Spotify - anyone heard of it?

im not sure how to install any of these apps?

oic never mind, took spotify a second to realize i had already downloaded the desktop client

genuine astonishment at this blue note app

yes but why do you hate it

im genuinely bummed that it looks like this after being open for 10 minutes lalready

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/366364/Screenshots/yxav.png

Daniel Ek feels put upon.

https://news.spotify.com/us/2014/11/11/2-billion-and-counting/

he talks like the alternative to spotify is 100% piracy

i don't understand why youtube isn't coming up in any of these discussions

tl;dr version

1. the music industry was corrupt long before we gave it 25% ownership of our company, don't blame us if you signed a shitty deal.
2. most tech companies exploiting the music industry don't give it anything, our deal is WAY better than The Pirate Bay.
3. if we don't sound good as a revenue replacement for music purchases, pretend we're just a revenue replacement for radio. That also replaces music purchases. Not that we do! I mean, we might when if we get to the projected user rate we use to suggest one can survive on the royalties we give. But we haven't yet! Also Pirate Bay.

Feel like that whole thing was a dog whistle for bigger artists to hit them up for some equity/advance before they go whining

It's difficult for me to feel I'm contributing to the evils of Spotify considering that I still buy upwards of 50 physical CDs a year

^^^ (buy vinyl for me)

*but

From what I have read a lot of the problem is really the deals the labels negotiate with Spotify (really, the big ones -- the smaller ones have less leverage to negotiate deals anyway), which, as I understand it, are basically designed to give the labels as large a cut and the artists as small a cut as possible (and guess what, the labels are also investors in Spotify, so they're getting paid on both ends). It has something to do with "up front" payments vs royalty payments and how they are split up, I think. I read this whole congressional testimony about it given by the Jagjaguwar dude and now I forget exactly what it said, but you can google that.

^^^ (buy vinyl for me)

I will not

(ignoring the correction in favor of the dumb joke)

Yeah IMO in a world where the music industry was a union of profit-sharing labels and a matching union of musicians (hey I can dream), spotify would be no more "evil" than any other tech-startup designed for a buyout/ipo. It's the collusive deal with the majors that's exceptional. If one wanted to vote on music industry ethics with their dollar, it would make more sense to boycott major labels than streaming services.

That said, spotify could stand to be a fuckton less disingenuous.

whoa has spotify just wildly increased their ads lately? i was just played 3 ads in a row after one song. played the next song and there was another 2 ads. one more song and another ad.

just pretend it's a sandwich and give it five bucks already

it's true

Pay $10/mo for the premium version, so worth it

When do I get my family plan option??

We actually pay for two subscriptions since we wind up using it at the same time a lot.

okay they are literally playing 2 or 3 ads now after almost every song. this is reaching pandora levels imo, that shit became so dumb (though i never really liked pandora anyways)

has spotify just wildly increased their ads lately? i was just played 3 ads in a row after one song. played the next song and there was another 2 ads. one more song and another ad.

I wouldn't be surprised if Spotify pockets more money from free users than they do from subscribers.

Xpost we have two subscriptions too. A few weeks ago Spotify announced that family plans were coming so we'd only have to pay 15 a month for two.

speaking of Youtube, has anyone else noticed that they started auto-generating music videos? as in, a shitty-looking picture of the album cover with the audio, and it says "Auto-generated by YouTube." sometimes it will be for the wrong band or just have a random clip of the song, sometimes full albums.

i just hope this googleplay is consensual

nope

i mean, i only noticed it because a bunch of videos for my music showed up the other day.

and you didn't give streaming rights to google otherwise? i'd think with their desire to make google play a legit thing they wouldn't just be making illegal streams for funsies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495_732htoU

like this one has a link to google play at the bottom - i'd assume these videos are just an extension of whatever lets them have the song on google play

oh that makes sense then, thanks. i just wish they didn't look so lame (and inaccurate).

yeah it would seem you might be a test case

can't find any "rejoice! we are now data dumping to increase the amount of streams we can report" articles so this is probably still in a sort of beta

they're all grouped under 'topics'...i just checked Rebirth Brass Band as an example, and there are a bunch of accurate auto-uploads, but also stuff like this mixed in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owP57wzBLKs&list=UUh1-bS8k_fS8c4lT0DX27fw

i applaud taylor swift's decision, btw. the spotify guy countered by pointing out how much money taylor swift makes from his service/ it's several million dollars -- but not impressive in light of her enormous popularity. more important, for artists much less popular than taylor swift (99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% of them, that is), they hardly earn anything at all from the service.

spotify's appeal basically seems to be "well, it's betting than people stealing your work" which is a pretty opportunistic and dubious business model IMO.

If legal streaming went away tomorrow, would album sales see an uptick? I'd be surprised if that happened.

every artist selling a considerable amount of albums over the last two years would seem to disagree with you

I'm just trying to figure out what would shift music/tv/movie consumption back to an ownership model rather than an access model.

essential reading btw: http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8993-the-cloud/

it's one thing to say that the industry would still be suffering a downturn in a youtubeless, spotifyless world. it's another to think that the ability to rent the music industry for less than the price of a cd has no effect on customer desire to buy a cd

xxpost

nothing, probably?

that doesn't mean that spotify should be allowed to exploit the situation as they have.

(responding to johnny fever)

if swift's decision has done nothing more than bring a spotlight on the shitty royalty structure of spotify and other streaming services, it's been a useful decision. and by no means just for taylor swift.

honestly if i was in an indie band - and could afford it - i'd probably just release vinyl and put some push tracks or "singles" out on streaming services. treat the internet as a radio. give 3-4 songs away, force people to pay for the album if they want more. beyonce did a similar thing with her album, except it was a bundle with video instead of vinyl, and it did great. sure someone will rip the vinyl for illegal downloads, but you weren't gonna get money from those people either way.

I seem to remember in the early days of Spotify (in the US at least), many albums only had some of the songs available to stream and it was a surprise when you found an album that was 100% streamable. Now it's a surprise to find one that isn't.

i can't use spotify b/c it crashes my shitty computer, but that's just me

considering the fact that most indie bands have like 2 or 3 songs that generate a million plays, and then a huge dropoff to the album tracks, i don't see the point of having album tracks on there at all. like fugazi - if they only had three songs from each album, people curious about fugazi would burn through them quicker, and potentially be hungry for more. Instead, "Waiting Room" has a million plus plays, some other 13 songs stuff comes below it, and hardly anybody's checking out end hits.

I do believe streaming is the (near) future of music and all. But there is something highly annoying about the CEO of Spotify and Lefsetz par example wringing hands saying how Taylor Swift is "wrong"' about not putting her music on Spotify. As if a musician nowadays is obligated to do so. Swift (or her team of advisors and finance ppl probably) is in her right to keep her new album from streaming services imho. If the motive is that she earns more money that way because she shifts more physical copies of her album: good for her.

i think they are ostensibly criticizing her characterization of spotify (and other streaming services) rather than questioning her "right" to withdraw her music. but it amounts to nearly the same argument.