All of those are things you can’t replicate easily outside of Spotify, with the exception of recommendations. I’m not saying you should use Spotify, but if Spotify and its competitors just disappeared, a lot of people’s lives would be worse for it
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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.
Who would have thought that good old dumping at a large scale and inadequate economic regulation would lead to companies basically “starving” themselves in a Mexican standoff?
And it’s not just Spotify it’s a major chunk of the tech companies, because no one learned anything from the dotcom crash.
As a pirate, I approve of this take.
Yeah this isn’t Spotify’s fault really. It’s a cringe over prostitution of the industry with increased server cost, record studios asking more in premiums, and growing pains from increased salaries. It’s unfortunate we can’t ever just let something exist for the sake of general good without the greedy asking for their take when it becomes popular.
Spotify thanks you for defending our platform and more importantly the investment portfolios of our shareholders. Share this email for one free month of spotify premium.
based take
But if you can easily afford to pay for music and you still refuse to, at least have the honesty to just admit that you want to get things for free
Of course I just want things for free
Yes, you can of course always pirate if you want to deal with the hassle of that, but you should at least keep it in the back of your mind that, if everyone did that, we wouldn’t have any music to enjoy at all.
That is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever read.
Happy to have made an impact on you!
This is such a lame excuse. If the company never turned a profit - they shouldn’t exist anymore. Not shittify their service till nobody uses it.
But their service is great if you pay for premium. Which is fine in my book.
A hacked client on the free tier is also a decent experience.
This month’s expenses:-
- Concert tickets: $350
- Vinyl records: $100
- Pirating Spotify: $0
I think I’m winning.
The point is they haven’t turned a profit even with people having premium. So what’s the reason for them to exist
This is the case with a lot of companies. Facebook didn’t turn a profit for 10 years or something that sounds equally crazy.
That’s more or less the problem (one of many problems I suppose). Companies seem to think it’s a good business model to burn money collecting a user base and then turn all their free users into paying users down the line.
Think drug dealers. They wanna be that.
The analogy to a drug dealer is on point. They’re relying on users being hooked on their dopamine outlet.
I’m still waiting on porn to pull the rug and take away my good times
it’s like this to eliminate competition, any alternative has to fund marketing costs + unsustainable pricing, while Spotify will be running their ponzi scheme, effectively leveraging their market position.
I’m absolutely not defending Spotify or any other capitalist entity, but profit by no means constitutes a reason to exist. I know plenty of people who have never turned a profit and in fact accrued debt who are far more valuable than any executive at Spotify.
I just don’t give a shit if Spotify or any major labels exist. I buy records and merch from independent labels run by people that actually have a soul.
Don’t use it if you don’t like it.
Hurr durr can’t criticize cause I like it hurr durr
None of those options are new. It’s how Spotify free always worked.
Well, if you don’t pay with money, you’re paying with your attention. Do you think they create this huge service just for funsies?
Tbf, out of all media streaming services across movies, series, and music, Spotify has the highes bang-for-your-buck. It’s still like Netflix at that time when there was only Netflix and you could watch almost everything on one platform. I still buy records that I like on physical media like vinyl, but Spotify is such a great deal for convenient listening to all music out there.
Man these people forget the days when a month of Spotify would afford you 1 CD. I remember cause I would spend half my paycheck on music. I’m just sitting here happy for services like Spotify and YouTube in my life. I remember a time when music and information was much harder to obtain (even illegally).
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.
But I don’t want to own it. I don’t want to amass a collection of CDs taking up space somewhere. Been there, done that. I have a large collection of ripped mp3s from CDs I bought in the 90s and early 2000s (I’ve long since disposed of the physical media). I haven’t clicked on a single one of them in years, I just keep them for nostalgia sake and because they take relatively little space.
I just occasionally want to listen to music sans commercials or annoying DJs wasting my time. For the cost of 1 CD a month my entire family can listen to almost anything they desire, at any time, without hassles (on Pandora in our case but I assume the economics are similar).
Same thing with movies, honestly. I watch them once and move on. There’s a small handful I like enough to rewatch and I do own those.
I get the whole, we don’t own anything anymore, argument and I mostly agree with it (see my massive Steam library). I just want both options to be viable. Streaming for ephemeral entertainment and actual ownership for the things I choose to keep.
We all have our preferences and I enjoy the quantity of music I can get in a heartbeat. It really sucked when you were 16 and spent $15 on a CD that sucked because there was no way to hear it ahead of time.
My rule was always “buy it if there are at least 3 songs I know & like”. Only really had a few disappoint. I used to hang out at used CD stores though. I got so many for $2.50 or $5. Even a few gems for $1.
Valid point, but commuting with my turntable to listen to my sick vinyls on the go is a pain in the ass. Also moving sucks ass when you have a metric fuckton of sensitive vinyl to move. Owning stuff also has its downsides. Also no way I’m digitizing my vinyls and cutting them and shit to listen to them on the go, ain’t nobody got time fo dat.
I gave up on CDs roughly 15 years ago because I don’t like the format compared to vinyl (small album art, plasticy jewelcases, …).
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
Hahaha seriously
I remember my 56k ass was a Napster pro
I was 16 before Napster existed. It didn’t come out til I was 19. You guys are so ignorant and self centered. Claim you care about the artists but you want it all for free and when Spotify makes things difficult on you your solution is to pirate everything. We pirated when music was far more expensive than it was now. Software cost $1000s and there wasn’t a $60 monthly option. People actually lived on minimum wage back then and it was $4.25/hr.
💀
Surely you have a better explanation for why Spotify isn’t giving you the full service for free.
Your point?
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.
You individually are a competitor to Spotify?
I hum in the shower 😎👉👉
Spotify execs hate this one trick
Not sure why my comment was deleted, but no. I work for a corporate competitor or them. Spotify is a public company, so it is plain to see that they are not profitable and have never been.
I know not everyone will agree, but I think YouTube premium is the better bang-for-buck service. $3 more per month than Spotify and includes YouTube Music premium and YouTube Premium. So all the music and ad-free YouTube.
Except what YT Premium does is easily doable with free tools.
Only so long as Google decides to continue serving content for free to people who contribute nothing to their bottom line, which isn’t guaranteed to last.
Anyone that thinks Google’s WebDRM is going to stop with ads is a fool.
Ultimately, there’s no real way to get around the fact that operating huge platforms like YouTube that serve hundreds of millions of people every day comes with very significant costs, and someone has to pay them. Either users pay them directly, advertisers pay them in exchange for ad space, or investors pay them in exchange for the ability to control the platform for whatever purpose they want.
Given that, I’m personally pretty happy to settle on direct subscription fees. For the sheer amount of content you get, I don’t think it’s really that unreasonable, though I am of course speaking as someone in a position where I can afford them.
*with free tools from thankless efforts.
You can donate to projects you like tho
Preach. I’d rather donate to those folks than give google money lawl
Are you actually doing that though?
I used to. And I will do it again once I have an income where I don’t have to count pennies.
Yep! Recently to Yuzu and a mod creator that personally helped me get TotK running at 60FPS with no drops or stutters!
Are you donating to them?
An argument could easily be made for Spotify as well. There are plenty of options for streaming music for free to your device with download support. Just about anything can be done for free if people are willing.
YT is just the more egregious example of this imo.
Sure, for now. YouTube is cracking down on ad-blockers, don’t think they’ll let those free tools work forever…
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.
Family is one of the biggest reasons. A huge part of it for me was minimizing at least SOME of the ads my kids would be exposed to.
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 mean, if you are paying for two services but don’t use one by choice, sure I can see the value not being there.
I’d rather vote for Deezer. Costs the same, but you also get lossless (16-bit 44.1kHz FLAC) audio.
By the way, free-mp3-download.net rips songs from Deezer. And if you don’t like spending storage, you could self-host your own Navidrome server, though I get that may not be convenient.
I need 48-bit 96kHz raw PWM otherwise my ears can’t tolerate it. I can hear the difference in the waveforms.
Careful, this same take when discussing YouTube ads will draw the ire of the internet
Removed by mod
You’re not hurting the companies, you’re hurting the artists. I’m not saying don’t pirate at all, especially from artists like Taylor swift. But maybe if you’re listening to a small artist, especially if they’re independent, consider buying their cd.
If the option is Spotify or pirating, you’re really not hurting indie artists. They don’t make shit from streaming.
hey now I make 10 bucks a year from streaming royalties. I can almost buy a fancy coffee with a shot of booze for that. Oh the life of an indie music artist.
There is still a difference between basically nothing and literally nothing. Spotify is better than pirating and CDs/vinyl/digital directly from them is better than Spotify.
That tracks. Every artist who spoke to me about this (I’m kind of a hobby musician) told me a) fuck labels, not worth it, b) Promotion is 95% of the game and you have to master it yourself, c) no money in Spotify except for the top .1% or so percent, the money always comes from gigs or shows so starting live early is a good idea.
Additionally, when you listen to an artist on Spotify or YT Music, it increases the chance of the app promoting that artist to other users.
Relying on an algorithm is a lie when record labels can just circumvent that with money.
Remember, we’re distinguishing between “basically nothing” and “literally nothing”.
Of course the best way to financially support an artist is to buy their merch or buy their music on a store like Bandcamp.
The last album I bought was Ty Segal’s latest. I have seen him live at least a dozen times and bought roughly $600 worth of limited releases and shirts at these shows. I “discovered” him thru Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist that automatically puts together music they think I will like.
I think all the free users are the problem. They don’t want to pay for the service, they complain about ticket and merch prices at shows and hardly contribute anything to the artists themselves. They blame Spotify when it’s Ticketmaster and the labels they should direct their anger towards. Not paying users like me.
According to this blogpost or whatever it is Spotify basically doesn’t pay artists, so if there’s a niche/local/whatever band you like, the best way to show support is by buying their tracks/records directly from them.
I think for smaller artists, Spotify is less for revenue and more for exposure, hoping that your music can reach new listeners.
“I can’t pay you in cash, but I’ll get you exposure!”
“woah” as they hold up the piece of paper that says ‘exposure’, “this is worthless!”
(kinda meme kinda serious, as I know nobody who hears an artist on a streaming service and then does anything past listen to them on said streaming service, netting the artist effectively nothing)
I think my favourite retort to “we can pay you in exposure” that I’ve ever seen has been “people die from exposure.” It’s just so succinct.
I get your point but it really depends on the audience you’re looking at. Personally, I use Spotify a lot to listen to any new artist I can find and check their stuff out without crawling a) youtube or b) buying their records in advance. If I stumble upon some stuff that I’m really into, I look if there are any vinyls available. (Bonus step c): you’re two months late to the vinyl release and the discocks are already hoarding all copies, smh.)
The point you’ve made kinda boils down to the question if music is a hobby or a commodity for said person. The “problem” I’m seeing is that music is more of a commodity to many people that just listen to stuff for the sake of listening to it. That’s just a product of changing times and the relation between people and music and the distributors inbetween reflects that. Of course this is frustrating for the load of talented artists that just niche audiences care about.
know nobody who hears an artist on a streaming service and then does anything past listen to them on said streaming service
Please allow me to introduce myself lol.
I go to live shows pretty frequently, maybe every two months or so, and my first exposure to many of the artists I’ve seen came from a random Spotify recommendation. I don’t think this kind of thing is particularly uncommon among people who go to shows frequently. If I don’t learn about them from Spotify, I heard about them from a friend or online community that was listening to them. Music really moves through social networks, so exposure can have some real value, though I agree it’s rather cruel to literally not pay an artist and simply tell them they’re getting exposure.
But hey, if exposure truly was worthless, advertising wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar industry.
Yeah, spotify recommendations, spotlist, and whatnot has replaced what MTV was back in the day.
I have the same experience. It’s not like I’m on tick tock or watching MTV to find new artists. I deep dive thru the artists I already like and find them that way. It’s expanded what I listen too compared to my dad who is still stuck in the 70s
As someone who’s friends with a few multinational artists with millions of plays on spotify – no that’s now how any of this works.
They literally make pennies on thousands of plays.
If you want to support artists, download and share mp3s, buy vinyl, and see them live.
We’re talking about Pennies. I go to their shows and buy merch (preferably from their websites). The artists see more direct money that way.
What’s with the instance hate. It’s fucking cringe.
Yeah if you can’t pay for Spotify then don’t, I get you. It doesn’t make their subscription offer any worse, though, if you decide on pirating.
Spotify is not actually profitable, not that I imagine you actually care about discussing such annoyances as facts. I imagine you probably wouldn’t personally love the idea of working while actively losing money for the privilege?
I guess Kbin is getting a reputation for having such wild takes as “Stealing isn’t exactly great,” so I’m glad to see I chose a Fediverse home wisely.
Y’all have some of the most self centered takes. And if it’s not self centered, it’s either dumb or pro-capitalist.
If your definition of resisting capitalism is apparently “not paying for things that other people provide for you”, I think that says more about you than it really says about economics.
To then call me the self-centered one is actual comedy, so thanks for that laugh.
What a shame it would be if this drove more people into using those awful cracked versions of the Spotify apk that give you most of the premium features without a premium account. Truly the godless heathens over at xManager (https://github.com/Team-xManager/xManager) must be rejoicing over this.
Who tf uses Spotify without a premium account?
I’d rather pirate that shit that use it for free (I like to hit next all the way).
IMHO Spotify is one of the few services that it is worth to pay.
I have the family premium plan and honestly love it. I haven’t downloaded an mp3 in years because Spotify is so convenient. As far as subscription services go, this one is top tier for me.
Now when we look at movie streaming… well that’s what the music streaming could have been like. What an absolute mess.
Enshittification everywhere. Selfhosting forever
I’ve been using Spotify for almost 2-3 years. The only thing I can say is the app gets DEGRADED EVERY YEAR!!! They do their best to bring more and more bugs with each update. I’m done with Spotify shit, also they removed a lot of regional songs from my country. The only reason I pay for Spotify is because I can download/rip their music and store it on my Plex Server.
Spotify in on itself is worth paying for BUT…
Their app for android sucks blue donkey balls and I’d happily pay more if I’d get to use a slightly less retarded cousin of this app.
The other but:
Spotify in on itself is not very bad right now and basically could and SHOULD continue as-is forever.
However, the economic system as it currently is requires it to continually come up with new crap that nobody needs nor wants (see also all Microsoft software that went from absolute shit thirty years ago to absolute slimey shit with lots of useless but pretty ding dong bells attached to it with a nice camera hidden inside to spy on the insides of your butthole) and it only a matter of time before…
Some exec gets hired there that promises to double their revenue, then implements some shit that will double their revenue once, gets this exec his bonus upon which he immediately quits to go to the next company to fuck over with a pineapple, leaving Spotify with a huge exodus of users, a dwindling service, and two years later it’s dead.
I’ve seen this cycle with too many large companies, and it’s the same story over and over. Be it Boeing, Disney, just about all large game companies, etc etc…
So they went to the same model Pandora used to use 15 years ago
Left clicking on the UI: premium feature
Putting all the best features behind a paywall, opening up ad space as well as sponsored song spots… Where have I seen this before?
This is literally just commercial radio.
It was already like this in Europe when I began to use Spotify in 2015. I do not hate it because the app’s free tier is already unusable to me due to the adverts.
The free version is completely useless on smartphone. I hope the limitations won’t come to the desktop version
I don’t mind paying for music
