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…
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
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.
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.
Enshittification everywhere. Selfhosting forever
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.
Looking forward to when you wake up and realize that you’re just emptily shilling for a company that would happily take your money while refusing features.
Not sure how this is emptily shilling though. Am I paying for a service? Yes. Will I stop paying for a service if they start “refusing features?” Also yes.
Like I said in another comment, I was happy with Netflix back in the day, but now, nope. I have self hosted alternatives.
If a service is not worth it for me, I stop paying. Different people have that line at different levels, and for me, today’s Spotify Premium is worth it. In the future it may not be.
No need to be so hostile.
We are all here on Lemmy because we see the value in self hosting and free & open source software.
However even here, people have the need to antagonize each other and call each other corporate shills.
Maybe a peek behind the curtain of human nature.
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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.
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.
pirates are the FIRST to complain over a product rhwy dont pay for lmao
Literally the opposite. Pirating takes time, effort, resources, and I lose access to “everything” - I only get what I take the time to download and store.
If a product I pay for provides a great service, I’ll keep using it. It’s worth the money for excellent user experience and convenience. It’s when they keep upping the price while reducing the features or content that bothers me, and that’s when I’d rather spend the time pirating than paying them for a worse product.
Why do you think they aren’t paying for it?
Pick someone who doesn’t pay for a product to unleash your own corporate bootlicking whine on, because the person you actually replied to said:
I pay for Spotify
Stream music are fucking trash in quality compared to flac, so give me flac or go fuck yourself
When you’re listening on a shitty bluetooth speaker or earbuds it really doesn’t matter.
Don’t know why you think I listen with Bluetooth speakers while I have a meter tall hifi system
Your daily reminder: if you don’t own it, it’s not yours.
Disclaimer
The it in this case is your music library, and by own I mean have in your personal possession and not DRM’d.
Nobody thinks they own music on Spotify. Or movies on Netflix.
I don’t know why anyone would give Spotify money when they pay Joe Rogan to spread vaccine disinformation and union bust.
I use YouTube music. It’s far inferior to what Google Play Music was, which was literally perfect, but it’s not Spotify and I really think it does mixes best of all. Apple Music is so very Caucasian, I gave it a shot but it just comes back to the whitest music possible every time.
You know, it is literally pick your poison, google/alphabet is not a better company either.
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