Ask HN: Is Spotify Evil? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Spotify Evil?

4 pointspkdpic9 comments

I don't know enough to really have an opinion on it. It didn't give me a great feeling when it first appeared and I couldn't find any of the weirdo hipster techno I liked on it at the time so I ignored it.

But I've noticed that a lot of the anarchist software dev hippies (who I love) that I work with / know seem to use it now. Not sure what that means but I thought I'd ask HN rather than risk offending anyone I respect at work.

Thanks in advance!

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What do you think is evil about it? I dont know about any specific internal practices they have (and generally find if you want to find something to get mad at a company about, you usually can). But as far as their business goes, they found a business model that actually makes me pay for music. I think this is great, and finally ends the artificial monopoly that distributors had for the last ~50 years and brings us into more balanced regime that respects the ease of digital musical distribution.

Censoring Joe Rogan episodes seems pretty evil to me. [1][2]

[1]: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/514665-con...

[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/ikf9at/full_list_...

Yes I disagree with political censorship, but it would be hard to use the internet if you boycotted everyone that does it. That doesn't excuse it of course.

You have a very lax definition of evil compared to most people.

It’s ironic that people are trying to censor you for this.

I don't have any concrete reason to think it's evil, just vague rumors I've heard here and there that it's hard to make money on there for artists? Was curious if other people thought it was evil, bad, good, great.

Also, that's a pretty solid point on the breaking the monopoly factor. That's definitely a point for Spotify.

It depends how you define evil. Spotify behaves like anyone else does in the space, redistributing licensed, copyright content to users who pay money. They're a business, and the majority of the evil you'll hear about from them comes down to their bottom line. There are some places where they go the extra mile: they (semi-unofficially) support Linux, have a pretty massive catalog of music, and a pretty accessible price tag to what is essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet of music. There are also some places where they fall short, like their measly compensation for artists and general apprehension to fix bugs. Really it just depends on where you stand in the Overton Window of this particular topic.

That pretty much covers the bases on what I was curious about. Very few of the musicians I know bother trying to get their stuff on there and those that do don't seem to feel super opinionated or positive about it.

Should have put this out there too but my situation is just that in Spotify's infancy the musicians I liked weren't on there yet and the musicians I knew were all just using bandcamp.

I've always been able to find excellent new music on bandcamp, especially with a couple of browser extensions to make their feed autoplay like a playlist and give much needed volume controls.

I guess I was just wondering if they had made a big shift in how they paid artists and / or what the current public perception of them was.

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