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Comment by WisNorCan | Hacker News Reader

People often use Netflix as a parallel to reason about Spotify and circumventing labels.

But it is a bad comparison. Start with the consumer and work back.

Consumers expect their music streaming service to have any song they are looking for. For video they don’t have the same expectation.

Music has a greater element of “I want to listen to this particular song/album because it is my favorite”. Video is more about “I want to find something new to watch”.

That fundamentally changes the value of having a complete catalog in music and puts Spotify in a weaker spot relative to Netflix.

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I agree that comprehensive catalogues matter more for music, but I think we're missing another area where Netflix and Spotify are similar (and where Spotify may arguably be better than Netflix): acting as a recommendation engine.

Netflix has been able to track exactly what types of movies consumers are into so that it can deliver more in the same vein. Originally, it would send consumers to other movies it licensed. Now, as a producer, it can direct consumers towards its own flow of productions.

Spotify's recommendation engine has long been a draw for many users. I believe Spotify is setting itself up to be able to increasingly direct users into its own Spotify-flow of artists and musicians. The recent change to playlist mechanics (so that playlists autoplay "recommended similar songs" once completed) will make this even easier.

Having a huge catalog is important, but controlling the flow of what's popular may trump the back catalog in the long run.

edit: Spotify is not as far along in the process as Netflix, obviously, and the entrenched nature of the music business doesn't help, especially with the market practice of locking artists into 7-year exclusive contracts. I believe it will go in the same direction - it's just going to take a little longer.

Spotify's recommendations used to be very good for me, but Discover Weekly has gotten dramatically worse in the past few months. I'm lucky to find one good new song in there these days, whereas I used to love the entire playlist.

Netflix's "recommendations" have been pretty terrible from day 1 -- it's mostly random garbage, and suffers from serious issues like grouping sci-fi with horror (seriously? Star Trek TNG belongs in the same category as Hellraiser?) -- and since they started producing their own content their recommendations have quickly become thinly-veiled attempts to push their own mostly-poor content. Add in their horrible UI, replete with autoplaying previews as you browse tiles paired with obnoxious stock music, and Netflix has become something painful to use. I've been moving back to renting/pirating depending on availability and price this year because Netflix doesn't have anything worth watching that I haven't already seen.

So I'm not the only one with that problem! All Spotify recommends to me these days are covers, most of them video game style themes. I like chiptunes and Minecraft parodies as much as anyone, but not to the exclusion of all else. I don't know what they changed to cause this, but I haven't opened Spotify in a month.

Now I open Bandcamp first when I want music.

For video they don’t have the same expectation.

I think this has more to do with the economics of pirating movies versus music.

When Netflix started, people were not used to torrenting (or Napster-ing, or Kazaa-ing, etc) movies. They were already at the mercy of Blockbuster, so being at the mercy of Netflix instead wasn't that big a deal. Pirating movies is more popular today, but people are still generally OK with having a limited movie selection.

Whereas by the time iTunes Music rolled around, people were already comfortable with having the whole world of music at their fingertips. You can't undo something like that easily. So the only way forward has been to try to have everything.

Perhaps the most interesting part about all this is that there was never (to my knowledge) such a thing as a store where you could rent records, tapes, or CDs -- Blockbuster for music.

> When Netflix started, people were not used to torrenting (or Napster-ing, or Kazaa-ing, etc) movies

Can you provide a source for this that adjusts for the increase in worldwide internet use as well as bandwidth?

When Netflix started, it was an overnight DVD delivery company, not directly competing with online movie piracy. Pirating movies in 1997 meant making large sacrifices over quality and convenience, not because people "weren't used to it".

By the time Netflix entered the online movie streaming market to compete with piracy, the DMCA had been in effect for years. The world was very used to filesharing before the DMCA went into effect. And Blockbuster was already suffering poorly not just because of Netflix but because of a general shift in how people consume their movies.

> Whereas by the time iTunes Music rolled around, people were already comfortable with having the whole world of music at their fingertips

Through YouTube? Because otherwise I don't know of a truly comprehensive legal streaming service. Unless you're referring to filesharing?

> Perhaps the most interesting part about all this is that there was never (to my knowledge) such a thing as a store where you could rent records, tapes, or CDs -- Blockbuster for music.

Music-ripping tools were ubiquitous at the time (everyone had a CD drive), movie ripping tools were not nearly as popular. It didn't economically make sense.

adjusts for the increase in worldwide internet use as well as bandwidth

Why? The fact that it was physically hard to pirate movies in 1997 is part of why people didn't do it.

Through YouTube

iTunes Music predates YouTube being a viable music platform. I'm talking about filesharing.

Music-ripping tools were ubiquitous at the time

I'm talking about pre-CD-drive.

Netflix as a streaming service wasn't pre-CD-drive.

Music also has much more replay-ability than movies.

Can you provide any references for "people were not used to torrenting movies" or "pirating movies is more popular today".

I don't disagree but I also find these foundational to your argument and they appear to be perceived opinion.

> Perhaps the most interesting part about all this is that there was never (to my knowledge) such a thing as a store where you could rent records, tapes, or CDs -- Blockbuster for music.

Not a store, but you can rent records, tapes and CDs at most libraries.

Theoretically, yes. But I’ve never seen anyone actually do it.

Maybe you should get out more?

You can but the selection is quite limited.

> Perhaps the most interesting part about all this is that there was never (to my knowledge) such a thing as a store where you could rent records, tapes, or CDs -- Blockbuster for music.

That is because it is illegal. 17 U.S.C. § 109(b).

> That is because it is illegal. 17 U.S.C. § 109(b).

It seems one could start a private non-profit library whose purpose is teaching about music history that rents CDs and promotes musical performances. I could call it "Musicbuster" perhaps. I'm assuming no one has done this because there isn't really a market for it? Or is that not a clear and easily exploited loophole in law?

> It seems one could start a private non-profit library whose purpose is teaching about music history that rents CDs and promotes musical performances. I could call it "Musicbuster" perhaps. I'm assuming no one has done this because there isn't really a market for it?

Even if there is a market for it, the nature of the legal limitation to a non-profit library is that the usual capitalist incentives for serving such a market are removed.

Does the "computer program" not include games?

Because Redbox rents games

I do not agree with "For video they don’t have the same expectation" - this is exactly my expectations for say Netflix. Now today I know this is not true and never will be, but I did believe and expected it a couple of years ago.

Your expectations were probably influenced by having been a subscriber to their DVD service, for which they _did_ have nearly every movie you could imagine. Their streaming service is only a subset of the movies they had (have) on DVD.

There was a time when you could reliably say "I'll just wait for it to come out on Netflix." It was an expectation that led a ton of friends to sign up. I am talking about the streaming service. I just left Netflix because it's so far from what the service is now.

Not exactly.. in fact I've been more disappointed when I go to Netflix and cant find a classic to stream.

I've come to _expect_ that Netflix probably doesn't have a classic I particularly want to watch. Anecdotal, sure, but I find that I treat Netflix and <music streaming service of choice> differently. With Netflix I'll turn it on when I want to watch something but I'm not sure which. If I have a show/ movie in mind I'll check if it's there but generally I expect to pay a small fee to rent it on Amazon. The catalog changes monthly, so you never quite know what is going to be there on any given month. With music I know that the music I'm looking for is (probably) there and I won't have to pay more for it.

They are both media-consumption services but I think most people treat them like

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