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Comment by mcintyre1994 | Hacker News Reader

mcintyre1994

Why wouldn't everyone just go to Apple/Google Music if Spotify raised their prices? None of them have exclusive content or features that rival Netflix's exclusive library, I don't see why Spotify have any meaningful pricing power. I'm one of those people who hit OK this year when Netflix raised their price, but I'll immediately leave Spotify if they raise their prices and the competition don't - they have nothing sticky for me.

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Same reason people don't move from Amazon to Wal-Mart, or Apple to Android, or Netflix to...I don't even know what. Spotify is objectively better as a service, people love it, and we are creatures of habit. There are other factors like social and all the playlists you've created. Besides, people derive value from things based on more than price alone. You might not see why they have pricing power but the fact is they have over 60 million paying subscribers so they must be doing something right. And is the ~$10/month meaningful for any of those subscribers? Probably not at all. I mean, you're going to tell me that people line up to buy a $1,000 iPhone which costs 25% more than a previous model but perhaps an extra $2/month for Spotify (#12 app on App Store - right in between Gmail app and Uber) is going to cause an exodus? I'll take the other side of that one.

Good point.

If Spotify started charging $15 instead of $9.99 I wouldn't care, I would still pay. They are simply the best music streaming service out there IMO.

I payed for Google Music for a bit a while ago and I hated it and switch to Spotify. The experience was awful. I'm also pretty sure that Google Music rips audio from Youtube in certain cases which makes the audio quality terrible.

> I payed for Google Music for a bit a while ago and I hated it and switch to Spotify.

It's always so interesting how people can have similar experiences but come out with completely different perspectives. For me, the Google Play Radio feature is the most important thing they have. It's like a Pandora that doesn't play you the same three songs over and over. When I would try and use the radio feature on Spotify it would play music that was not even close to the original other than it maybe being in the "alternative" category.

Spotify's strength is their recommendation engine, IMO. It's really good.

For me it's the concerts listing, which shows you when an artist is in town and how to buy tickets.

Oh wow, I just realised that feature exists.

Also looks like Zhu is coming to town Next week. Might have to grab some tickets.

Spotify eventually makes great recommendations. The Daily Mixes (I think there's always 6) consistently deliver music I enjoy while maintaining a much better "genre theme" than anything I ever heard from Pandora.

I say eventually, because it's conditional on you using the service to seek out a variety of music you enjoy, and also on providing feedback via thumbsup/add-to-library actions. Try this for a month and you'll get good recommendations that continue improving over time.

I also tried Google Music for a while before leaving it. They enticed me by offering to host all my MP3s, so I could stream my entire collection to any of my devices.

Later I found out they would use user uploads in their catalog (when legally able), so it sounds more likely that someone uploaded a bad copy that was shared, rather than Google ripping music from youtube.

I see much less differentiating spotify from its competitors, than in the case of amazon/anyone else or apple/android. Objectively better.. maybe? Don't really see it, personally. But say that's true - what's stopping Google or Apple from investing heavily in their offerings and crushing spotify in the process? Again - what's the moat here?

Can't help but feel that you're projecting your personal love for spotify onto others.

> Same reason people don't move from Amazon to Wal-Mart, or Apple to Android, or Netflix

The big difference is Apple has its own ecosystem, Amazon and Wal-Mart sell a lot of different stuff, Netflix has a TON of original shows to differentiate itself from Hulu and others.

Spotify? They literally offer the identical catalog of music as everyone else. Literally. Sure their apps may be slightly better but who cares? If they raised their prices why not move to the more native solution your platform offers for cheaper? Google Music, Apple Music, Microsoft Groove (lol), Amazon Music; they all offer the same damn thing.

Then why is Spotify so freakin popular? Why do they have more than double the subscribers as Apple Music which arguably has major advantages (resources, pre-installed, etc)?

First mover advantage? Spotify has been around for many, many years before just about anyone else that matters. Since they're all basically the same thing why would you change after new ones came out? I kept with Google Music for the longest time before moving to spotify only because of the family deal (which, if I remember correctly, came before Google's deal and really the only reason why I ever switched).

Sorry, not buying it. You don't grow to 60 million paying subs on a generic product that has little more than a first mover advantage. Their subscriber count grew 50% from Sep 16 through Jul 17 alone when everyone was competing aggressively. It grew a ton after Apple Music came out. It grew a ton after Google Music came out. It grew a ton after Amazon Music came out.

Maybe, just maybe, Spotify is actually really great and customers love it.

This reminds me of people debating Apple vs Android circa 2012.

Yep. Apple Music is a nonstarter for me because the Android app was pretty shitty when I tried it in early 2017 and didn't integrate into the rest of the OS in native-like ways, especially when it came to things like Android Auto. I find the Google Music interface a disaster, and the Spotify clients seem to have better last.fm integration, which I haven't found in the Google clients. I also hate the desktop Google Music client, it's quite primitive feature-wise. Spotify's desktop app isn't as nice as iTunes (why are play counts and granular ratings gone from everywhere else :( ) but at least it's a start, and last.fm can pick up on play count tracking for me. Amazon's offering seems even more half-assed than Apple's.

If you're gonna ask me to re-create all my playlists and invest the time to train the recommendation engine, your client better be damn good. Otherwise what's an extra few bucks a month for not having to bother relearning shit? $10/month difference would probably get me thinking, though...

- Bundle the subscription with another service. Like when dropbox pro came with the galaxy S.

- Seamless user registration and free trial that comes with automatic recurring payment. You'd be surprised how easy it to get $5 monthly out of android/apple account without people noticing.

- Bots, lost and fake accounts

- Arrange statistics generally speaking and careful wording. "subscribers" doesn't distinguish between free trial, inactive accounts or long term regular users.

There are plentiful ways to handle PR however you like. Only the insiders really know what's happening inside a company.

If you're making the argument "Spotify probably isn't that much more popular, it just inflates its numbers" you've got a high burden of proof to clear with people who see everyone around them using Spotify at a much higher rate than the competing services. Maybe that's not your experience in your circles, but it's clearly a lot of other peoples', just from reading this thread.

Let's not call that "inflating numbers". No company will publish a detailed report on their users, costs and revenues.

I am making the argument that a company saying it has millions of users and is growing is not enough to judge of its current and future situation.

Groove Music is literally dead. Play Music is buried on the Play Store somewhere as if Google doesn't want people to access it. Seriously, I had to do a Google search to find it. Its UI is not as good as Spotify (in my opinion) and the service doesn't seem like a priority for Google.

I haven't tried Apple Music and Amazon.

Spotify on the other hand has a decent desktop app available on Windows, macOS and even Linux. Their mobile app is great, too. They have brand power, a UI that a lot of people like and their AI-based playlist engine is amazing.

I was agreeing with you as I read these replies but then I thought of what would actually happen if Apple Music raised their prices. I think I would stay. All the music and likes/dislikes that it has about me are a pain to move. And also I really value Beats 1 and that is worth the price raise to me alone. So maybe we really are creatures of habit.

I'm also a subscriber and love Beats 1, but I believe Beats 1 is free. Sometimes I wonder if I should just unsubscribe and listen to Beats 1 all day.

It just works -- pretty much exactly the way I want it to. I've been a Spotify user for 5 years, have occasionally tried competing services, but I've never cancelled my subscription. Even if they'd double the price, I wouldn't cancel my account.

I had a six month trial of Google Music and YouTube Red, thinking I'd go to that instead of Spotify.

I canceled the Google one because changing over was too much effort.

Are there scripts to aid changing services to convert playlists etc? That'd increase competition and decrease lock-in.

If I change password manager there are scripts. If I change browser there's addons for the other browser as well. [...]

I assume, but here's the thing: it's ten bucks a month and I don't watch YouTube on devices without ad-blockers very often. It's not worth my time to think about it.

I have all my play lists and albums saved in Spotify. Is there a tool that let's you export all that stuff to another service? If not, then switching would not at all be worth all the hassle just to save a couple bucks a month.

Because Apple and Google Music suck? And non Apple fanboys would never go to Apple music, Apple customers are probably already there, and people don't want to give all their business to the big giants which do evil things? (Not that Spotify doesn't do evil things). Spotify also lets you catalog your own tracks from local drives... does Apple Music or Google Music let you do that?

>And non Apple fanboys would never go to Apple music,

I did. Apple Music still has one major selling point: They own iTunes so anything on iTunes is on AM. For spotify and other streaming services you still have to wait a couple hours to a few days for something to appear on the other streaming services

That being said I moved back to Spotify after a year because of how awful and buggy the UI in AM is. If Apple Music could improve the UI and fix the bugs that have been about for years they could really do well. But I have my doubts as to whether that will ever happen

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