You have major phone producers removing 3.5mm jacks to save space, by the aame attitude I think it's safe to assume no one will add a "thick" cooling system.
I absolutely agree that memorization and repetition trump conceptual understanding when dealing with intermediate level of mathematics (I am taking a course on probability and integration and even though I have a good grasp of the basic concepts, if I don't keep up with the nitty gritty details and properties, I completely go astray when the teacher introduces a new concept built using those details.)
I.e. you need to master your tools (theorems, formulas etc) by repeating them so that you can use them to build something. Even if you knew what a hammer is good for (conceptual understanding) but didn't know how to hold it, it would still be pointless.
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.
If they actually pick a comment from HN and then verify the authenticity and expand on it by interviewing the author, then I think they are really doing their job.
And they say Linux can't be pretty. If only this distribution had more support! The team hs already done wonders making it the most well-polished Linux distribution out there. Perfect for those transitioning from a Mac/Windows.
I'm a Windows/Linux user. I feel like something like Linux Mint is very much polished. My complain is the lack of main apps: adobe suite and visual studio in my case.
Looks are pretty silly and irrelevant for most power users. I run Ubuntu with the i3 tiling window manager, which doesn't even have a desktop. Having a desktop is another thing that's pretty much irrelevant, given the way i3 works. I would never sacrifice the functionality I really like just to get something that's supposedly "prettier".
There are different kinds of users. No need to call something silly and irrelevant just because it doesn't fit your preferences and priorities.
For example, one of the first things I check when trying out a new Linux distro is whether I can tweak the font rendering exactly the way I like. If this takes more than a few minutes, or if Firefox and LibreOffice don't pick up my tweaks consistently, that distro is out. I don't care what other awesome features it has. If I'm going to be looking at it for 10 hours a day, it had better not hurt my eyes. I would never sacrifice visual comfort just to get something that's supposedly "more functional". But that's just me. Other people will have other priorities.
Usability is important. Basically every X.org distro ever supports your i3 power user setup. A much smaller number of distros are aimed exclusively at making Linux easier for average users.
I just don't understand that argument, on two fronts: First, Elementary looks almost exactly like a stock Fedora Gnome desktop (slightly clunkier, actually, in terms of window decorations and the settings panels)...so, how is it uniquely pretty in the Linux world? Second, I consider recent Gnome on Fedora to be comparable to Windows and mac OS (preferable, even, IMHO).
Linux from several vendors has been pretty for years. Being pretty, or historic lack thereof, clearly isn't the thing keeping Windows and mac OS users from switching in droves.
> First, Elementary looks almost exactly like a stock Fedora Gnome desktop (slightly clunkier, actually, in terms of window decorations and the settings panels)...so, how is it uniquely pretty in the Linux world?
