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Comment by anotherthrow2 | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing more than PR fluff. Spotify is in big trouble, as waging war with Apple is proving to be far more costly than they expected.

I want to know how much Techcrunch got paid for this advertisement.

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My instincts feel that way, but Apple Music announced they crossed 20 million paid users in 12/2016, 40% of Spotify's 50+ million. Anecdotally, discover weekly is a tremendous hit.

Makes you wish for functional public capital markets so we knew the real story.

Spotify has partnered with telecoms, newspapers, and others to provide bundled subscriptions -- inflating their "paid" subscriber amount.

A good chunk of those 50m aren't paying $10/mo; they've expanded their partnerships (in part) to inflate that number.

Very interesting. Can you give me some pointers on what kind of partnerships they have?

Every Starbucks barista (who's worked at Starbucks for some number of months) receives a free Spotify subscription, for example.

Here in Australia, Vodafone (a mobile carrier) have been bundling Spotify Premium with their contracts, for example: https://www.whistleout.com.au/MobilePhones/News/Vodafone-rev...

Interestingly Apple did a similar thing with Telstra (the largest, formerly state owned carrier), with a year free on 1 year contracts.

That has now become more of a free trial sort of deal though: https://www.telstra.com.au/applemusic

Here in the Philippines the major providers bundle Spotify with data plans. Also, a family subscription here is a fraction of what it was back home in the US (~P159 vs ~$10+)

With Rogers in Canada some plans get Spotify free for 6 months.

In New Zealand, Spark (our largest telco, the ex-state monopoly) offers free Spotify with their mobile plans.

NYTimes All Access subscription ($5/week) includes a free year of Spotify premium.

The most recent one I heard was a partnership with the New York Times, which seems like an odd partnership to me:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cheriehu/2017/02/13/spotify-new...

There's also Spotify family. I'm paying 15 USD for 5 (extended) family members. Dirt cheap. Discover weekly is amazing. Wish for the best for Spotify.

And students at accredited universities in the US get half price($5.00) a month subscriptions.

> Anecdotally, discover weekly is a tremendous hit.

Would be nice to try, but it is restricted for me.

I switched from Google Play Music to Spotify specifically because of Discover Weekly and the curated playlists that spotify hosts. I pretty much only listen to music from one of those two.

Conversely, the "daily mix" playlists seem to be utter crap for me.

I like the daily mixes, possibly because I have hundreds of saved songs across dozens of playlists.

Heh, it's the opposite for me. I rarely get anything out of Discover Weekly (just too random) but the daily mixes work well.

Discover weekly is great but Apple Music now has the same thing (My New Music Mix) and an additional 'My Favourites Mix' which is kind of a weekly playlist made up of songs they think you already like but haven't heard in a while and one or two songs you don't know but by artists you already like.

I think discover weekly is much more than that, and that is precisely what makes discover weekly so good!!

>> I think discover weekly is much more than that

I don't understand. The 'My New Music Mix' feature is exactly the same as Discover Weekly. It presents you a weekly playlist of music you don't know yet but might like based on your listening patterns. I've used both extensively (I have subscriptions to Apple Music and Spotify) and they do the same thing (although obviously with different algorithms).

Agreed, I came here to say the same thing, namely this is a PR fluff piece, not serious journalism. I don't believe there is a records executive at any of the major 3 labels that is legitimately concerned about Spotify gaining "leverage" over them. And like you mentioned Apple seems to be quietly growing its subscribers in leaps in bounds:

https://9to5mac.com/2017/02/13/apple-music-subscribers-past-...

I don't have any real reason to believe so, but I doubt techcrunch would accept money straight up for an article.

Access to scoops and leaks, which translate into articles that get page views, which translate into ad dollars, is an indirect way to pay off a journalist.

There is an actual price list for those if you know where to look and you know right people.

You absolutely can buy your way on there. You pay a PR firm with a strong enough relationship with an editor to get anything on there.

This goes for traditional news orgs as well.

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