I wonder how many of these 40M users are like me and are searching for other options. I'm using Spotify because of an intro offer, and my Google Play account exists almost solely for the discount on other content. Both have enough annoying design quirks that I've also tried Tidal and Apple Music, but their recommendation engines left me wanting more.
Based on my love of Rdio, I'm really hoping Pandora's rumored new streaming service becomes a viable alternative.
I know it's easy for me to be an armchair quarterback but I have to say it. Although I am currently and somewhat reluctantly paying for it (for now), Spotify's UI makes me want to strangle someone every time I use it. I can never remember exactly what ridiculous combination of screens I need to cycle through in order to get where I want to go. It feels like I'm trying to enter a fucking launch code for a nuclear submarine just to play a damn song. God forbid I'm running and hit the wrong screen, then I have to stop, fiddle for 3 minutes, and start again.
Also the stations are incredibly shallow. If you pick a station on Pandora, you will have 100+ songs that are generally well selected in my experience. If you pick one on Spotify, you get maybe 20-30 songs.
The one major benefit to Spotify is that you can pick any song you want, you're not forced into stations. However, if you pick a genre, you're likely to be inundated with shitty cover bands that you have to painfully sift through in order to find the actual playlist your looking for, because '70's hits' could be anything from Led Zepplin to your next door neighbours cover band.
TLDR - incredibly over complicated UI, shallow stations, too much spam music.
Not sure if it's just melancholia, but I do think rdio is still totally unbeaten in terms of personalised playlists. It was absolutely amazing! Also, the audio quality seemed far superior compared to Spotify or Apple Music.
Take a look at Apple Music again. They just started doing two personal weekly playlists (like Spotify's Discover Weekly). One is full of tracks you haven't listened to before (it seems pretty good so far) and the other is a weekly 'favourites' mix which seems to be 90% stuff in your library and 10% stuff not in your library but by artists you like (e.g. new releases). It's really good. I was using a mix of Spotify and Apple Music but with iOS 10 I've dropped Spotify as recommendations will improve if I'm using one service and the new weekly playlist seem to be as good as Discover Weekly which was all the was holding me back.
I'll take another look. One of the things I miss most about Rdio was an option to pick how "adventurous" I wanted my personalized playlists to be, so that favorites option would be a nice switch from the Discover Weekly model
Also, Beats 1 is really nice. There's nothing like Josh Homme or Mike D playing their favorite (sometimes obscure) tracks. I've definitely discovered more music per month since subscribing to Apple Music than anytime before.
Beats 1 is fantastic. I listen to Zane Lowe's show everyday. It's a pretty diverse mix of music so even if I don't like everything I always discover some new stuff I never would have otherwise. I listen to Josh Homme, Elton John, and deadmau5 on demand. Matt Wilkinson is also quite good. The key feature for me is that I can easily add the tracks to my library while listening. That makes it a great discovery tool as paired with the 'recently added' view in iTunes I end up listening to the tracks a lot for a week or two and dig into the artists more in my own time.
I've checked out Apple Music but the only draw would be Taylor Swift and immediate access to exclusive releases, like The 1975's new album which was released on Apple Music first then released on Spotify two weeks later.
I really like two things about Spotify:
* Curated Playlists: Their mood/genre playlists have a human touch (and very good taste) and I can also follow playlists created by some of my favorite artists
* Social/Sharing: I like seeing what my friends are listening to in the sidebar and I know enough people on Spotify that I can reliably send Spotify links to my friends and know they'll be able to listen to a song/album. I would reconsider if that network effect shifted and more people were on Apple.
I could not agree more. I was a big Rdio fan and went to the ways of Apple Music because the family plan is so cheap. Wish they would integrate Last.fm and a web interface though. The 12.5.1 version is a step in the right direction though. Along with iOS 10. Excited to see what Pandora will offer as well.
I know it's easy for me to be an armchair quarterback but I have to say it. Although I am currently and somewhat reluctantly paying for it (for now), Spotify's UI makes me want to strangle someone every time I use it. I can never remember exactly what ridiculous combinatoric puzzle of screens I need to cycle through in order to get where I want to go. It feels like I'm trying to enter a fucking launch code for a nuclear submarine just to play a damn song. God forbid I'm running and hit the wrong screen, then I have to stop, fiddle for 3 minutes, and start again.
Also the stations are incredibly shallow. If you pick a station on Pandora, you will have hundreds of songs that are generally well selected in my experience. If you pick one on Spotify, you get maybe 20-30 songs.
The one major benefit to Spotify is that you can pick any song you want. However, if you pick a genre, you're likely to be inundated with shitty cover bands that you have to painfully sift through in order to find the actual playlist your looking for, because '70's hits' could be anything from Led Zepplin to your next door neighbours cover band.
TLDR - incredibly over complicated UI, shallow stations, too much spam music.
Absolutely 100% agree. Its why I went with Apple Music after the death of Rdio. I had a horrible experience when i had a 90-day trial. I stopped using it after a week and even canceled my subscription early. It was awful. That was a few years ago and I'm sure a few things improved, but still the free desktop version annoys me. During my trial, this was back when you had to create a playlist in order to listen to the whole album. Who had that idea?! Ever since then Spotify has always left a bad taste in my mouth.
Same here. Spotify finally pissed me off enough yesterday that I just went and cancelled and I'll see how Play works out. It's just far too buggy and I don't remember a day I haven't had problems with it lately.
My experience of Google Play Music is that it works well when it works. But something it really likes doing is not playing. Our running joke is that every time a butterfly flaps its wings anywhere in the world, Play stops playing. While hyperbole it does happen a lot, especially if there is less than perfect networking (eg while driving). But it will also stop playing with perfect networking, usually at the end of a song for no good reason.
Spotify is far better at actually playing under the same conditions. If anything it is too eager (there was that time I had to tell it to stop 4 times). However it is a huge pain if you want it to just play music without having to babysit what it plays.
Ya I uninstalled spotify and my idle battery charge time went from 1/2 day to 2 days. (s4 on lolipop) Did not seem to be a "don't fucking turn on or do anything when I'm not using you" setting in the app anywhere. Oh well I did like the service.
I think one of Apple Music's main strategic points is to sign a lot more upcoming and big-name artists like Drake, DJ Khaled, etc. and push toward more exclusive content to draw subscribers
They had Spotify apps, the two most popular were lyrics apps. Then they removed the apps and added lyrics inside Spotify, and now there is no more lyrics at all.
Obviously that's a very demanded feature so they must have a strong reason not to have it anymore (legal issues probably).
I personally used it all the times for improvised karaokes so I'm very upset to not have lyrics on demand anymore.
I can't make it appear on my app (iOS) and the help link [1] shows that's it's enabling comments from Genius about the lyrics, so not the actual lyrics synced.
The lyrics were simple and great. I was surprised how much I missed them when they were gone. A Genius partnership would be perfect, but Genius seems to think they're god's gift to Earth so that will probably never happen.
I've been trying to find this (and I've been using iOS 10 since June). Is it possible Apple has made lyrics a US only feature for now (which would be bizarre)?
I'm happy their subscriber counts are up, but I've noticed a steep negative trend their library selection in the last month. I poked around a bit for more info. All I could find were complaints that they don't publish this information anymore.
Does anyone know how to see if my anectdote is a trend?
Perhaps they lost some contracts with major labels, or perhaps there is a way to probe their search API to estimate their library size.
I would say the golden age never even started. I've stuck with torrenting over streaming with things like spotify because it's the only way I can guarantee that I will hear things that I like. Sure it takes a bit more planning, but for higher quality and customization I think it's more than worth it.
I'm not sure if it's something that varies heavily by country, but I just switched back from Apple Music to Spotify and couldn't be happier.
So many artists that I like were missing albums or songs on Apple Music for some reason. One group that I particularly like was missing over 3/4 of their music at Apple. All available in iTunes of course, but I don't feel like paying for individual songs on top my subscriptions. Worth noting that I'm in Canada and I'm talking about mostly Electronic, Metal, and Jazz tracks.
I tried out Apple Music and really wanted to like it, but I came back to Spotify mostly because the apps (desktop and mobile) that apple were offering were just completely unusable.
I have noticed this as well. I actually cancelled my subscription and will continue using Google's service which has more of the music I listen to available in the US.
I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure I read that their contracts with all the major labels ran out a few months ago and they're still renegotiating. Maybe labels are removing small amounts of music in the mean time to force the issue?
Good on them. Now can their stupid, over-zealous designers stop messing with the product by removing actually useful features such as "Most Played" filtering of your library, etc etc.
Spotify has achieved what no normal entity could. Go them for having a relatively decent free to play with, I'm assuming, a good pay to play model as well.
In Canada, one of the major wireless providers offers Spotify premium accounts bundled in with mid and high tier data lines (i.e. 2 years of Spotify premium "for free"). So I wonder what other providers around the world do this, and how many of the 40mm are part of this group.
I have accounts on both Deezer and Spotify because of bundled accounts on wireless providers. So far I prefer Spotify but only because of the Discover Weekly feature.
Free to play won't be around long imo. Since Spotify first launched for me in 2009 the free offering has got progressively worse. The second the labels can drop freemium they will and I don't think we're too far away from that.
I haven't used Spotify free in a long time but originally the only difference between free and premium was ads and offline mode. AFAIK there are many more limits on free now.
Between March(they announced 30 million) and now - roughly 6 months later they added 10 million new paid subscribers? How is that even possible? That would average out to 1.6 million new subscribers a month.
They still haven't redownloaded their UMG library to fix the horrendous watermark issue. Everything from UMG before 2013 is very low quality due to a bug with their watermarking technology at the time. This includes all the best classical music labels.
1) I can't play it on multiple devices at the same time like every other service I subscribe to (Netflix, Hbo, Hulu). If I ever upgrade to a"family" account, I have to make new accounts for each person (including my kids).
2) The UI sucks. I can never find the queue list, so I never know what is playing next. Adding items to a playlist is should be easier.
3) The web app is really broken. You have to install the Spotify software to use the service.
4) Offline playlists randomly decide they have not been downloaded yet.
5) Nothing by the Beatles. Like every other music service, the only way is to rip your old CDs or torrent them.
One feature I do like, listening to local music files on the Spotify software. Like, for example, the Beatles.
I really wish Grooveshark was still around!
[edit] Now that I read that Spotify (and similar companies) are actually losing money I realize that I shouldn't be so hard on them.
Friendly fyi... if we're talking about a company's financials instead of a human's salary, the precise term would be "revenue" instead of "income". Income would be revenue minus costs. Spotify doesn't have any positive income.[1]
>Their expenses are mostly royalties and those are probably spare change compared to that income.
No, it's not "spare change". In fact, the unfavorable licensing terms[2] to the record labels (58% payment) are preventing Spotify from turning a profit. (Keep in mind that so far, Spotify has never turned a profit.)
They also took on $1 billion in new debt with exploding terms[3] which pressures them towards an IPO. A bad timing of the IPO wouldn't help them at all.
I don't see how the financial numbers work in favor of Spotify. It looks like the only companies that can afford to stream music would be Amazon/Apple/Google.
Digital music streaming is a brutal business and all 3 major streaming companies Spotify/Pandora/Rhapsody have been losing money for years.[4] It's now 2016 and nobody has found a way to make profits. Their subscriber growth numbers keep making the headlines so people mistakenly assume those companies are financially successful when they're not.
According to the source you posted Spotify has been given favourable license terms since it started whereas competitors like rdio have had to pay more and have since went bust.
>According to the source you posted Spotify has been given favourable license terms
I can see why that report's statement is confusing.
To clarify, that sentence was only comparing Spotify's "better" licensing terms to Rdio. It's about the licensing costs relative to a competitor.
However, in absolute numbers, it's a licensing cost percentage that's still too expensive. Spotify wants to renegotiate the percentage to be less than 50%. Spotify's "better" rate of 55% compared to Rdio 60% did not meet this more favorable threshold to turn a profit.
The "favorable licensing terms" I was talking about was in absolute terms (company profitability) and not relative terms (compared to another competitor).
I still don't think referring to it as (un)favourable makes sense. It's simply the cost of doing business. If Spotify can't convince enough people to pay them enough money to cover the costs of acquiring the content that's their problem. If I can't afford rent on my shop because not enough customers are coming in that's my problem not the landlords. I can try to renegotiate a lower price as can Spotify but given how much competition they have it'll be difficult and if they can't get a lower price it's not unfair.
>I still don't think referring to it as (un)favourable makes sense. It's simply the cost of doing business. If Spotify can't convince enough people to pay them enough money
Got it and I totally understand exactly what you're saying. It's a matter of perspective and what you said is also true.
That said, let's put some context and boundaries around "unfavorable terms" when it's used to analyze Spotify's financial situation.
If we use an alternative perspective of measuring how Spotify can compete with Apple who has solidified an anchor price[1] of $9.99, it means that Spotify is heavily pressured to not be more expensive than that.
Yes, Spotify could theoretically charge more such as $11.99 to cover the higher licensing percentages of 55% or 58% but they probably feel that it kills their demand curve.
Spotify's pricing has to work in between "free" (piracy) and Apple's $9.99. They don't have the leverage or differentiation to convince consumers to pay $11.99.
So one perspective is that Spotify needs to increase subscription prices to whatever level they need to in order make a profit and to hell with losing millions of customers to Apple's $9.99 deal. Possible eventual outcome is that Spotify dies in bankruptcy because of dwindling user accounts.
The other perspective is that $9.99 is a too much of a consumer-ingrained psychological price so don't bother fighting it. The better chance of survival is to renegotiate with the record labels for more "favorable terms" so it's possible to make a profit at $9.99.
So far, the digital music streaming business can't figure out the money puzzle to make everybody happy. Many consumers already think that $120 a year is too much to pay. At the same time, many artists believe they get too little money[2].
COGS is going to be ~60% of revenue. That's the royalties.
Gross Margin = Gross Revenue - COGS.
We're down to under $160M.
Spotify has (or had) 1600+ employees. If these were US (CA) based, we'd estimate higher, but since Europeans are relatively "cheaper", let's call it $75K/employee all-in (taxes, benefits, etc.). That's probably light, and doesn't take into account rent or data centers or any expenses, and that costs them ~$120M.
That leaves $40M for "everything else". Assuming that their employees are indeed "as cheap" on average as guesstimated above.
Here it is 5.99 EUR (~6.8 USD) / month. So, based on that price, it should be like ~$270M.
Also, you can have a family subscription for 6 people for 8.99 EUR (~10.1 USD). I wonder, if such subscriptions are counted as one, or for every member separately.
Where is that? EU wide? In the UK its £9.99 which I've always found too expensive compared to services like Netflix, NowTV, Amazon Video etc. Personally I feel the price point should be around £5 or less, otherwise I can buy an album every other month on iTunes and own it forever, so for me at least this price point doesn't work.
