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
if we want the product to continue to exist
how you can simultaneously say that Spotify shouldn’t exist what do you actually want them to do? [to continue to exist, presumably]
In the very short and absolutely present term, all of your arguments regarding the existence of Spotify are quite sound. But that’s just it. This is just the where the largest musical spigot for the average music consumer is located today, and that alone does not make it viable, or even lend authenticity to your claimed innate right for Spotify to exist.
An uncounted number of us here on Lemmy enjoyed music lonnnnng before Spotify, and remember it well, in a way that was arguably fairer to artists, where musicians and producers and labels and radio stations and promoters all got their cut, and creativity at all levels of the process was supported FAR more than it is today.
There were the same problems then, with predatory labels and managers and shitty contracts, but it was all limited by the fact that unless you bought the physical recording or listened via radio or bought a concert ticket, you did not get access, period. So the labels were forced to use those big profits toward A&R, marketing, publicity, actively looking for and signing new artists, etc. They don’t really do that anymore. There are no A&R guys like there used to be, studio producers, in-house marketing except for the biggest acts.
It’s ALL profit now.
And I’m pretty sure you already know all this, so don’t be offended that I am restating the past. And it IS the past: physical limitations on the dissemination of copyrighted materials are long gone, and enforcing fairness via those limitations is long gone with them.
People still want music. People are still VERY willing to pay for music. But in an age where there are so many digital outlets to choose from, Spotify wants to be the Ticketmaster of streaming music, forcing a monopoly without the actual ability to do so. Many folks are happy with that, even in this thread, and pay Spotify because that is just fine by them. And I recognize that the labels have Spotify over a barrel in this, that if the labels were less predatory with the rights, everyone would be better off. But they’re not. It is what it is.
Yet none of this means that Spotify has a right to exist, or that the music industry cannot be managed in completely different ways, or that a non-profitable company should be subsidized by people that hate it and want nothing to do with it.
So from where I’m sitting, Spotify does not even remotely need to exist for people to continue to make, promote, sell, and enjoy music. It just doesn’t. The music business is literally as old as music. Even Mozart didn’t work for free; it was just a different business model. The only thing Spotify EVER had going for it was instant access, a decent interface and a good algorithm, but the music itself is not theirs and never was.
And when Spotify is done, another provider and a newer streaming business model will take its place.
Spotify is just for today. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. And it looks like it’s already on the way out.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
In the very short and absolutely present term, all of your arguments regarding the existence of Spotify are quite sound. But that’s just it. This is just the where the largest musical spigot for the average music consumer is located today, and that alone does not make it viable, or even lend authenticity to your claimed innate right for Spotify to exist.
An uncounted number of us here on Lemmy enjoyed music lonnnnng before Spotify, and remember it well, in a way that was arguably fairer to artists, where musicians and producers and labels and radio stations and promoters all got their cut, and creativity at all levels of the process was supported FAR more than it is today.
There were the same problems then, with predatory labels and managers and shitty contracts, but it was all limited by the fact that unless you bought the physical recording or listened via radio or bought a concert ticket, you did not get access, period. So the labels were forced to use those big profits toward A&R, marketing, publicity, actively looking for and signing new artists, etc. They don’t really do that anymore. There are no A&R guys like there used to be, studio producers, in-house marketing except for the biggest acts.
It’s ALL profit now.
And I’m pretty sure you already know all this, so don’t be offended that I am restating the past. And it IS the past: physical limitations on the dissemination of copyrighted materials are long gone, and enforcing fairness via those limitations is long gone with them.
People still want music. People are still VERY willing to pay for music. But in an age where there are so many digital outlets to choose from, Spotify wants to be the Ticketmaster of streaming music, forcing a monopoly without the actual ability to do so. Many folks are happy with that, even in this thread, and pay Spotify because that is just fine by them. And I recognize that the labels have Spotify over a barrel in this, that if the labels were less predatory with the rights, everyone would be better off. But they’re not. It is what it is.
Yet none of this means that Spotify has a right to exist, or that the music industry cannot be managed in completely different ways, or that a non-profitable company should be subsidized by people that hate it and want nothing to do with it.
So from where I’m sitting, Spotify does not even remotely need to exist for people to continue to make, promote, sell, and enjoy music. It just doesn’t. The music business is literally as old as music. Even Mozart didn’t work for free; it was just a different business model. The only thing Spotify EVER had going for it was instant access, a decent interface and a good algorithm, but the music itself is not theirs and never was.
And when Spotify is done, another provider and a newer streaming business model will take its place.
Spotify is just for today. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. And it looks like it’s already on the way out.