I always thought it was in their interest to go public due to their debt position - is it perhaps that an IPO specifically opens them up to a certain repayment type (i.e. contract terms that are based on an "IPO" rather than a stock market listing?) whereas they can avoid that by going down another avenue?
Good. They have been so out of touch with what their users want, it's time they wake up.
Examples:
- Redesigning the client multiple times
- moving from native clients to essentially a bundled browser
- removal of lyrics feature
- can only store 3333 songs offline on a device
- 10000 songs is the limit for the library
- Still no Hi-Fi option
- Can't add third party songs to the cloud library
And the competition is definitly rising: For example, Apple Music offers lyrics, a song limit of 100000, can store all of those songs offline, play back on 10 different devices at the same time and store all those songs offline. Also, you can drag and drop the songs that are unavailable into your library, which makes them available on all of your devices.
Once Apple Music releases a web player (or a client for Linux), I'm done with Spotify. For the moment, I need it for my desktop, which runs Linux.
The thing that most bothers me about Spotify is that it boots to a "top music right now worldwide / in your country".
When it also has a "Discover" system that works semi-well. Why not open to the Discover screen? If I was that plugged in into the zeitgeist pop music-wise, why wouldn't I just listen to the radio?
I moved to Apple Music about 6-8 months ago, but had essentially stopped using Spotify before then for many of the reasons listed above. The many changes to the iOS app, songs disappearing from playlists when moving between countries, and with offline synced songs disappearing at random times, I just lost interest.
The move to Apple Music wasn't entirely without friction. There was no very good migration story, only third party apps and the results of these were so-so at best. But this was a one time cost, since then it's been a smooth ride. I pretty much only use apple hardware and the fact that Apple Music works great on all platforms is a huge win for me – Spotify doesn't even have an Apple TV app which was also a pretty big reason for my switch.
I also feel that Apple Music has improved a lot in these past 6-8 months, perhaps not so much in terms of app features and the likes, but I've definitely noticed changes in music availability. Most tracks and albums that I searched for half a year ago but weren't available are there now, and when I started I felt it was hit-and-miss whether the particular songs I was looking for would be there or not. Today I can't remember last time I tried to find a song but it wasn't available.
The only annoying thing now are my friends sending me Spotify links, since it means I have to look up the link, see what song/album they are linking me to, and search for it in Apple Music. This feels like something we should've solved with URNs instead of URLs...
What do their users want though? I am a user and have some counterpoints.
I have been a premium user of spotify for over a year now and I actually really love it. Maybe I don't use as much features as other people do.
I have a bunch of playlists (18) and love their discovery feature as well. I listen to it every time when I am at work - or doing chores at home - and sometimes during the commute on my phone. Same goes for 2 family members.
I don't miss the lyrics feature - I used it occasionally but it was shortly after I started using spotify so it's hard to miss something you have not really had the opportunity to use for a long time.
I have used their client on Windows and Mac (work), Linux (home) and mobile (android) and actually did not have issues with either of them. For what I use it (listening to music..) it does everything I want and does so perfectly.
Storing songs offline? No thank you, if I wanted to do that, I would just torrent the albums I like.
About the Hi-Fi option, they do have a HQ option but I am not sure which "quality" that actually is. I'm not an audiophile though, but I bet the average user isn't. So they might not care.
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But, like I said, to me it is essentially just a cloud music player and should not be anything else. I don't use any of the social features, I'm surely not an audiophile, and I can actually not compare it to Apple Music.
(Sidenote: The pricing is really good as well, at least the premium model where you can add family members).
EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not affiliated with Spotify, and as always, this is just my opinion and yours might be different which is completely OK. :-)
I'm in the same boat as you are (subscribed to spotify less than a year ago). I was really disappointed when they removed the lyrics feature, it was pretty nice and now I have to resort to 3rd party services for that.
Like the parent I really would like to be able to complete my library with my own music files when I can't find something on Spotify. That would be massively convenient for me and it doesn't seem like it would be a massive hassle for them to implement (as long as they limit the maximum amount of storage to something reasonable). I'm sure many users would love to be able to add their own audio files and podcasts to their library to access them from their spotify client everywhere.
I would also really love if they added a truly random mode. I get that they try to have a "clever" shuffle mode that's supposed to avoid playing the same artist back to back and things like that, but for most of my playlists I don't actually need that and spotify ends up replaying the same tracks before it's exhausted the rest of the playlist. As a side effect it also seems to favor certain titles over others in my experience. Just give me an option to turn on "dumb" random mode and I'll be happy.
"Hi-Fi" mode is probably snake oil but I guess it'd make for a nice marketing gimmick. I'm personally perfectly content with the premium audio quality as it is currently.
I still don't plan on canceling my subscription but I'm mildly annoyed that in this past year I've seen features disappearing while nothing of great value was being added.
> That would be massively convenient for me and it doesn't seem like it would be a massive hassle for them to implement (as long as they limit the maximum amount of storage to something reasonable).
The problem isn't the storage, but figuring out who the rights holders are and ensuring they get paid for those streams too. And it gets even more complicated for things you might have that Spotify doesn't have in their catalogue vs. is not allowed to let you play due to geographical restrictions. There's no easy way to guarantee correctness and completeness of the metadata uploaded by others whereas they can reasonably trust what is given to them by music labels.
Wouldn't it be similar to streaming music from a dropbox account for instance? As long as they don't allow redistribution to third parties (like grooveshark used to do) there ought to be a way to work around this issue?
Doing that is only legal (under US copyright) if you bought the CD and ripped it yourself. But that's pretty much impossible to validate from the receiving side.
Dropbox "allows" for it but they're in a grey area, just like other services have been able to skirt the issue. It's likely to not be a big enough concern for anyone right now to go after that particular use case.
Been a Spotify Premium user for very, very long. I used to create accounts with a swedish VPN back when Spotify wasn't available in my country. Overall, i am pretty happy with the service. Native clients would indeed be nice, but it is understandable why they don't want to maintain three different clients.
If they had native Windows and Mac clients but no Linux client because of time and resources, then all the complaints on HN would be directed there. Sometimes the over complaining on HN can be a bit much.
I'd also suggest trying Google Music. I moved to it originally simply because I could upload my existing music collection to it, and listen to it wherever. Then Google gave me 3 free months of the subscription service - and I'm seriously considering paying for it once that's up.
It runs in a web browser on Linux just fine - and I find a lot of their suggested artists/tracks are closer to my tastes than I got from Spotify.
I realize that these features are what you want, and sorry that they're not making you happy. But I would bet that a very small minority of users cares about things native clients / bundled browser and Hi-Fi option.
On the other hand, they added things like making discovering new music much easier, like "Daily Mixes" and "Discover Weekly", which - again, I don't have any hard data to back this up - made a ton of users very happy.
As a non audiophile but someone who always chooses 320 Kbps perhaps more so for placebo than anything else, why do you not need hi-fi playback if you are an audiophile? Similarly, do you listen to Spotify or other music at 320 and notice a difference between that and 256 or 192? (Which I think are the other bitrates Spotify provides)
A core principle of lossy audio codecs is leaving out information that would be masked by other information. But the masking will only happen if that other information is actually reproduced as expected. If, e.g. through a lousy frequency response curve, the masking information is not as loud relative to the masked information as it should be, the difference between would-be-masked present (lossless source) and would-be-masked absent (lossy encoding) will be much more noticeable. Same for the masked information: if played back through a system that distorts the masked part into something that would not be masked, the distorted version will be missing from what you hear in the lossy version but present in the lossless on. Again a noticeable difference (and just because the audible difference lies in a distorted part does not mean that not hearing it would be better, the lossless version would be more consistenct with itself).
Better headphones make the illusions of the psychoacoustic models work better, much like a stage magician will be more convincing with more precise execution of his tricks.
Or in other words: if you are good at identifying the differences between lossy and lossless that might be because you have golden ears. But it could just as well be because you are using tinny cans. (Or any combination thereof)
The first time I used daily mixes I was blown away by how perfect it was.
I use Spotify as much as conceivably possible (~20 hours per week) and haven't heard a peep of discontent from anybody. Totally agree - Spotify is incredible.
I'm not sure if I use daily mixes but after years of being a Spotify user I recently
Started using some of their curated playlists for me. And am also blown away by how many new bands I'm being exposed to that seem good. Once I started telling friends about my curated playlist experiences they were mostly like yeah we know. So seems to be a feature that's widely liked.
Yeah, I agree. The criticism above is definitely from an engineers perspective. The vast majority of users really won't even notice most of the items on that list. Reminds me of the episode of Silicon Valley where engineers absolutely love their product, but everyone else hates it because of the terrible UX.
Three things stick out on that list as things non-engineers care about.
Lyrics; people listen to music and then enjoy singing along. This little thing called karaoke supports a whole industry, for engineers and non-engineers alike, so people can get together and sing songs.
Redesigning the client. New interfaces are scary and different for non-engineers.
Can't add third party songs to cloud library. Non-engineers understand that some licensing nonsense means they can't get Taylor Swift on their Spotify, and then... just don't use Spotify, because all their music is on the Apple.
I'm not including "native client to bundled browser" as something non-engineers care about, but people do ask "why does the new version of $program make my laptop fans get all loud?"
Really? What genre of music do you listen to mostly? I enjoy hip hop / rap style music and the discover mixes are generally pretty awful. They seem to just throw in a bunch of popular radio hits and some b grade tracks from smaller artists. I've been really disappointed because people always talk about how great the discover feature is.
I have much better results playing a full album on youtube and letting youtubes auto play feature pick the next album for me. I've discovered a half dozen artists that way on the last year.
My daily mixes never flow correctly. I'll have a softer, technical indie track followed by a technical heavy metal song. It's bad enough that I can't use them at all.
My friends and I average over 20 hours a week as well and we're all pissed about their recent decisions.
The removal of messaging/direct sharing was the final straw for me.
Wait. They removed this feature? I unsubscribed over a year ago but this was one of the biggest things I missed after no longer having Spotify. What is the idea behind removing features? I do remember lyrics being removed and that was awful too.
I want Spotify to fix Discover Weekly. At some point Spotify learned I like Chinese and Korean songs, they started to add Thai songs. I don't listen to Thai and I don't understand Thai. I don't know how to make Spotify unlearn and remove Thai from Discover Weekly now. Ever since, I stopped using the Discover Weekly feature because I get 3-4 songs in languages I don't understand and there isn't an easy way to make Spotify realize I dislike a particular kind of song.
If there isn't a "I do not like this" feature for a machine learning feature, that UX isn't good. Other users have raise this concerns too (google it).
This is from a friend with a similar problem who talked to a guy working with the feature, so YMMV:
Supposedly, the feature works at least in part by analyzing your playlists and giving recommendations based on what the people with similar songs in their playlists have there as well. He claimed to be receiving less Finnish rap m after removing his playlists with northern Swedish rap, so you could try that approach if you still have any Chinese/Korean playlists.
I just remove the few offending songs from my discover weekly, which I don't find too much of a hassle, but it doesn't seem to learn from that.
They also ripped out messaging and the ability to share music directly after allowing it to die a slow death that involved it being completely hidden form the web client.
As a big fan of data analysis I've also noticed that they no longer accurately report or record user preferences and instead heavily weight popular artists.
They also only sent out the "Year in Review" to people that were subscribed to their spam emails.
Those two things are what brought me to them over Google Play Music. I'm currently in the process of switching back.
This is so frustrating hear. I'm going through the same thing right now as google music just wasn't doing the job for me and enjoyed my experience with Spotify much more.
I don't think most of true things listed matter to the vast majority of people.
People don't care how an app is made usually. I really dislike the 10000 song limit too but none of my friends seem to know or care. A hi-fi option def can't matter much to people or Tidal would've been more popular for that reason, no?
I have my own ax to grind with offline music not scrobbling to last.fm even close to properly but I'm not going to even pretend that more than a fraction of their users care or know about the feature. Similarly I don't think people would have an issue with 3k+ offline track limit. That's a lot to me.
Apple Music does seem to have a lot of good features though. Give you that.
> moving from native clients to essentially a bundled browser
I'd argue that this is a better choice than having to develop and port features to all their different platforms. By having their clients be a web view they're able to offer features / innovate quicker.
Spotify supports 320kbps. Lossless streaming is borderline a pointless luxury, and I'm happy not to subsidize it for people who want to stroke their gold ears or egos. There's luxury services for that.
My problem with Spotify is their lack of TFA. My account had a unique password that was somehow stolen a year and a half ago, at which point I realized users' full names, address, DOB, etc are all exposed on the profile screen once logged in. There's absolutely no email or text verification for new signins either. That, and the android app runs like shit, pushed me over to Play Music.
The shuffle feature in Spotify is probably among the worst, or perhaps is the worst, I've ever used.
It's more of a "shuffle-songs-from-the-same-artist-or-even-the-same-album-until-you're-annoyed-enough-to-manually-switch-songs" feature. It doesn't seem to be a proper shuffle, or even close to a randomization, no matter how many songs, artists, or albums are in your playlist.
That's the killer feature I've been waiting for...
> - Can't add third party songs to the cloud library
You can, actually. Although I'll admit it's not the easiest process. You simply need to manually add your songs into your library on the desktop, create a playlist with those songs, and all your other devices will now be able to download these third party songs via the playlist as well.
How is market share particularly important when their overall subscriber numbers have rocketed? The entire streaming market is increasing massively atm and all services are growing (well, maybe not Tidal...).
Normally, the company creates a number of new shares when the company goes public, offers the new shares to the public and uses the income to... well, to do something. Existing shareholders typically promise not to sell their shares for six months or so.
But it's perfectly possible to have some existing shareholders offer a few shares for sale instead of emitting new shares. Unconventional, and I'm sure some people disapprove of it for that reason, but perhaps the company doesn't need the cash and the existing shareholders don't want the dilution?
There are two stages to most American IPOs: registration and the initial public offering. Registration means your shares can be sold without relying on a Securities Act exemption [1], e.g. the rule which lets one sell private shares to accredited investors [2].
When you register, you have to start disclosing certain information, e.g. your financials, to the public. This is a hassle and expense most companies delay for as long as possible. Companies must register before an IPO; this is why registration and public offering are commonly conflated.
"IPO" specifically refers to the process by which an underwriting bank buys shares from the company (including, potentially, current investors) at a certain price and then sells those shares to the public at a different--hopefully higher--price [3]. Some companies cut out the underwriters by directly offering their shares to the public [4]; this is less common.
Spotify appears to be contemplating registering its shares but not issuing any new ones to the public. I presume this is to stop the bleeding from their TPG notes, which penalize them for not going public [5]. This would let existing investors more easily sell their shares. It would not raise new money for Spotify. Depending on the jurisdiction it chooses, reporting requirements may be lighter than the United States'.
How would the price be decided for the very first sale of shares? And before that sale, would there be a stock symbol with a "NULL" price? - I hope the stock market tested that corner case :-)
I don't know about shares, but for fixed income securities, it's common to have a null price. I know this because my code is littered with checks for them!
You could also use a reverse takeover where you purchase the assets of a smaller publicly listed company.
>A reverse takeover (RTO) is a type of merger that private companies use become publicly traded without resorting to an initial public offering (IPO). Initially, the private company buys enough shares to control a publicly traded company. The private company's shareholder then uses its shares in the private company to exchange for shares in the public company. At this point, the private company has effectively become a publicly traded company. An RTO is also known as a reverse merger or a reverse IPO.
This is the future. The value added by investment banks does not justify 10's or 100's of millions in fees. It's one of the biggest remaining inefficiencies in company growth that needs disruption.
The reason it hasn't happened yet seems straightforward. Companies are hesitant to be beta testers of a new model where so much is at stake. No one ever got fired for running an IPO through Goldmen Sachs.
The principle of people making obscene amounts of money doesn't bother me one bit. It would be nice if teachers had higher salaries, but NBA players make more money than teachers for many objective reasons. This situation is different.
Does anyone think this is the best we can do? One quick example:
You may be conflating what's going on here with a direct public offering [1]. Google, for example, did not use an underwriter in its DPO-style offering [2]. (Partly as a result, they massively underpriced.)
Spotify isn't doing a DPO nor an IPO. They will simply allow their shares to be traded by third parties. Since Spotify, itself, is raising no cash there isn't a need for an underwriter nor an auction process. Each investor will need to figure out listing, trading, clearing and settlement, et cetera mostly on their own.
Snapchat had underwriters and popped 50% on opening. Isn't that also massively underpriced? Life insurance and health insurance companies don't make the obscene margins and figures that investment banks do. Investment banks basically rob you silly when they underwrite. It's not insurance. It's clear that you will be underpricing if you want your IPO to be underwritten.
However the point is that after considering this and all other value add, it's still vastly over priced, and is propagated by a happenstance of a few unhealthy market dynamics.
Please, take a look at the link I posted above. Do you agree with how those fees are applied?
I agree there are downsides. But IB profits on IPOs are excessive and not mild like you'd expect of an insurance company. Hijacking the term "underwriting" is a bit dishonest.
No, IB fees are definitely a factor in this decision. I believe the WSJ mentioned that was part of the decision process.
Also, the Google result is really hard to draw any conclusions from. It's one data point vs. many underwritten deals of which some have done better. some have done worse.
The the main point is I do not see any reason, at least in principle, that the current model could be vastly improved.
> Each investor will need to figure out listing, trading, clearing and settlement, et cetera mostly on their own.
I would think at a minimum Spotify would convert all equity holders to common stock and would register the shares with the appropriate clearinghouse depending on where they were listing. Even if they didn't register with an exchange they could be be traded over the counter. More likely they would register with an exchange and take care of those mechanical details for their investors.
The real risk here is that they list but don't get any analyst coverage and no one wants to act as a market maker for the stock initially. Analyst coverage is part of the quid pro quo for an IPO, and companies typically want to see analyst coverage of past IPO clients, with BUY ratings on those stocks.
Personally I don't think coverage commitments matter that much. Modern markets are price efficient. Spotify is big enough that they would get coverage and market makers without paying the IPO tax. And they can do a much cheaper follow-on offering after the shares have been public, with greater certainty as to the price.
For smaller companies it's much easier to languish without anyone paying attention to your stock, and this would be much riskier.
How is that relevant? Does it mean if the stakes are high it's impossible to overpay so don't question it?
People paid through the nose for IBM PCs because a lot was at stake. But not because IBM actually lessened their risk, but because it took a little time before people realized they were leaving money on the table unnecessarily.
A noob question: Why don’t companies just bypass the underwriters and offer their stock for sale using a Dutch auction, where the price starts very high and gradually decreases until the most optimistic investors decide to buy? That way, the company always sells at the highest price the market is ready to offer.
Companies with limited name recognition outside of their industry--Okta comes to mind--may not be able to scare up enough liquidity in the marketplace to absorb the millions of shares on offer by the company. A true unrestricted dutch auction may end up going off close to zero. That's what the IPO roadshow is about, giving your pitch and soliciting bids for shares. The investment banks act as gatekeepers to these potential investors, and arguably getting face time with their clients is a large part of what the fees the company pays are for.
Couldn't such an auction be performed entirely online? An online dutch auction where institutional and retail investors can buy shares in an online live auction? There might be some technical hurdles to solve to ensure everybody is updated while the auction is running but this would at least reduce the liquidity problem for these auctions.
Yes, however I think the hard part is getting the attention and interest of the investors in the first place. The IBs also act as a quality signal in the other direction, too. That is, I, as a potential investor am more likely to invest if the deal is brought to me by Morgan Stanley than if presented on some startup platform. I'm not passing judgement on that mindset, I'm just pointing out that it is the case for a large percentage of those potential investors.
Dutch auction has notable downsides, namely the free-rider problem.
The way it's supposed to work is that a number of investors do due diligence, decide on the price they think it's worth it to them, and make their bids. Once enough pledges been made, the lowest price is given to all bidders.
However an investor may decide to join in without any effort put into due diligence. Instead he will decide to bid high and rely on others to set the fair price.
First, the "honest" investors end up paying for the free riders. Second, the free-riders end up crowding in and bidding up the price above the reasonable level. Consequently the "honest" investors put all the effort into it and end up with nothing to buy at their determined price. In the end "honest" investors end up not participating at all, so the Dutch auction thing just fell apart.
In short, smart money was in charge setting correct price, but smart money was crowded out by dumb money. This problem is not unique to Dutch auctions, but it appears that that's where it is the most acute.
Could you explain a bit more? I don't see how free riders are a problem. Anyone who's willing to pay an arbitrarily high price in order to get in on the stock should probably get some stock. If there are enough such actors, they'd significantly raise the sale price, but that's the point, isn't it?
1. Suppose two funds compete, and the both partake in a Dutch auction. They end up with having the same stock at the same price at the dutch auction, and so the same income. However the free-rider gets fewer expenses so his profits are higher. The diligent fund is losing to the free rider in profits. After a while there are no more diligent funds.
2. The diligent fund prices stock at "proper" value, the free-rider prices it higher hoping to pay the lower, "proper" price but getting ahead of the diligent fund in the queue. If there are many free-riders they all end up in the queue before the diligent fund, so the latter may get less stock, or no stock at all. After a couple of such experiences the diligent funds stop partaking in any new Dutch auctions.
What if instead of a blind auction, a company conducts an open Dutch auction? That is, everyone can see the amount of stock sold so far and the price of each transaction (the buyers may remain anonymous). The prices different buyers pay are not necessarily the same: the first buyer pays the highest price, the late buyers pay less but risk having nothing at all if they wait too long. In an open auction, bidding too high just causes the buyer to lose some money.
"They could also avoid the classic “leave money on the table” scenario, where institutional investors and the other high net worth individuals who have access to IPOs reap all the benefits from the first day’s gains."
Main justification of IPO IMHO is greedy banks, early investors, and underwriters aiming to cash out a lot on the first day without giving a crap about the company or its employees in general.
It is a welcoming step and a step in right direction. Cut the middle man out.
The biggest problem with Spotify is that they aren't a company they are a feature. Streaming music is being considered a low margin value add by companies with much deeper pockets like Apple, Google, and Amazon.
None of Spotify's competitors are trying to make a company sustainable profit from music streaming.
83 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadGrowing your losses whilst losing market share is not an enormously attractive value proposition to investors.
Examples:
- Redesigning the client multiple times
- moving from native clients to essentially a bundled browser
- removal of lyrics feature
- can only store 3333 songs offline on a device - 10000 songs is the limit for the library
- Still no Hi-Fi option
- Can't add third party songs to the cloud library
And the competition is definitly rising: For example, Apple Music offers lyrics, a song limit of 100000, can store all of those songs offline, play back on 10 different devices at the same time and store all those songs offline. Also, you can drag and drop the songs that are unavailable into your library, which makes them available on all of your devices.
Once Apple Music releases a web player (or a client for Linux), I'm done with Spotify. For the moment, I need it for my desktop, which runs Linux.
When it also has a "Discover" system that works semi-well. Why not open to the Discover screen? If I was that plugged in into the zeitgeist pop music-wise, why wouldn't I just listen to the radio?
The move to Apple Music wasn't entirely without friction. There was no very good migration story, only third party apps and the results of these were so-so at best. But this was a one time cost, since then it's been a smooth ride. I pretty much only use apple hardware and the fact that Apple Music works great on all platforms is a huge win for me – Spotify doesn't even have an Apple TV app which was also a pretty big reason for my switch.
I also feel that Apple Music has improved a lot in these past 6-8 months, perhaps not so much in terms of app features and the likes, but I've definitely noticed changes in music availability. Most tracks and albums that I searched for half a year ago but weren't available are there now, and when I started I felt it was hit-and-miss whether the particular songs I was looking for would be there or not. Today I can't remember last time I tried to find a song but it wasn't available.
The only annoying thing now are my friends sending me Spotify links, since it means I have to look up the link, see what song/album they are linking me to, and search for it in Apple Music. This feels like something we should've solved with URNs instead of URLs...
I have been a premium user of spotify for over a year now and I actually really love it. Maybe I don't use as much features as other people do.
I have a bunch of playlists (18) and love their discovery feature as well. I listen to it every time when I am at work - or doing chores at home - and sometimes during the commute on my phone. Same goes for 2 family members.
I don't miss the lyrics feature - I used it occasionally but it was shortly after I started using spotify so it's hard to miss something you have not really had the opportunity to use for a long time.
I have used their client on Windows and Mac (work), Linux (home) and mobile (android) and actually did not have issues with either of them. For what I use it (listening to music..) it does everything I want and does so perfectly.
Storing songs offline? No thank you, if I wanted to do that, I would just torrent the albums I like.
About the Hi-Fi option, they do have a HQ option but I am not sure which "quality" that actually is. I'm not an audiophile though, but I bet the average user isn't. So they might not care.
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But, like I said, to me it is essentially just a cloud music player and should not be anything else. I don't use any of the social features, I'm surely not an audiophile, and I can actually not compare it to Apple Music.
(Sidenote: The pricing is really good as well, at least the premium model where you can add family members).
EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not affiliated with Spotify, and as always, this is just my opinion and yours might be different which is completely OK. :-)
Like the parent I really would like to be able to complete my library with my own music files when I can't find something on Spotify. That would be massively convenient for me and it doesn't seem like it would be a massive hassle for them to implement (as long as they limit the maximum amount of storage to something reasonable). I'm sure many users would love to be able to add their own audio files and podcasts to their library to access them from their spotify client everywhere.
I would also really love if they added a truly random mode. I get that they try to have a "clever" shuffle mode that's supposed to avoid playing the same artist back to back and things like that, but for most of my playlists I don't actually need that and spotify ends up replaying the same tracks before it's exhausted the rest of the playlist. As a side effect it also seems to favor certain titles over others in my experience. Just give me an option to turn on "dumb" random mode and I'll be happy.
"Hi-Fi" mode is probably snake oil but I guess it'd make for a nice marketing gimmick. I'm personally perfectly content with the premium audio quality as it is currently.
I still don't plan on canceling my subscription but I'm mildly annoyed that in this past year I've seen features disappearing while nothing of great value was being added.
The problem isn't the storage, but figuring out who the rights holders are and ensuring they get paid for those streams too. And it gets even more complicated for things you might have that Spotify doesn't have in their catalogue vs. is not allowed to let you play due to geographical restrictions. There's no easy way to guarantee correctness and completeness of the metadata uploaded by others whereas they can reasonably trust what is given to them by music labels.
Dropbox "allows" for it but they're in a grey area, just like other services have been able to skirt the issue. It's likely to not be a big enough concern for anyone right now to go after that particular use case.
It runs in a web browser on Linux just fine - and I find a lot of their suggested artists/tracks are closer to my tastes than I got from Spotify.
On the other hand, they added things like making discovering new music much easier, like "Daily Mixes" and "Discover Weekly", which - again, I don't have any hard data to back this up - made a ton of users very happy.
Also, complaining about stuff like "only" being able to store 3333 songs is pretty silly.
Better headphones make the illusions of the psychoacoustic models work better, much like a stage magician will be more convincing with more precise execution of his tricks.
Or in other words: if you are good at identifying the differences between lossy and lossless that might be because you have golden ears. But it could just as well be because you are using tinny cans. (Or any combination thereof)
I use Spotify as much as conceivably possible (~20 hours per week) and haven't heard a peep of discontent from anybody. Totally agree - Spotify is incredible.
Lyrics; people listen to music and then enjoy singing along. This little thing called karaoke supports a whole industry, for engineers and non-engineers alike, so people can get together and sing songs.
Redesigning the client. New interfaces are scary and different for non-engineers.
Can't add third party songs to cloud library. Non-engineers understand that some licensing nonsense means they can't get Taylor Swift on their Spotify, and then... just don't use Spotify, because all their music is on the Apple.
I'm not including "native client to bundled browser" as something non-engineers care about, but people do ask "why does the new version of $program make my laptop fans get all loud?"
I have much better results playing a full album on youtube and letting youtubes auto play feature pick the next album for me. I've discovered a half dozen artists that way on the last year.
My daily mixes never flow correctly. I'll have a softer, technical indie track followed by a technical heavy metal song. It's bad enough that I can't use them at all.
My friends and I average over 20 hours a week as well and we're all pissed about their recent decisions. The removal of messaging/direct sharing was the final straw for me.
If there isn't a "I do not like this" feature for a machine learning feature, that UX isn't good. Other users have raise this concerns too (google it).
Supposedly, the feature works at least in part by analyzing your playlists and giving recommendations based on what the people with similar songs in their playlists have there as well. He claimed to be receiving less Finnish rap m after removing his playlists with northern Swedish rap, so you could try that approach if you still have any Chinese/Korean playlists.
I just remove the few offending songs from my discover weekly, which I don't find too much of a hassle, but it doesn't seem to learn from that.
As a big fan of data analysis I've also noticed that they no longer accurately report or record user preferences and instead heavily weight popular artists. They also only sent out the "Year in Review" to people that were subscribed to their spam emails.
Those two things are what brought me to them over Google Play Music. I'm currently in the process of switching back.
People don't care how an app is made usually. I really dislike the 10000 song limit too but none of my friends seem to know or care. A hi-fi option def can't matter much to people or Tidal would've been more popular for that reason, no?
I have my own ax to grind with offline music not scrobbling to last.fm even close to properly but I'm not going to even pretend that more than a fraction of their users care or know about the feature. Similarly I don't think people would have an issue with 3k+ offline track limit. That's a lot to me.
Apple Music does seem to have a lot of good features though. Give you that.
I'd argue that this is a better choice than having to develop and port features to all their different platforms. By having their clients be a web view they're able to offer features / innovate quicker.
Spotify supports 320kbps. Lossless streaming is borderline a pointless luxury, and I'm happy not to subsidize it for people who want to stroke their gold ears or egos. There's luxury services for that.
My problem with Spotify is their lack of TFA. My account had a unique password that was somehow stolen a year and a half ago, at which point I realized users' full names, address, DOB, etc are all exposed on the profile screen once logged in. There's absolutely no email or text verification for new signins either. That, and the android app runs like shit, pushed me over to Play Music.
It's more of a "shuffle-songs-from-the-same-artist-or-even-the-same-album-until-you're-annoyed-enough-to-manually-switch-songs" feature. It doesn't seem to be a proper shuffle, or even close to a randomization, no matter how many songs, artists, or albums are in your playlist.
That's the killer feature I've been waiting for...
You can, actually. Although I'll admit it's not the easiest process. You simply need to manually add your songs into your library on the desktop, create a playlist with those songs, and all your other devices will now be able to download these third party songs via the playlist as well.
How does one become a publicly owned/traded enterprise without an initial offering of one's shares to the public?
But it's perfectly possible to have some existing shareholders offer a few shares for sale instead of emitting new shares. Unconventional, and I'm sure some people disapprove of it for that reason, but perhaps the company doesn't need the cash and the existing shareholders don't want the dilution?
When you register, you have to start disclosing certain information, e.g. your financials, to the public. This is a hassle and expense most companies delay for as long as possible. Companies must register before an IPO; this is why registration and public offering are commonly conflated.
"IPO" specifically refers to the process by which an underwriting bank buys shares from the company (including, potentially, current investors) at a certain price and then sells those shares to the public at a different--hopefully higher--price [3]. Some companies cut out the underwriters by directly offering their shares to the public [4]; this is less common.
Spotify appears to be contemplating registering its shares but not issuing any new ones to the public. I presume this is to stop the bleeding from their TPG notes, which penalize them for not going public [5]. This would let existing investors more easily sell their shares. It would not raise new money for Spotify. Depending on the jurisdiction it chooses, reporting requirements may be lighter than the United States'.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answersregis33htm.html
[2] https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answers-rule506htm.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_public_offering
[5] https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-02-08/spotify...
>A reverse takeover (RTO) is a type of merger that private companies use become publicly traded without resorting to an initial public offering (IPO). Initially, the private company buys enough shares to control a publicly traded company. The private company's shareholder then uses its shares in the private company to exchange for shares in the public company. At this point, the private company has effectively become a publicly traded company. An RTO is also known as a reverse merger or a reverse IPO.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reversetakeover.asp
> “It seems short-sighted and very risky,” said Barrett Daniels, CEO and managing partner at Nextstep Advisory Services. “Don’t they want money?”
The reason it hasn't happened yet seems straightforward. Companies are hesitant to be beta testers of a new model where so much is at stake. No one ever got fired for running an IPO through Goldmen Sachs.
The principle of people making obscene amounts of money doesn't bother me one bit. It would be nice if teachers had higher salaries, but NBA players make more money than teachers for many objective reasons. This situation is different.
Does anyone think this is the best we can do? One quick example:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/11/where-banks...
Spotify isn't doing a DPO nor an IPO. They will simply allow their shares to be traded by third parties. Since Spotify, itself, is raising no cash there isn't a need for an underwriter nor an auction process. Each investor will need to figure out listing, trading, clearing and settlement, et cetera mostly on their own.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_public_offering
[2] http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
The cost of taking risks can be very high. There are not inconsiderable likely downsides.
However the point is that after considering this and all other value add, it's still vastly over priced, and is propagated by a happenstance of a few unhealthy market dynamics.
Please, take a look at the link I posted above. Do you agree with how those fees are applied?
Also, the Google result is really hard to draw any conclusions from. It's one data point vs. many underwritten deals of which some have done better. some have done worse.
The the main point is I do not see any reason, at least in principle, that the current model could be vastly improved.
I would think at a minimum Spotify would convert all equity holders to common stock and would register the shares with the appropriate clearinghouse depending on where they were listing. Even if they didn't register with an exchange they could be be traded over the counter. More likely they would register with an exchange and take care of those mechanical details for their investors.
The real risk here is that they list but don't get any analyst coverage and no one wants to act as a market maker for the stock initially. Analyst coverage is part of the quid pro quo for an IPO, and companies typically want to see analyst coverage of past IPO clients, with BUY ratings on those stocks.
Personally I don't think coverage commitments matter that much. Modern markets are price efficient. Spotify is big enough that they would get coverage and market makers without paying the IPO tax. And they can do a much cheaper follow-on offering after the shares have been public, with greater certainty as to the price.
For smaller companies it's much easier to languish without anyone paying attention to your stock, and this would be much riskier.
People paid through the nose for IBM PCs because a lot was at stake. But not because IBM actually lessened their risk, but because it took a little time before people realized they were leaving money on the table unnecessarily.
Worse outcomes have happened: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-and...
The way it's supposed to work is that a number of investors do due diligence, decide on the price they think it's worth it to them, and make their bids. Once enough pledges been made, the lowest price is given to all bidders.
However an investor may decide to join in without any effort put into due diligence. Instead he will decide to bid high and rely on others to set the fair price.
First, the "honest" investors end up paying for the free riders. Second, the free-riders end up crowding in and bidding up the price above the reasonable level. Consequently the "honest" investors put all the effort into it and end up with nothing to buy at their determined price. In the end "honest" investors end up not participating at all, so the Dutch auction thing just fell apart.
In short, smart money was in charge setting correct price, but smart money was crowded out by dumb money. This problem is not unique to Dutch auctions, but it appears that that's where it is the most acute.
1. Suppose two funds compete, and the both partake in a Dutch auction. They end up with having the same stock at the same price at the dutch auction, and so the same income. However the free-rider gets fewer expenses so his profits are higher. The diligent fund is losing to the free rider in profits. After a while there are no more diligent funds.
2. The diligent fund prices stock at "proper" value, the free-rider prices it higher hoping to pay the lower, "proper" price but getting ahead of the diligent fund in the queue. If there are many free-riders they all end up in the queue before the diligent fund, so the latter may get less stock, or no stock at all. After a couple of such experiences the diligent funds stop partaking in any new Dutch auctions.
Main justification of IPO IMHO is greedy banks, early investors, and underwriters aiming to cash out a lot on the first day without giving a crap about the company or its employees in general.
It is a welcoming step and a step in right direction. Cut the middle man out.
None of Spotify's competitors are trying to make a company sustainable profit from music streaming.