Audiobooks on Spotify | Hacker News Reader

Audiobooks on Spotify

timetoplayfair.com

191 pointsJadoJodo250 comments

As a consumer, I’ve actually come to prefer in app purchases. I love when a subscription is available on IAP because for something like a newspaper, I know that I can cancel it with a couple of taps instead of having to fill out some long retention form or call someone.

I think I feel similarly, to be honest. While I don't think I'd be less likely to buy something I wanted if an in-app purchase wasn't available, I've always been thankful when I realized I bought something or set up a subscription via Apple because I feel their incentive isn't to make managing that purchase difficult, so their UX for control over subscriptions has been great.

Though, at face value, I do see the argument for giving folks the option to make the purchase how they want, which may mean doing it in the app but not using Apple's APIs. I dunno, I don't have strong feelings about any of this, so it always surprises me when companies try to make such a big deal of it. Sure, it affects their bottom line, but let's not pretend like I should care about that.

Exactly. It's not that Spotify can't do in app purchases. They just don't want to pay for the privilege.

Because they exist in a highly competitive market where Apple Music can provide in app purchases without paying the extra tax.

Are you also willing to pay the extra Apple tax for this convenience instead of expecting the subscription provider to eat those costs?

Depends on the product and the tax.

Looks like I'm paying more via IAP for Youtube ($16 vs $12/mo) and Audible ($16 vs $8/mo ???) according to the prices listed on their website.

Half of the services out there probably charge you extra just because you don't have to go through their scummy "cancel subscription" website pipeline. They probably lose millions on that along with the fact that I get an iOS notification when my IAP subscriptions renew.

One crappy autorenewing service charging my credit card directly has cost me more than IAP taxes ever will. As far as I'm concerned, IAP saves me money and the status quo for rebilling in the USA only benefits the bad actors.

Especially when trying a new service, I rather pay slightly higher fee than risk dealing with scummy cancellation process. But I may switch payment method if I decide to keep the service longterm.

YouTube is very easy to cancel and not at all scummy, you just need to click one button and it works. Easy 4$ saved per month. I cancelled and then resubscribed at least 5 times this year and it was never an issue (I'm trying to cut down on YouTube which is why I cancelled so many times).

> Half of the services out there probably charge you extra just because you don't have to go through their scummy "cancel subscription" website pipeline

Or because Apple charges 30% for IAP which is huge when your base price already is 10-15 dollars.

Apple could enforce a clean cancel sub process. They do not. So, instead of making things better for you, the user, you just pay more for them to do nothing.

iOS will remind you you've got an active subscription going if you delete the relevant app too, that's a nice touch

Fine if you prefer that, but this is no reason for Apple to enforce it as the only allowed option.

If apple opens the floodgates allowing these purchases outside of this option, why would a company give apple's option to consumers?

Apple enforcing it is the only reason as a consumer I don't have to deal with park patterns for many of the apps I use. Which is a good thing for consumers

You mean Apple would have to be competitive regarding their own services for once? Actually have it make financial sense and provide a seamless experience for companies so they're encouraged to use it rather than forced? No... that can't be a good thing for consumers.

Are we talking about the same thing here?

I am talking about payment services. Most companies will do everything they can to screw over the consumer. Especially once they have you in a subscription.

As a consumer I would rather these companies be forced to not do shady practices and have to conform to a uniform way of purchases and subscriptions.

I have been in too many meetings about "User Retention", if given the chance very few companies will choose to loose the ability to bash the user over the head with "are you sure you want to cancel" or "please call to cancel".

Apple forces it.

Edit:

Put Another Way: Apple giving developer the choice of wether or not to use their system removes MY choice as a consumer to avoid scummy business practices (Which are often not on display until you no longer want to do business with them).

Apple doesn't have to charge 30% to also offer you convenient payment management APIs. They choose to, and they use it as a justification for their, as you say, "scummy business practices".

You're right - you don't have a choice if you support scummy business practices with Apple. When you use an iProduct, Apple demands it. Every dime you spend on the App Store gets taxed by the richest company on Earth.

Let's work with your assumptions, hopefully you can realize why they don't really make sense when it comes to consumer rights or healthy competition.

So companies "will do everything they can to screw over the customer". Apparently excluding Apple for some reason who can never do wrong or suddenly start demanding apps charge subscriptions instead of a flat fee in the first place, but let's continue.

Companies that have their own infrastructure to support their own payment systems will switch to it, but have to create a justification for consumers to switch as Apple isn't going to do that work for them. So maybe they cut the fee, maybe they throw in a bonus whatever. Some consumers switch, finding this new method acceptable.

Then there will be other consumers, like you, who value Apple's system too highly to switch. If the above hypothetical company does not support both Apple and their own systems, this group of consumers will opt not to continue subscribing.

Now tell me, how is this so bad? How are you unable to avoid scummy business practices?

> Apple giving developer the choice of wether or not to use their system removes MY choice as a consumer to avoid scummy business practices (Which are often not on display until you no longer want to do business with them).

No it doesn't. If you use Apple IAP (or any 3'rd party IAP) you cancel there and the 2'nd party can't do anything about it. What you are claiming is just a lie, a strawman.

The difference being discussed is between <Apple enforcing Apple IAP as one of the options for IAP> and <Apple enforcing Apple IAP as the ONLY option and banning any communication on the subject>.

Honestly, after getting screwed over by so many companies making one jump through so many hoops to cancel a subscription, I rather have Apple's way.

Perhaps when law or credit card processors force companies to provide an easy way to cancel a service, as easy as it was to sign up for it, then I can worry about competition in IAP space.

That already exists, if all hell breaks loose for some reason you can talk to your credit card company and request that subscription be stopped. Asking for a new card does the same. Chargebacks also exist and is actually a handy way to get your account removed entirely as lots of companies hate chargebacks.

Also both Visa and Mastercard have their own rules that apply to subscription services, for example Visa requires services that allow signing up for a subscription to be easily cancelled online. So if you run into great issues there, call up Visa!

Nobody is stopping you from using Apple IAP.

The difference being discussed is between <Apple enforcing Apple IAP as one of the options for IAP> and <Apple enforcing Apple IAP as the ONLY option and banning any communication on the subject>.

Simple solution: enforce IAP as an option whilst allowing alternatives. The other option would be to not tax 30% on value Apple did not produce.

Apple does produce value though.

They built the platform that allowed Spotify to even exist.

And then they built the distribution channel that directed customers to Spotify.

No different to Spotify itself.

Spotify also adds value to the iPhone, before the App Store it was pretty but kind of useless. Make them give both options, people can decide whether easy cancellation etc. is worth 30%, Apple can make up any losses it needs to continue the platform from the iPhone sales price (or they can charge for App Store access or whatever, we should make them allow third-party stores/sideloading regardless), people can then decide whether that platform is worth it over Android.

The iPhone before the App Store was exactly the same as all of the other phones on the market at the time, none of which were useless.

Wrong, Spotify's existence does not depend on Apple and their platform. Spotify works on all platforms.

Apple is rent-seeking by abusing their natural monopoly on app distribution on iOS platforms (their platform, their rules) which is leveraged to create a monopoly in IAP channels.

Apple already does enforce having their option alongside other external options: Sign in with Apple is requires if you also offer sign in with google etc.

I think this would be a great solution. I also prefer using apple for purchases, but they should at least be allowed to point the user to another purchase option.

I'm even OK with apple preventing taking payment through the app, however disallowing companies from describing how to do so is too much.

> why would a company give apple's option to consumers?

Because it cares about its customers, who are paying for the service.

This is 100% how I feel.

Too many of these companies have dark patterns for canceling your subscription (or hoping you forget you have one) that I actively stay away from most services that I can't just use an IAP with. This is largely thanks to all of this being consolidated in a single UI where with just a couple clicks (without ever needing to open the app and dealing with their marketing or 20 questions) I can cancel a subscription.

Apple will email me when a yearly subscription is about to bill, clearly telling me how I can manage or cancel it (again outside of the app).

I understand why businesses may not like this, but as a consumer I value this heavily (and yes I do find myself annoyed by what I often hear also being in the tech industry).

At the same time for individual digital purchases I don't want to give every company my credit card. I would much rather that go through Apple.

I understand the concern about the "30% cut" but I wish these companies would also realize that I (and I assume many others) spend more money though my phone because I can do it through Apple where otherwise you would not be getting my money in the first place. So its 70% or nothing from me. Especially when there are alternatives that will be more than happy to take that money from me.

That doesn't mean that I don't use my credit card in some places. But those are for physical items. Likely at stores that already have my credit card in the first place.

At the end of the day, it is Spotify that is choosing to make customers jump through hoops. They chose to enter this market knowing that this will be an issue (if they did not expect this issue... honestly fire whoever decided to go into this market).

This so much, specially when I think of my parents and older love ones, 30% is nothing compared to being in the wild west of dark patterns.

Reputation have a price, Apple may not be perfect but I can trust that they aren't going to deceive my parents or make their life more difficult when trying to use technology.

At least personally, I would much rather pay a bit more than opening the door to cheaper prices at cost of Apple losing one of their big advantages, trustworthiness.

We should have regulation on dark patterns. Not paying 30% more abs giving more power to monopoly. Why is it so hard.you can literally sue companies for dark patterns and hey more money.i did that once with ATT and got more than they said I owe them for dark subscribing to tv when i only wanted internet. I didn't had to spend a single penny nor visit any court.all out of court settlement. You make them accountable for such practices.and as a consumer you should fight against apple to lower subscription fee if the seller can sell at least price

We have regulations. If you think the cops enforce spam calls and texts, think again. Or the millions of scam calls and other blatant internet fraud.

I don’t get iMessage spam. Period. That alone is valuable. Politicians who make these regulations continue to spam me and there is no way to block them with a do not call list.

Apple is so valuable in part because they do enforce some rules.

Looks what EU did go apple change their USB c policy. At least they have guts unlike politicians here. Do you not get spam calls on iPhone. Pixel phones are much better at call screening and blocking spam calls and texts. you are in walled garden my friend. Most of my iOS friends get so many spam calls everyday.even if i get ,they are detected as spam and I can screen them in case I suspect it's not spam. I don't hey iMessage.are they end to end encrypted? They are not. And fb commenting on it. Wait for apple getting into ad business. It's just matter of time their ad revenue skyrocketing

It could be 10% instead of 30% though.

You must not be from here. Never once did I have trouble cancelling anything, maybe it's a Dutch or even a European thing? I keep hearing of "retention department"s and such. Completely foreign to me.

Paying 30% more for all your subscriptions sounds like an interesting way of dealing with that problem.

For subscriptions, 100% agree

For buying one off products. Don’t wan to be using in-app purchase.

I seem to suddenly be able to buy audiobooks in audible now though? Or at least use my credits. When did that happen?

I too mostly prefer subscribing to services via IAP, but I’d also like the option to do one-time purchases without the 30% markup.

While you could argue enabling the purchase justifies this markup, forbidding the mention of alternative methods seems like an artificial constraint.

Sure, but I'd rather pay a 2% PayPal tax for that ability than a 30% Apple tax.

Apple could just mandate IAP but also allow the app publisher to offer their own methods. It would force competition in pricing. IAP fee ultimately is passed to the consumer. Companies need to make their margins.

This is clearly the best option. Apple would be pressured to reduce their prices and/or increase the app store value, app publishers would be incentivized to not use sleazy subscription cancelling practices.

As a consumer, I'd prefer competition to exist, so that I don't pay 10x higher markup on digital payments for no reason other than Apple being able to get away with extortion and price gouging.

Apple forbids informing users about the extra cost they're paying for using IAP.

Apple forbids informing users that any competing payment method may exist anywhere else.

Apple forbids having cheaper prices elsewhere.

So, none of that has anything to do with IAP.

It simply requires that the person be able to cancel easily and in a standardized way. And Apple could enforce that. That's the whole point of having a review process, an app review, all that.

Apple could enforce that, but they choose not to.

No other company do I hate and love so much. I love their discovery algorithms and find new music through them so often. I look forward to my new Discover Weekly every Monday.

But in every other way they drive me crazy. The UI is terrible and basic but I've learned to live with it. What I absolutely can't stand is inserting podcasts and audio books into the app with no option to opt-out.

I get that they want to put these things in front of as many people as possible, but it's a shame that happens at the expense of those of us who don't want that cluttering up their libraries. Let me turn it off. Why can't I turn it off?

I used to love the Discovery Weekly list as well. But since a couple of years, my account recommendations went into some strange niche solution and they recommend the same rubbish over and over again. I even get annoyed at certain genres that I used to mildly enjoy before.

If you try to look for a solution, apparently the only way is to cancel the subscription, delete the account, resubscribe and start over ... I wish there was a way to reset the "intelligent" recommendations for an existing account.

The only workaround I found: put a couple of similar and interesting songs into a playlist and let Spotify continue with recommendations.

Agreed. I actually switched to Apple Music because the recommendations had gotten so consistently bad/weird.

I wonder if it's related to money somehow, if some artists are accepting a lower cut in exchange for being placed on these playlists more frequently.

Literally: they keep recommending variations of the same song over and over. And if I'm not mistaken, not even variations, but the same song over and over.

Each time I mark it as "remove".

I visit my Discover Weekly about once a month because there's almost never anything of value in there. I'd find more gems with a random list of 30 songs.

I've heard that their algorithm now prioritizes lower licensing cost songs even if their algos rank them as a lower possible match for you. It also seems like their curated playlists prioritize lower quality songs now too, so I try to find better user generated ones.

Why does everything go from good to the lowest mediocrity companies can get away with?

This has always been the problem with Spotify for years but I guess it got worse and more blatant now. There has never been any incentive for the platform to be recommendations neutral and nowhere did they specify how they treat songs and labels from different artists.

Whats particularly egregious with Spotify is that their recommended method of improving your recommendations is to just "listen more to things you like". It's so disingenuous.

The funny thing is that they have many teams each doing a tiny part of the app's UI, and proudly advertise this model as a best practice:

https://blog.crisp.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/SpotifyScal...

Baffling how you can have so many engineers working on a music player, and it ends up worse than Winamp or Mediaplayer from 25 years ago.

Software interfaces in general have regressed severely since the mid-2000s. Media players are a perfect example. There was 10x more functionality in Winamp or Windows Media Player than we get in Spotify or Apple Music today.

What is going on? Why are things getting dumber? Are we just optimizing too hard for the lowest common denominator and the average user wants things to be dead simple?

I don't want to believe software has to be this basic. As software has become mainstream I think we've created a self-reinforcing myth that it has to be simplistic for people to want it. I think we can afford to ask users to think for a couple of seconds about the interface they're using.

Same for Netflix. A basic UI like Popcorn time is all that most people need. Instead we get a situation where both the UI and content is randomized, constantly shuffled. The simplest of use cases are barely supported or completely missing.

It's not just incompetence, they are intentional dark patterns. Netflix doesn't want you to structurally browse their catalog in easy ways as you might conclude that it falls short. So it throws random things at you, auto-playing videos, etc. Giving the inflated impression that there's always something interesting for you.

Likewise, user reviews, an absolutely basic community feature, is simply not there. Because if it would be there, and assuming they are fair reviews, you could filter by rating. Which once again could reveal a lack of quality content. Best to mask that.

It's sad to consider that the output of hundreds of engineers and some very high-tech data science leads to something a single engineer in mum's basement could do better.

>There was 10x more functionality in Winamp or Windows Media Player than we get in Spotify or Apple Music today.

Except for the extremely useful functionality of putting a large percentage of the world's music at your fingertips ready for instant listening. Spotify also makes curated playlists ("This Is _[Artist Name]__" playlists), artist pages that show their most popular tracks and discographies, offers professionally mixed playlists, social sharing of playlists, sharing of songs, and works on mobile, desktop, web, and tablets.

It also lets you have a library made up of both local files and Spotify licensed files on the network. It has selective download of songs you want to listen to offline (even licensed songs). It has both regular playlists and ad hoc queues. You can make playlists public, share with certain friends, share with all friends, make them collaboratively editable or not.

It's actually kind of a staggering achievement.

I get that the player could be better, and maybe Winamp had some features it should steal, but let's appreciate that it has solved many, many problems that no one was addressing 20 years ago. (And I must say, I can't conceive how Winamp could have had 10x the functionality as Spotify or Apple Music - this seems quite an overstatement, as someone who used it c2000 and uses Spotify now. Maybe you meant it had more of the functionality that you care about (presuming you only care about listening to files you own and have downloaded).)

I agree with the GP. Yes, the infrastructure is great, but the client itself is trash. Winamp consumed 1% of my CPU twenty years ago, Spotify consumes 10% now. Not only do they mostly do the same thing, but Winamp did much more.

This is a major, major regression, that we have machines thousands of times faster but the software is an order of magnitude slower and more resource-hungry than back then on the much faster machines.

You agree that Winamp has 10x the functionality of Spotify?

Yes, easily. Just the plugins alone are easily 10x the functionality.

99% of what you described is the same basic playlist system.

It's a virtual list of songs that can be shared/edited by multiple accounts and where the songs themselves are just pointers to the copy-protected bitstreams on the Spotify network.

If we could legally do so, a p2p music player would do even more, so from an engineering perspective I'm not impressed, this is the price of doing things legally I guess and even with the legalities, there is still some pushback against spotify.

I suppose the only way forward to having an actually good application is to rent a catalogue. Streaming a set of things and the application tries to organize the best it can. Decouple the application from the provider. Instead of the mess we have now... but alas, that's just wishful thinking.

Offline songs is my biggest gripe, they are impossible to find / filter for. To find them (i.e. on a flight) I pretty much have to go into my settings and switch to offline mode.

> Are we just optimizing too hard for the lowest common denominator and the average user wants things to be dead simple?

Yup, but note that things can be both simple and powerful. I think there's also for some reason the expectation that people want fewer features on mobile than on desktop devices.

As a frontend dev I blame it entirely on the "co-design" fad and the rise of A/B testing. When I started 10 years ago the idea was that a designer can objectively produce a good UX using their skills (of course validating it with real users).

These days it seems to be treated more like social science with never ending broad discovery work to answer questions like "How do our users feel"? This stuff is important but I feel is often used to justify decisions poorly compared to a more quantitate approach.

But largely I think A/B testing is to blame, we get more conversions this way (or maybe with spotify user's listen to more tracks / have longer sessions with this particular interface). Often the metric measured is profit driven rather than user enjoyment as well.

It's very hard to come up with a media player interface that is better than Winamp 25 years ago.

The Spotify UI is bad but it’s not even close to as bad as Apple and YouTube music.

I tried my best to like Yt music since it comes with YouTube premium but the service is simply unusable.

the UI Is bad in comparison to what? its pretty easy to find whatever you want

My biggest pet peeve with the Spotify iOS app is the offline mode - it’s total garbage.

- Every time you open the app you get a “turn on wifi to enable downloads” alert. This may or may not be an iOS thing - I try to navigate to an artist or album I’ve downloaded and I just see loading spinners until it finally times out and shows me my offline content - Music I’ve previously downloaded just…not available - i.e. It needs to be redownloaded. Well thanks a lot Spotify - leaves me shit out of luck when I want to listen to something you’ve deemed as “expired”. My most recent one being Taylor Swift’s Midnights this evening, an album that came out and I downloaded on Friday.

Spotify: I want so badly to love you, and (FWIW) I'm very much on your side battling the giants like Apple. But, I'm so bothered by your approach to podcasts (the lock-in and proprietary of a previously open standard) that I can't muster much enthusiasm to defend you. It makes me think that since you're on the "bad" side of the podcasts issue when it's in your business interests, that you're only fighting on the "good" side of OP issue because it's in your business interests, and that destroys trust. Do you really think your approach to podcasts is better for anyone other than Spotify?

Does anyone else take issue with Spotify branching out into other arenas (e.g., Podcasts, TV, Audiobooks, etc.)? I'm honestly kinda tired of all of these services trying to gobble up any slightly related industry.

I subscribe to Spotify to listen to music, not podcasts. My podcasts arrive using a different app with the backing of the RSS standard, not Spotify's internal standard. I don't want to get a subscription cost bump because Spotify has not decided they want to offer podcasts when I'm only paying for the music.

I subscribe to Spotify to listen to podcasts, and occasionally music.

> I'm honestly kinda tired of all of these services trying to gobble up any slightly related industry.

Vertical (acquiring as many steps in the supply chain to a business' core business as it can) and horizontal (acquiring as many related or semi-related functions as it can) integration has been the name of the game for as long as businesses were a thing.

One example I like to use is Temple-Inland, that started as a company that made boxes, was acquired into a company that made paper, bought another company that did forestry management, which turned into "we should have a real estate investment arm", and resulted in the country's third-largest mortgage lender in the early 80s.

We can be kinda tired of it all we want to but this is one of those competing interests between customers[0] and companies: the customer wants maximum flexibility for the lowest cost with the broadest range of features; the company wants the fewest costs for the most income with the highest amount of lock-in. Integration tilts the balance towards the companies so they will always pursue it.

0 - As an aside, I don't like calling people "consumers". We are customers; we "consume" service offerings, but (likely) we do so with intent.

In many cases, the word consumer connotes a legal definition that is different than customer.

For example, see the definition from Reg P: Consumer means an individual who obtains or has obtained a financial product or service from you that is to be used primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, or that individual's legal representative.

A customer may be an individual or a business.

Source: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/regulations/101...

I personally find the podcasts kinda nice but there should really be a way to turn them off entirely. Soulseek + foobar is allways an option.

Spotify is a horrible podcast player. The audio engine doesn't have nuanced speed control or remove silence like other dedicated podcast apps. I also find the podcast UI is terrible for managing shows and play list.

And then there's the bugs that don't get fixed for a long time. Last year they had one where every time a podcast was interrupted by a notification or something it would start over from the start.

Lastly spotify podcasts that are exclusive are not, by definition, a podcast because they don't have a valid rss feed. You might refer to them as shows but calling them podcasts ignores how podcasts are supposed to work in an open interoperable system.

And of course there's zero chance they will embrace podcast 2.0 features; https://podnews.net/podcast/i4ji5 https://podcastindex.org/podcast/value4value

> are not, by definition, a podcast because they don't have a valid rss feed

Does a podcast need to have a rss feed? All I see in definitions is that its an audio format made available over the internet.

> And of course there's zero chance they will embrace podcast 2.0 features

What is Podcasting 2.0? All I see is a bunch of people doing podcasting differently, namely adding ads and crypto.

Yes it needs an RSS feed. Otherwise it's just an mp3 file.

So a podcast with an ATOM feed isn't a podcast? It needs a feed, sure, but not necessarily RSS.

That depends on the service or app. Some accept both, and some only take RSS. Apple Podcasts used to accept Atom feeds, but they don't anymore for new podcasts. All the feeds

Edit: do you know any podcasts that use an atom feed? None of the 80 feeds in my podcast app are atom feeds.

The underlying protocol is an implementation detail.

I don't know any atom feed podcasts (and can't find any), but I can find references to people using (or trying to use) atom for podcasts.

I've been casual into podcasting and listening to the developers create Podcasting 2.0 and I haven't heard anyone talking about atom feeds. I think podcasting has firmly settled on rss.

> The underlying protocol is an implementation detail.

So you are saying you could do HTML without TCP/IP? Would that work you think?

> Does a podcast need to have a rss feed?

Canonically, yes. RSS is how podcasts are distributed, and why any podcast app can play any podcast.

However, Spotify marketing has bastardized words like "podcast" and "podcasting" by using them to refer to their closed, proprietary platform. That strategy is working brilliantly, and so the future of podcasting is probably proprietary platforms on one side, and bullshit "2.0"/Web3 stuff on the other.

I see the future of podcasting with a much brighter future than proprietary. Talk to the developers behind Podcasting 2.0 and see if they can change your mind; https://podcastindex.social/about

It's pretty much embrace, extend ..

They're benefiting from the open ecosystem whilst simultaneously damaging it.

Agree with the first part, but how are they damaging it? Everything they are building is open far as I know.

Can I listen to paid shows in antennapod? Can I buy their podcasts from someone else the way I can get music or books from different stores?

If a vendor chooses to only sell on one platform, that's not the platforms fault (cancerous exclusives notwithstanding).

Podcasting 2.0 is mostly about removing ads, shifting to a direct streaming monetary support model via crypto. The bonus with this model is once advertisers are removed free speech is no longer a problem. Also a big focus on decentralization in order to prevent censorship.

> The bonus with this model is once advertisers are removed free speech is no longer a problem.

How is it a problem now? RSS feeds already can't be taken down by angry third-parties, and offer perfectly usable decentralization. Advertising is entirely an at-will process for podcast hosts, so they can choose whether or not they want to shackle themselves to a third-party that might object to the content they spread. Connecting your podcast to a crypto wallet doesn't fix that, and it's nothing you couldn't do with preexisting XML syntax.

Even if Spotify adopted Podcasting 2.0, why would users care? Even as a technical guy, I want nothing to do with a crypto-adjacent monetization model. Podcasting 1.0 already solved these problems years ago, there's a good reason the major podcast players are wary of this "upgrade".

If you accept money from an advertiser and say something they don't like they can threaten to pull funding. Sort of like how none of the us "news" media will say anything against pharma, sponsored by phizer!

Direct support of shows by listeners is a much more honest relationship and liberating for podcasters but there is nothing in PC2.0 saying you have to use these features, it is simply enabling an alternate funding model. If you don't get the value for value principal in the first place it's not going to make sense though.

How is direct support limited in a traditional podcasting model, though? Nobody is forced to accept advertisements for their podcast. If you do, that comes with a risk that someone will stop paying you. With traditional podcasts you can still embed Paypal accounts/Bitcoin wallets if that's what you want.

I just fail to see how Podcasting 2.0 is a significant change over Podcasting 1.0. Everything you've listed already exists in RSS.

Paypal deplatforms people. They also don't have a way to stream revenue as you play.

I'm not a great ambassador for it but they are building the infrastructure to accomplish the streaming payments, boosts, cross platform chat, podping to get immediate notifications and reduce wasted polling, and a whole bunch of standardized metadata.

By the way the streaming payments also have value splits to support the show hosts, app used to play it, hosting platform, a guest that happens to be on that episode, etc, etc. Whatever they want. It's really impressive and no way can paypal match this.

> Paypal deplatforms people. They also don't have a way to stream revenue as you play.

Then don't use them. PayPal is not intrinsically linked to Podcast 1.0, it's just an example of how you can use any payment (including crypto) without upgrading to Podcasting 2.0 or whatever. Adding YouTube style feature is something, but personally seems like a lot of hubbub for little payoff.

None of this strikes me as an upgrade over RSS, even still. XML trumps the Blockchain for this sorta stuff.

I'm not sure there is anything in podcasting 2.0 about removing ads. I don't think the distribution protocol can do anything about ads that are baked into the mp3s on the hosting side.

You are correct, not forcing this on anyone. They are offering a solid alternative to ads with the streaming sats model. It's more in line with the principal of value for value.

Spotify isn’t even a good music player…

Those podcast recommendations (i.e. advertisements) that appear as image tiles in their apps are annoying but avoidable.

Recently they have started inserting random podcast episodes into my "Release Radar" playlists. Not happy with this development to put it lightly.

Ugh. How do these companies so thoroughly not understand their own raison d'être?

They understand that they make more money this way even if it pisses off customers.

They’ve calculated that the customers who drop because of it is outweighed by the higher profits from playing podcasts.

I remember when they would prominently advertise Jordan Peterson right on the home page of their app. No other podcasts, just him over and over again while I've never used their app for anything other than music.

I contacted their support to ask how to remove these advertisements from the product I paid for, and they told me that this was impossible.

Impossible is a strong word, and installing https://github.com/spicetify proved that it was, in fact, possible to remove the ads for podcasts from their product.

> their own raison d'être

It's growth, that's why they exist, searching for growth

Cancer has the same modus operandi.

I ended up switching to Qobuz for this exact reason. I have nothing against podcasts, but what I wanted from Spotify was a great music app, and it's clear that that's no longer what they want to be.

(I also suspect that podcasts and audiobooks are more lucrative for Spotify than music is, since long-form content likely has a lower royalties/minute rate than music does)

> Does anyone else take issue with Spotify branching out into other arenas (e.g., Podcasts, TV, Audiobooks, etc.)?

> I subscribe to Spotify to listen to music, not podcasts. My podcasts arrive using a different app with the backing of the RSS standard, not Spotify's internal standard

100%. I will never touch Spotify Podcasts for that reason and that a number of the podcasts I listen to have specifically talked about Spotify's shitty/scummy practices around podcasts (like grabbing their audio and hosting it on Spotify's servers which cuts off the only traffic/demographics info that podcasts currently have access to). Anyone with half a brain would take one look at what Spotify is doing and run in the opposite direction. They don't care about the open nature of podcasts and they want to lure people in then put a wall up around them. If a podcast is only on Spotify it's immediately a podcast I don't care about because those podcast creators don't give a shit about the medium of podcasts, no self-respecting podcaster would walk into that lions den.

With this new move into audiobooks I need to seriously reconsider using Spotify. I've enjoyed using it (and paying for it) since launch but I'm sick of their gross moves and whiny-baby attitude (also after getting access to APIs refusing to implement them, really shows how full of shit their claims are). Maybe I need to look into 3rd-party Apple Music players since the AM app is some of the worst UI/UX for a music app.

> They don't care about the open nature of podcasts and they want to lure people in then put a wall up around them.

This is key. "Podcasts" and "podcasting" were created to refer to an open medium, but Spotify's intentional adoption and perversion of those words to refer to their proprietary platform has worked brilliantly. We're further down the embrace/extend/extinguish path than most people realize.

Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle?

And if you support paywalled podcasts, what, in your mind, would be the correct way for Spotify to implement them?

(I'm genuinely curious your answer, but to lay my cards and biases on the table: I prefer paid podcasts to the ad supported ones; I'm tired of hearing all the Casper and Squarespace ads woven into the content. And I have trouble imagining a typical Spotify listener (interested in, say, Joe Rogan podcast) properly moving a personalized premium RSS feed into another client without a ton of chaos and confusion.)

As ctoth said in cousin comment, HTTP Basic Auth seems to work well for content like that:

https://subscriber-id:subscriber-token@podcast.host/feed.rss

It's open, no proprietary client required.

I, for one, am not totally against the idea of paid-subscription-only podcasts, though I hope they don't completely push out free podcasts.

> Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle?

I have zero issue in paywalled podcasts, in fact I pay about $35/mo across various podcasts. Every single one of those gives me a special RSS feed with a token in the URL. There is no need for a service/platform to support this, it works perfectly today. A few of those podcasts are from Patreon and they have support for this built in (not that the "tech" behind this is groundbreaking). I almost always pay if it's an option because I abhor ads in every form.

I don't listen to many "mass market" podcasts, I think the largest podcast I listen to regularly (aside from some NPR ones I occasionally listen to) is ATP (Accidental Tech Podcast, which probably pales in comparison to the "Serials" and similar) and they offer a subscription ($8/mo).

Thank you for this comment. I was listening to Podcasts on Spotify think it would help get those podcasts attention. I'll switch away from doing that now.

ATM I use podcasts more time than music, and I like their implementation fairly.

i mean there's not actually that much $ in a commodified streaming service. royalties eat most of it and artists still aren't paid that much. so branching out is spotify's only hope of finding a high-margin area of business.

I have no issue with it business-wise -- if they don't, they'll eventually die because a podcast/audiobook app expands into music.

I just have a major issue with it UX-wise. I wish podcasts and audiobooks were their own separate apps. I've totally given up even trying to understand Spotify's UX anymore. I always eventually manage to play what I want through some combo of scroll/filter/search/history but I just feel like I never know what's going to appear anywhere this time.

And as long as I'm wishing... how about an app just for classical music too! Composer+performer just can't be satisfactorily shoehorned into a single "artist" field no matter how hard you try. Same as tracks aren't works -- a symphony might be anywhere from 3 to 40 tracks. (Keep classical music accessible in the main app for casual listeners, and because the line between classical and pop is blurry in some cases -- but just add a dedicated app designed for classical alone.)

> While I'm wishing, I've always wished they'd separate classical music into its own app too...

For what it's worth, a lot of Spotify's customers agree with you and have made third-party apps that try to do this. (I only know they exist but not how good they are since classical music is not my thing. But I kind of understand where classical music fans are coming from since a lot of electronic music, especially earlier works, is "mangled" in the same way.)

The two I know off the top of my head are Concertmaster and Tempso, if that helps.

Do you know anything similar for electronic music ?

Idagio is a great alternative for classical.

"Apple appears to be preparing for the upcoming launch of Apple Music Classical, a standalone classical music app that will be available alongside the Apple Music app." https://www.macrumors.com/2022/09/27/apple-music-classical-g...

> I subscribe to Spotify to listen to music, not podcasts.

Yep, and I really wish they'd stop promoting absolute turds like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson at me. I have no interest in listening to them.

Not yet, but if you see 20,000 more ads you might have interest.

Spotify is willing to try.

The worst part is that they are showing these ads to paying customers.

The only thing that’ll make me do is badger the folks at Tidal and other streaming co’s to create a proper alternative to Spotify Connect that works on my Yamaha hardware.

What is wrong with Tidal Connect (https://tidal.com/Connect) ? Honest question, have never used it. Don't you need to badger Yamaha to support it in your old hardware? But even if the old hardware was getting updates, Yamaha don't seem to be a partner (https://tidal.com/supported-devices?filter=tidal-connect).

You can cheaply add Tidal Connect support to an old amp with a LinkPlay-based product e.g. https://www.arylic.com/products/up2stream-pro-receiver-board

Yeah it’s likely more of a Yamaha issue but it’s a feature I use daily so is unfortunately a complete deal breaker for me.

I use Yamaha streamers so adding a separate dongle to those for those seems unnecessary.

I think they have to get some kind of exclusive content. Either they somehow start recording hits and start a war with other streaming services for popular tracks or they have podcasts which I guess are sort of supposed to be like the catalog that video streaming services are trying to build.

Exclusive content is the only way they (or any streaming service) can become profitable. With recorded music, they have to pay a revenue share to the artists and Spotify's percentage does not increase as they grow. With exclusive content, however, they pay once and as the audience grows the additional listeners are pure profit. So, the goal is to increase the percentage of owned content consumed on the platform and give less of the subscription fees to the record labels.

The exclusive tracks model does not work for music artists because they want ubiquitous distribution. Music is unlike video in that people consume the same content over and over again, and also unlike video in that the artists make the big bucks off of live performances.

This is why SiriusXM can pay Howard Stern $100M per year and still be wildly profitable. It reduces their dependence on royalty incurring content.

I am a paying customer and for some reason they show me an popup ad every time I open the app...

It's extremely annoying.

I wasn't seeing that popup ad "every time", but after the third one, I said screw it and canceled my paid subscription. Unforgivable.

> Does anyone else take issue with Spotify branching out into other arenas

Branching into audio books is the obvious next move. It's not like Netflix attempting to make games. If you think that's bad, take a look at Disney

Yes, as far as I concerned Spotify was basically perfect in like 2012, and most all of the features added (and _REMOVED_) since then have made the app experience worse. I want to listen to music. That's it. Anything that gets in the way of me doing this is a net bad afaic.

I'm still particularly offended by their near deprecation of support for local files. When I first got into Spotify the seamless integration with my local music library was a huge selling point. At some point, the app tried to help me by "linking" my meticulously organized concert playlists with studio versions of the songs... I have not been inspired to give that feature more time since.

I feel like I get closer to just getting an mp3 player again every day.

Silly as it is I really miss song previews.

Used to be if you long pressed a song (iOS anyway) it would jump in a little and play for as long as you held it, going back to the music you were listening to when you let go.

Great for checking you've found the song you were thinking of and impromptu remixes to make friends laugh.

Annoyingly it was removed for "low engagement rate"[0]. I mean yeah, I found it by accident lmao. Maybe tell people about it?

[0] https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Touch-Previ...

I never knew they had it, but now that you mention it... I miss it also. When you just want to get an impression of the song without listening to the whole thing front to back, yeah very often I'd make use of this.

Honestly, I think the perfect music app that never existed is Pandora with the ability to play specific songs. I always found Pandora to a have a much better recommendation system and was actually happier and didn't play specific songs, just stations.

The only thing that made me switch was the Spotify family plan and multiple children asking for it. I've been unhappy with it for years, but can't bring myself to pay for two separate music subscription services, and also can't bring myself to listen to adds.

It's fine if they branch out, but they abuse their users with popups, and by not being able to hide these extra features. I just want to listen to music without having to repeatedly tell them that's all I want to do.

>My podcasts arrive using a different app with the backing of the RSS standard, not Spotify's internal standard.

I know a lot of people will disagree, but I think Spotify did a good job of handling the problem of "premium" podcasts.

There's no way to make a "premium" podcast (one you charge people to access) that is fully compatible with the original open vision of podcasting. You can either pervert the original RSS enclosures system by using obscure / personalized URLs for individual subscribers (a leaky abstraction that both discourages open sharing of feed URLs and fails to properly close off access) or you can pervert it by wrapping files in DRM (Apple's approach in the Apple Podcasters Program).

Instead of perverting the RSS feeds, Spotify opted to pervert (slightly) the term "podcast" to not strictly mean "in an RSS feed and listenable on any client." I think this was inevitable and arguably had already happened and is far better than corrupting the open ecosystem. It also happens to be far easier from a UX perspective to tell someone to just use the Spotify app.

For all the people upset at Spotify, consider the counterfactual: Why would they tell people to listen to their premium podcasts by copying a custom premium URL and pasting it into some random client (which 99% of the time on iPhones will be controlled by their bully Apple)? It is much clearer, easier for the user, and better for Spotify's premium creators (who don't want to lose listeners to a complex setup system) to just tell them "Listen to Spotify podcasts by downloading the Spotify app".

Under Spotify's system, some podcasters rake in Spotify money they wouldn't otherwise get, growing the premium ecosystem, while the open ecosystem remains robust and not polluted with more DRM and URL hacks. Keeping closed systems clearly closed and separate is much better IMO than trying to awkwardly jam it into the open ecosystem, undermining what makes that ecosystem great.

What's wrong with HTTP basic auth for this use case?

https://subscriber-id:subscriber-token@podcast.host/feed.rss

In what way does this "pollute" or "pervert" the open standard? Apple and Spotify are companies, not people, this is not high school, Apple is not "bully"ing Spotify, they have a business relationship.

In general your comment is loaded with emotional language that seems to muddle the issue rather than clarifying.

I didn't consider HTTP basic auth as part of the open ecosystem because it's not, as far as I know, widely supported by clients. Is it? Maybe my assumption was wrong.

But it's also not part of the original "open" podcast vision because it is closed by definition, on an access level, and opens the door to tracking. Wouldn't most users in the open ecosystem be confused by an auth prompt? Wouldn't it be better for the open ecosystem if this sort of essentially closed feed just be cleanly inside Spotify (or whoever else's app)? This is my thinking, although I appreciate that opinions can differ.

I agree my language like "pervert" and "corrupt" can read as emotional, but I deployed it because I was trying to argue against the people who criticize Spotify using similar language, not to criticize anyone or raise emotions. If anything I'm trying to praise Spotify here.

As someone with a few Patreon feeds, yes it is widely supported, and the few that don't support it do support URL parameters so a token works fine as well.

I Patreon (verb?) two podcasts and for both it was just a custom URL, I don't recall an option to use a password though maybe I missed the option.

Patreonize? :)

I pay for a couple podcasts as well and I’m pretty sure they just sent me a custom RSS feed to drop into my player.

No way in hell am I going to fall for Spotify’s middle-manning attempts here. Hopefully they don’t manage to close off too much.

My employer offers premium podcasts as private feeds. It's a growing industry. Usually just puts a secret in the user specific URL.

Isn't it the case with almost every subscription service that there are aspects of it that you don't make use of? I feel like every subscription I have, from cellular to cable to Netflix, there's stuff I don't use that is part of the subscription. E.g., I don't watch horror movies, but apparently Netflix is still making them. Maybe I should take issue with it, but it just feels so mundane to me.

You're talking about genres, which is a different scenario.

This is more like Netflix raising prices for streaming subscribers to fund a new video-game studio. The fact that some people might enjoy both doesn't make them anything like the same thing.

I think it's just levels of granularity. Podcasts and music are both audio entertainment. It's like Netflix adding TV shows to their lineup of movies.

But the broader point is simply that in subscriptions to services you usually pay for some aspect of the service that you don't use and never have any intent to use -- and you can partition off that aspect of the service in a simple way (at least simple to you).

Car rentals and horseback rides are both transportation, but most people would say the difference is not trivial.

Movies, tv, and video games are all visual entertainment, but video games are different enough that most people are generally not happy about the idea of raising the price of Netflix to finance a video game studio. Art museums are visual entertainment as well, but raising the price of Netflix to build art galleries in select locations wouldn't fly well, either.

In this case, Spotify is doing anything but partitioning off podcasts. As many comments here reveal, most people are seeing podcasts pushed heavily in their music interface.

i don't have a problem at all with that. I consume everything on spotify. However what bothers me is Spotify playing victim here, when we know that if Spotify was in Apple's position, they would probably do the same.

No, I don't at all mind them trying to break the monopoly on audio books that is Amazon. (You can get them from the original publisher (not author/narrator) for 35 bucks, or 10 from Amazon. I'm willing to pay a premium for avoiding Amazon but I love audio books and I'm not as rich as Bezos.)

Podcasts was never a monopoly, but they're trying to make it one with the exclusive shows. That's what I hate. I have Spotify premium for music, so I could listen to those, but I unsubscribed from those podcasts immediately when they became exclusive. There's plenty more.

TV, I didn't know Spotify was trying to do, but same logic applies there.

Absolutely. But it's not really an expansion - they're trying to get people off of music and onto podcasts because those are cheaper for them to serve (so more like an attempt at not having to raise the subscription price).

I guess the idea is that all types of audio content have some commonality and somebody who's considering listening to music could also listen to a podcast instead. I don't think this overlap happens for me very often, but maybe it's more often than I think and often enough for them to be worth it.

I'll still boycott their podcasts because they're attempting to make proprietary what is currently free.

I don't think I have an issue with Spotify, a music streaming platform, moving into streaming other audio types.

Afterall, Apple always had the Podcasts app and they make computers. So I don't think it's much of a stretch for Spotify. Perhaps if they branched into video I'd start to be concerned.

I quite like the fact that my music library and podcasts are all from the same app and I do find that Podcasts are less "in your face" than music.

I just use Spotify for podcasts, never music. Just providing a different perspective.

I want them to absorb the whole ecosystem. Podcast apps suck and I am absolutely never using itunes. I'm glad I can get podcasts I like in Spotify and it will track across my phone / pc my progress. I don't listen to audiobooks but would buy them from Spotify if I did so I don't have to download and figure out some kind of Amazon Audible app instead.

I wouldn't bother me at all if they didn't neglect the existing features. It used to be the most responsive music app to the point where they made a documentary about themselves now it it's everything but that - crashes, buffers, freezes, every sort of bug is present where it wasn't before.

I have a slightly larger issue with the lock-in mechanisms of such "purchases". Whether I pay through Apple IAP or directly to Spotify, I can access the audiobook only on Spotify. No where else. I can't import that audiobook to another player. I can't lend it to a friend. I can't trim the parts I like and share them or listen to them independently.

Moreover, when contracts between such platforms/marketplaces and publishers go south, I'm usually left holding an empty bag cos all of the content is removed from the platform without any refunds. (Happens frequently with game stores.)

Last I checked, that's not how a "purchase" is supposed to work. Take an example of, say, an actual book. So am I ... "subscribing" to a book now? Doesn't seem like it cos I can't cancel it and get a refund. So what exactly is this model? What am I paying for?

The only 'purchase' model that works for me is where I have control of a physical or electronic copy. I got bitten by 'purchasing' music on Google Play Music - yes, there was / is the 'take-out' option, but that was such a clunky process and I'm pretty sure there were albums I paid for but didn't appear in the download (I didn't keep track of all my purchases, they were there on Google, they'll be forever, right?).

My self-imposed restrictions:

1. Subscription: no lock-in monthly payment

2. Purchase: get physical / electronic copy that's outside the reach of remote deletion or any kind of alteration

(I did say, when GPM shut down, that I'd never go back to subscription music and committed to spending the $10 / month on music from Bandcamp instead. I've since subscribed to Spotify - the catalogue at your fingertips is too good to do without - but also maintain my $10 / month Bandcamp spend on my flavour of the month - and I keep track of it!)

Know any way to buy audiobooks without DRM? AFAIK, both Apple Books and Audible have it, not just Spotify.

Regardless of the passionate feelings against Spotify, it's hard to dispute their basic premise that Apple is deliberately creating a bad user experience just to preserve their walled content garden.

The same thing applies to not being able to buy a book using the Amazon app. It's ridiculous and there is no valid argument against it other than greed. Not a fan of overregulation, but in this area I can't wait for Apple to be reined in.

Yes, there should be a law that hardware that the user paid for cannot be tethered by the manufacturer. Otherwise it is a service, not a product.

Spotify could just implement IAP. It's simple and has a great user experience.

Seems like this is more about Spotify wanting to benefit from the channel without paying for it.

IAP take a 30% cut, which is unreasonable on things like audiobook

The problem isn't that Apple forces IAP. The problem is that they have the outrageous cut of 30% (or even 15%). Apples IAP is awesome. Their greed is not.

My reaction when I read: "Audiobooks on Spotify" - Finally! Why has it taken so long to have subscription access to all audiobooks???

And then I read that you actually have to buy individual audiobooks - WTF???!!!

I can stream ,000,000s of music, movies and series with a subscription - why not audiobooks??? (and don't mention Audible - for $23/month I can stream two books = BFD)

Your local library system _may_ offer eBooks through an app login. That'd be worth a check.

This is why I use Scribd. I can’t access every single book I want but there are enough available that I’ve only run into that problem a handful of times, and I just found something else because it’s really a great selection.

I love apple products but I hate this stuff. They're cynically kneecapping competition and hurting consumer choice, like they're not rich enough already. Would class action be a to do thing here?

Agreed. It's too difficult to move off of iPhone/Apple products, but I really want to do something to force them to stop with the anticompetative BS.

Wait you have to “buy” the audio book in addition to the monthly fee? hmmm no thanks.

Just my take but I don’t want click to purchase stuff coming to Spotify. In my opinion this a fail.

I already purchase a family plan for 15$ a month .. last thing I need is tap and click add on purchases.

soon we'll probably need to "buy" popular new albums on Spotify (e.g. T. Swift...)

Digital Audiobooks are becoming more and more of a racket. Amazon recently removed the ability to buy an audio book for a $ amount. You can only buy a credit and exchange that for a book. This means that you might be buying a new $30 book for 1 credit or a $3.25 book for 1 credit.

It's incredibly frustrating and only exists to trick readers into overspending on books.

I just checked in the android audible app, I actually now have the ability to buy with dollars via the app itself.

Usually they'd redirect you to audible.com to avoid any google fees but apparently they stopped that?

I do not have the premium audible subscription though, only plus. Maybe that's why?

I don’t understand this comment, do you mean Audible? I buy audiobooks with cash there all the time. I just checked and you can still do that.

This is only the case on the mobile apps, to avoid paying fees to Google/Apple.

If you go to the website, you can still buy the books for regular money in addition to credits.

(In addition, the majority of books cost more than 1 credit anyway, so in most cases you are much better off buying via a credit)

I dont actually think you are better off buying a credit in most cases. In many cases, yes. In many cases, no. If you buy older books its very often cheaper to buy the book directly.

It does look like you can buy books on audible.com still. They removed the ability from the mobile app and amazon.com. I wont be surprised if they remove it from audible.com as well.

I wonder if the decision in the US around Epic and external links[0] will benefit spotify in Europe or not (when it is eventually resolved).

[0]:https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22814147/epic-apple-app-s...

Hey. I want my audiobooks on Spotify.

This is purely a disinterested position, of course. In order to serve you better.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Big-Bucks/dp/B0BDBG5VNP/r...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-the-Future-A-Novel/dp/B09NZ...

Bizarre responses in this thread to the plainly anti-competitive behavior of Apple.

There have to be dozens of posts here along the lines of "I don't like xyz about spotify[...]". Whether anyone of us likes Spotify has zero relevance when it comes to the fact if they should be subject to extractive rents, literally none.

The EU or any other regulator finally needs to draw a line in the sand and make clear that manufacturing hardware doesn't entitle you to dictate people how they conduct financial transactions. How Spotify, its users and producers interact with each other is their business, and the idea that Apple has any right to insert themselves into the business transactions of third parties is absurd.

Imagine every time you made any payment on a Windows machine, you had to pay Microsoft a 10% tax. Every game, every piece of audio, every paypal transcaction, for no reason at all merely because you happen to be on a windows computer you pay them a fee. We'd be rioting in the streets probably. We brought the hammer down on Microsoft for shipping a browser by default, how is Apple getting away with literally acting like a landlord on its devices?

As a musician who earns less than half a penny per stream from Spotify, it is really hard to for me to take this sob story seriously.

I think Apple is being abusively extractive here.

I also believe that Spotify's audiobook play will be bad for consumers and worse for artists.

> I also believe that Spotify's audiobook play will be bad for consumers and worse for artists.

Could you expand on this?

Spotify buying Findaway (a company that previously licensed audiobooks to many different distributors with varied business models), for example, centralizes the market in a way that at best, will result in both an oligopoly for consumers and an oligopsony for creaters. It is certainly good that Amazon/Audible has competitors, but if the only competitors it has have basically the same vertically integrated structure there will be less incentive and opportunity for authors and voice actors to create genuinely interesting works, and listeners will in turn have increasingly commoditized options, with creators making less money for their work and consumers paying more.

And that doesn't even include the more specific concerns about the way Spotify uses contract labor to squeeze artists.

Apple has been crystal clear since day one that they want a percentage of payments being facilitated through their platform.

For them they are a channel and channels have costs.

I've been using Spotify for audiobooks for a few years. It's a lot easier to use than the alternatives in my opinion.

Right. If I’m going to get into audiobooks, I want as many dollars I put in to go to the author, editors, and narrator as possible.

Neither of these leviathans are interested in making that happen.

The spotify UI is the worst for listening to audiobooks i have ever encountered.

So, I would consider it a favour that Apple is preventing you from suffering this miserable experience.

Exactly this! They litteraly treat audiobooks like a music album. Randomize tracks? Check! Not storing where the audiobook was stopped? Check! Featuring actual personal mixtapes of chapters taken from multiple books? Check! With that experience I'd never buy a single book there.

Good grief, that URL.

These companies are ridiculous. Leave us out of your corporate drama.

I disagree. This "corporate drama" really does impact users, as well as developers (most of the HN crowd).

To be fair the corporate drama is usually dressed up as contorted consumer opinion drivel. The true reasons for most of these moves behind the scenes aren't as altruistic as these folks like to let on!

All of business is a sort of charade, Amazon might be "sorry that your product was disappointing and want to offer you a refund" by which they mean "if we give you a refund we think you'll feel confident enough to buy more from us". You still get what you wanted though.

Yeah, I mean... Maybe Spotify is right, but the fact that Daniel Ek puts it like Apple is the big bad company against a small and poor one... I can't stand the fact that they're playing the victim while they are also being greedy and not sharing enough of the revenues with artists.

Last time they complained about Apple not supporting Siri integration. Then when Apple added support for that, Spotify never added HomePod Siri support.

The idea has ~5k votes and 137 pages of comments on their forum and yet no action from Spotify.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Implement-Na...

These features would all help with putting money directly in their pocket. I imagine they would be prioritized.

I dropped Spotify and went to Apple Music because of this.

I dropped Spotify and went to Apple Music because for $20 I get music, 200GB cloud, and tv vs $15 for Spotify.

Just came here to write that! Because of that and because I am not a fan of the convoluted UI, I switched to YT Music. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Spotify also still doesn't support AirPlay 2, nearly 4.5 years after it was launched: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/25/spotify-still-doesnt-su...

I really don't want to switch to Apple Music (it's not a great app either) but I'm really tired of dealing with playback issues due to the lack of buffered AirPlay 2 playback. If you try out a proper AirPlay 2 supporting app like Overcast or Apple Music, it's a dramatically better experience.

I also want nothing to do with Spotify's podcasts or audio books. And their macOS Chromium desktop app has also languished for years.

While Apple Music is annoying to use, the Spotify app is even worse for me. Audio quality is also markedly worse — I have verified my hunch with a double-blind side-by-side test. Spotify is now way too expensive for what they offer and the only noteworthy integration they offer is Sonos.

I'm entirely with you that even if I was a Spotify subscriber, I don't want their podcasts and audiobooks. In separate apps, optimized for use-case, covered by the same subscription, maybe. Forcing all those fundamentally different media formats through one UI and funnel is just wrong.

> Spotify also still doesn't support AirPlay 2, nearly 4.5 years after it was launched

Apple homepod still does not support Spotify connect, nearly 7 years after it was launched.

Why would i buy a full price audiobook through Spotify when I can just use Audible?

I've tried to us Spotify for music. And Audible for audiobooks. But it's not enjoyable using seperate apps

I tend to only finish my audiobooks when they're on Spotify.

It’s worth noting Spotify handles it’s developer community just as bad. They took away the old SDK where you could play songs from Spotify without bouncing off to the Spotify app and replaced it a way worse user experience. Any question related to this change goes unanswered. Same with rate limit extension requests for apps.

It’s really hard to feel sorry for them getting treated bad by Apple while they do the exact same thing to their community.

Yeah the App Store rules suck and that’s all on Apple, but I find it a bit silly for Spotify to repeatedly act surprised about them. It’s the same cycle: Spotify wants go around App Store rules → Apple says no → Spotify fires up the timetoplayfair dot com with slightly tweaked text to fit whatever issue they have this time.

How else are they going to challenge the status quo? I'm confused by people acting shocked and appalled every time any other company brings up issues with the status quo.

Spotify wants to get into Audiobooks, Apple won't let them, Spotify wants to make a social ruckus so people are aware of who to blame and to demand change.

Before you consider the idea they should just quietly try to push regulation, consider without insane amounts of capital to go against the likes of Apple who will always have more, you need the public on your side. It does have an impact on regulation.

> Apple won't let them

Not true at all. Apple's rules haven't changed in ages, they've defended them against Epic in court, and Spotify knew what they were when they started down this road, just like they knew the last couple of times they've tried to argue with Apple publicly (they're 0-for-2 so far, last time I checked).

Spotify can get into Audiobooks in multiple ways, they just don't like any of them. Apple isn't stopping them, they're just requiring their usual cut on IAP, and enforcing the usual rules. As usual.

Maybe Spotify should take the lead.

Allow third party payment services and music stores in their app. With 0% cut of course.

Spotify is saying the cut should be 0% for Apple?

The discussion hasn't been framed around what the percentage should be.

It's been that Spotify disagrees with the entire model.

I wasn’t seriously asking you. Obviously they don’t expect to completely bypass paying Apple anything. Making extreme counter points doesn’t help these debates.

Spotify complaining about a “mandatory 30% tax” doesn’t mean they want zero tax. The people who dismiss questioning heavily centralized systems as only wanting anarchy are being purposefully misleading. Just like every other time that happens.

Apple would definitely let them to get into audiobooks, Spotify just doesn’t want to give them the cut. As a platform owner Spotify takes a cut from the artists, aren’t they playing the same game as Apple?

If they somehow get regulators to allow 3rd party payments on App Store, that would be a terrible thing for the users. I don’t want to start giving out my credit card number to every random company I want to purchase content from.

The UX issues Apple rules create are legit concerns though, but it just kinda feels they’re used as a veil to get to the bottom line, which is to get around the IAP system. It’s always about the money.

Then don't. You wouldn't be forced to give over your credit card number to every random company. You're creating a situation that doesn't make any sense - somehow you trust them enough to provide you the service you want, but not enough to handle your credit card?

Just as you're able to see through the fact that it's not just about UX - let's stop pretending the issue of 3rd party payments is about consumer 'safety'.

The situation already exists on Mac for example and it’s very inconvenient imo to have to buy everything from a different website, trying to keep up who charges what and when, keeping track of the license codes etc. I’m not a fan.

A friend of mine has the issue that spotify still charges him, even though he has no account anymore (and no access to the email address used for the non-existing account). There is no more information in the charge other than it is charged by spotify. They do not offer phone support and respond with useless questions. The only way he seems he has left is to let a lawyer handle it…

Next time he should just let it be handled by apple, with a click, for free.

Cheaper and quicker than a lawyer would be to cancel his bank card and order a new one

I use Spotify to listen to Music, Podcasts and Audiobooks already.

I've longed for a audiobook library on there for ages.

Hopefully this works out, and apple doesn't screw them over too bad.

I mean.... if it was a small company or whatever sure - but this is Spotify, a giant corporate enterprise, I don't really feel sorry for them.

Oh, look, a huge company that pays artists a pittance[0] is pretending to be on the side of the artists (writers in this case) in their fight against mean old Apple. Is this like when they complained about Apple not letting them do Siri, but then never implemented Siri support? Or maybe it's like when they complained about Apple not letting them make a watch app, when the APIs were already available?

Nah, it's about Spotify wanting more money, and trying to pretend it's David vs Goliath it's not.

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k9-UIg52xg

I bought a book from them, one I've been meaning to listen to for a long time.

for $25 it wasn't a bad deal for hours of really good content, read by the author. Best version i've seen.

I appreciate not having a subscription model attached to a few books I might listen to

I just wish I could buy and download copies of audiobooks, that's still how I listen. It's a trope on here to talk about walled gardens, but I was surprised by how difficult it's been to find audiobooks outside of Audible.

I have found private torrent groups that have amazing collections. Beyond that, yeah, pretty much just Audible.

What is that site about?! Is it Spotify's?! Can they not just announce whatever the feature is. I pay for Spotify and left that page within about ten seconds.

Don‘t know about the US market but in Germany there were many audio books available in Spotify already that you could access via the normal premium subscription. Few days after I read about the launch of purchasable audio books in the US all of those vanished so I canceled my subscription and got Apple Music via Apple one which was a little cheaper for the whole family when adding the extra iCloud storage I needed anyway. Happy with the decision so far. I just had to move all my playlists to Apple Music which was easy due to a random online tool I found

Could you, say, hike the price of all audiobooks by the Apple tax when buying through iAP? While offering a cheaper price outside?

You can but you're not allowed to inform the consumer about it. So it makes your product look overpriced and pisses off your customers.

There are already apps doing this, like Youtube Premium ($16 IAP, $12 on their website) and Dropbox ($12 IAP, $10 on their website).

Corporate propaganda. Hardly “the full story”.

Does it save position now on an audiobook? For example if you listen to music inbetween?

Cause if not, it's still useless

It does for podcasts.

Time for Spotify to “Play Fair” with musicians.

> Unfortunately, Apple sees things differently—because fair competition is the last thing Apple wants.

Hahah, so funny to hear this from a company well known for enforcing DRM & paywalls with ads everywhere.

As someone who uses Spotify every day, I hate it. I hate their expanding markets while constantly making the app more bloated, slow, and less intuitive. Really, you're going to fill my recommended page with podcasts you've paid a ton of money for exclusivity instead of showing me recommended music that's relevant to me, like they used to? Audiobooks aren't going to make my music experience any better either. Can't wait for a new, slower UI update in 3 months and for them to take away lyrics _again_.

I'm a bit salty here and that's a bit of a rant, but I just want to stream music and they make it progressively harder.

spotify podcasts are kind of garbage imo; player just doesn't handle it well moving between or around episodes and music depending on what I'm doing.

> for them to take away lyrics _again_

Disclaimer: I work at Spotify, but I can't speak directly for the teams handling this.

So. Lyrics, and any text that accompanies audio in general (for example, if you try to show audiobook text while it's playing, or audio transcript of a podcast, or...) is a legal minefield.

So, if some text that accompanies audio disappears... it's likely for legal/licensing reasons, not because devs are incompetent.

That said, as an incompetent dev myself, features may disappear due to incompetence, too :)

Oh I bet it gets tricky on the legal front. I was more referring to the entire feature being removed like 5 or 6 years ago I think, but I imagine there was an issue with the partnership with Genius or whoever the original lyric supplier was.

I can neither confirm nor deny that :)

There was a partnership with Musixmatch for lyrics, but it ended for reasons I don't know (and if I knew I couldn't tell you) https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Lyrics-feat...

Getting the lyrics back was another journey that I also don't know the details of (and also couldn't tell you :) )

Quoting from the page:

> TLDR: Apple rules mandate a cumbersome Audiobooks purchasing process

This is very much a lie. Apple’s way is the easy way - use IAP. And it seems that like with facebook [1] they’re trying to apply the rules evenly to everybody. Spotify religiously denies using Apple’s In App Payments. The attempt to send emails on how to purchase audiobooks is their sneaky way of bypassing the rules. They now to try to blame the process they came up with themselves on Apple. But Spotify is to blame, for not following rules of App Store which demand IAP for “digital goods and services”.

However you feel about IAP if spotify has the courage it should challenge in court (like Epic) instead of a website that makes a very bad biased take on the situation.

And we know Apple is not going to respond publicly.

[1] Story about Facebook boosts being forced to IAP a few days ago

Your argument is "they are the rules".

I think the point is that the rules are anti-competitive, user-hostile, extractive.

Not GP, but I think the argument was: "IAP is easy and simple and secure and well-known, and should be used." Spotify is acting as if Apple is blocking them in many different ways, but all would be solved if Spotify would use IAP, which is super-simple for users, but doesn't make Spotify as much money.

You're saying the exact same thing: follow the rules. Completely ignoring that those rules are insane.

"IAP is easy and simple and secure and well-known, and should be used."

Is that better?

I will never use a purchase method on iOS that isn't IAP. Never, and I'm not alone.

Who cares if you prefer IAP? Use IAP then. The discussion is not that IAP is bad, the discussion is that it's the only option, hence no option. You can't even talk of other options.

I can't, because--and this is key--Spotify refuses to implement IAP! To implement IAP would drastically undermine their case, eliminating huge swathes of the linked page.

Yes, it's dumb that they're not allowed to link to the website for people to purchase directly. I would prefer that they handle it like "login with Apple," where you can support others, but must support Apple alongside. I would always choose IAP, others could click and go through the extra steps to buy directly from Spotify. But it also isn't that hard to deal with. Amazon does it for ebooks, and people still buy ebooks from Amazon by going to the website.

Spotify is throwing a fit because they don't want to even allow IAP. They want the advantages of being on iOS with zero consideration of Apple or iOS users. Apple is going too far, but if I have to choose, I side with Apple here, because Spotify is throwing a dishonest tantrum.

You can make anything anti-competitive.

Spotify doesn't offer an API to allow me to replace their payment system with mine where I would direct 100% of profits to artists. Because that is their revenue source.

That makes absolutely no sense.

A more interesting/valid scenario might be something like "Spotify is using their dominance in music streaming to get too much of an advantage in the podcast market". How much is too much is for the public and politicians to debate as seen here, it's a matter of pragmatism not absolute truths.

I understand that they find it anti-competitive but I have a problem in how they summarize their argument - they blame Apple for the cumbersome process while the real problem is them skirting the rules on IAP. The TLDR sound rather sound like “Apple wants use to use anti-competitive IAP but we don’t want to so we have to make the process of buying audiobooks complicated”. This sounds more close to the situation they describe.

When apps use IAP it’s very user-friendly. People sometimes prefer it over putting down their payment details in yet another app. I disagree that forcing apps to use IAP is user-hostile. I am not arguing that the IAP mandate is perfect, but these are the rules right now. And you can’t break rules just because you think they’re insane. Dura lex sed lex.

The "rules applied evenly to everyone" means everyone but them loses 30% of all sales revenue.

It can be perfectly legal but still wrong, in which case it makes sense to raise awareness with the public in the hope of new laws.

Do you know what I hate? Spotify having my credit card.

There’s a very low chance I ever buy an audiobook if they integrate with apple’s purchase flow. There’s a zero chance if they had their own flow that pops up and asks me for a credit card. And a separate system to update numbers, cancel stuff, etc etc

I get that Spotify wants more money. I’m sure publishers hated selling audiobooks to Barnes & Noble and them taking 50% of the retail price.

Thanks to 3-D Secure it doesn't really matter who has your credit card details. Relying on the secrecy of a few numbers is silly anyway.

I’m not concerned about the security of my cars. I’m concerned about entering it again and Spotify charging me for stuff.

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