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Comment by yreg | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's a free service. They have no reason to care about users, who block ads and don't intend to ever become paying customers.

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The attitude you describe can easily hurt their business. They may be future paying customers that are exploring your service, or don't have the money yet to subscribe. And even in the latter group there is an opportunity for building brand loyalty.

But to see these opportunities, the first step is to not have a hostile attitude towards your users.

but you forgot how businesses work these days:

Fuck you, Pay me

That's how all businesses have worked since the beginning of time.

No, that was just "pay me for this service/good". Most businesses who ventured into "fuck you" territory would soon be out of business because disgruntled customers opens up opportunities for competition to rise.

Sadly, you don't have that anymore with today's economy-of-scale effects.

As opposed to the good ol' days when businesses all incorporated as 501(3)c's, funneling their funds to widows and orphans?

Right, I really miss the good ol' days when business was all "Hey guy, I like you, here's some free stuff."

That last part is conjecture, and just because they don't care doesn't mean you can't call them out on it.

It's purely hubris. They clearly don't understand the nature of the beast.

A non-paying customer who doesn't listen to ads has absolutely zero value to Spotify. Why shouldn't they block them?

Because then they tell all their less-technical friends and family that Spotify is shitty and evil and not to use them.

If this were a real thing, we'd all be using Linux on the Desktop by now.

Well it worked on me and I'm usually wary of consumer-facing subscription services.

I heard about Spotify through a musically-minded, but not technical, friend. I joined because of their insistence that it was a good service 3+ years ago.

Today, they complain about the desktop client and ads. I no longer use Spotify.

I've been trashing Windows for ages too, but there's a big difference here: people who really want to run some particular (usually proprietary) software generally have to use Windows to do that, and Windows has a lock on non-Apple computers for that and for many other reasons.

Spotify doesn't have any kind of lock on music. The Apple fans are all using Apple Music, after all, and there's lot of other choices out there. Ditching Spotify isn't going to affect your life or digital device using in any significant way.

Because non-paying customers have the potential to become paying ones.

Plenty of businesses don't give away free samples, and survive fine.

Obviously Spotify sees value in offering a free tier to their service.

Yes, the value is that they make money from it through ads.

*most businesses.

But without some incentive to do so, they won't. If they're already getting around basically one of the biggest dealbreakers for the Free tier (the ads), then there isn't really incentive to pay 9.99 a month when they're already getting essentially the same service for free.

A non-paying customer who doesn't listen to ads has absolutely zero value to Spotify.

I'd challenge this because they can convert to paid users or advertise the service via word of mouth, or probably provide other value as well (user data, listening habits, etc.).

However, even if these users have zero value to Spotify, then why terminate them? Spotify is getting some negative press over it, so it seems like a net loss for them...

> However, even if these users have zero value to Spotify, then why terminate them?

When I go to a restaurant and eat without paying, why do they kick me out?

More like "We sent a free pizza to their home. How dare they not eat the pineapple toppings!?"

Right, and what’s happening now is Spotify choosing not to send free pizza to those people anymore. What’s the matter with that?

Mostly a privacy and ownership issue: Spotify doesn't own the device receiving their service nor are they paying for the bandwidth used for the ad payload, and it's none of their concern how these are used. In the end it all boils down to whether Spotify's right to run a business supersedes a person's rights of ownership.

You have lot of students and people who can't afford it as of now but can convert to paying customers later on.

If you buy into the system you are more dependant on it than just going another route and you end up not giving a damn about Spotify

Students are $5 a month. Same as one Starbucks coffee a month. It is cheap already.

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