Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

IMHO Spotify stopped being interesting when they had to drop their ad-supported all-you-can-eat free tier. That's what really drove growth in Europe and make it ubiquitous here in Sweden.

Now that that's gone, they're just another dime-a-dozen paid music streaming services that nobody wants to pay for.

edit: For anyone wondering what the big deal with Spotify is, is that it was completely free. Anyone could just download the app, and then listen to any song they wanted to, legally, completely free - there were just short ad breaks every couple of songs. This free legal option meant that there was zero reason to pirate music anymore, so everyone flocked to it.

If you paid €10/mo you got a higher bitrate, no ads, offline playing and access to the iPhone/Android apps. The pay option was attractive if you were going to have a party (ads are a turnoff in situations like that), or when you end up requiring the iPhone app since you don't have any music files to put on your MP3 player anymore since you've just been listening to everything on Spotify...

The record companies really hated giving away music (despite Spotify being a goldmine for them - Spotify is currently the #1 single source of income for record labels in Sweden, making them more money than any single retailer), so they had to kill it a couple months back (rumor has it they had to kill it in order to secure U.S. rights).

Without the completely free tier, they'll have a really hard time getting new users.

I agree with everything you've said, especially about them no longer being interesting, but for one point.

You couldn't listen to any song and as such it didn't eliminate the need to buy (or pirate) some tracks. Certain record companies had yet to sign on and quite a few major bands were missing from the database. Bands such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and ACDC (there are numerous others, these are just the bands I like which were missing and really stuck out to me).

I was a paying customer for around 9 months using the service to sync offline playlists with my Android phone (wirelessly, as there were no other solutions that allowed me to do this easily), but I canceled my subscription when they failed to acquire more of the artists I liked and other solutions came along to allow me to wirelessly sync playlists to my device.

There are better ways to handle your online music now. Spotify had a real chance at becoming top dog, but in my eyes, they didn't innovate and provide the features the public wanted quickly enough.

From the US site http://www.spotify.com/int/coming-to-the-us/

>The award-winning music service that’s taken Europe by storm will soon be landing on US shores. Millions of tracks ready to play instantly, on your computer and your phone.

>Any track, any time, anywhere. And it's free!

Maybe there's a bit of a drawn-out bait and switch strategy here, but it looks like Spotify is going to start off in the U.S. with an "all-you-can-eat free tier".

They've cut it down to 10 hours free a month, which is more a sample than a real service.

That is a heck of an edit. Why didn't you bring this great assertion out in the first place?

It never was completely free: there has always been a limit on the number of hours per month you could stream music.

Anyway, your analysis is wrong, because you think your usage predicts everyones usage pattern. It doesn't. I'm a happy paying subscriber and will stay one for a while to come. If I hear one new CD a month, it's already worth it. Even if I don't, I love being able to just legally browse and listen to almost any music I can think of.

Are you sure? When I tested it, early on, it was unlimited hours of streaming, with ads now and then.

All the time it was available in the Netherlands, the limit was something like 40 hours a month, as far as I recall.

Initially, the free tier did offer unlimited (ad supported) streaming. It was only more recently (6 months?) that this has changed.

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