Technology

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.

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.

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

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

Tech Bros, reinventing classic technology with a veneer of techno babble.

Spotify is garbage, last time I used it it was missing basic features like sleep timer, play count, song rating, and history. I buy my music and use poweramp instead.

They just need to add commercials for Premium that have horns or police sirens and they'll be all set

I thought this was always how the free version was? Which bit of that is new? I remember only being able to shuffle play until I got premium

Spotify is now a Pandora knockoff.

And Netflix and other streaming services, despite supposedly saving us from cable, re-invented cable.

But the good news is, maybe it's time to get the good old iPods/DAPs back into the mainstream again. You can have a big SD card with all the music and podcasts you could ever want without tying yourself to a specific service.

Soooo, pandora?

All these companies want to control what content you consume. Just walk away.

I tried it free once, and found it generally unusable.

Like it was filled with annoying adverts, but it wasn't adverts for other people. It was adverts for itself. All overly chipper voice actors going "Wow, is it true that Spotify Premium is just £9.99 a month?" as if that's how anybody has ever talked in the history of humankind.

The free version is funded by paying customers. The only purpose it has is to annoy you into paying.

I was happy to use Amazon Prime's version for a bit, and then they decided that merely paying for Prime wasn't enough, and I had to pay special extra fees to listen to albums. So I got Spotify instead, because fuck giving more money to Amazon.

Use Spotube. It isnt have these limitations. You get premium spotify for free 😆 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=oss.krtirtho.spotube

Plz spread the word, it is the only way we can move them to right way, if they feel it...

I know Plex gets a lot of crap here, but they have done me no wrong allowing me to simply play the music I like. Spotify is ruining artist discovery, which is exactly how radio became the shithole it is now. At least Pandora leads at artist discovery.