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Comment by halgir | Hacker News Reader

> Video > audio

I get what you mean, but I wouldn't accept that as a universal truth. I spend considerably more time listening to music on Spotify than I do watching video on Netflix. The content I consume on Netflix may have cost more to produce, but the content I consume on Spotify gives me subjectively more value.

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I agree with you - music keeps me entertained all day, it has far more value to me. But isn't there an argument to be made that the infrastructure requirements for video is huge compared to music? The requirements to store and stream enough 4k video all day every day to satisfy millions of users is monstrous and that has to factor into the cost. I wouldn't expect streaming audio to be nearly that costly.

The only reason music streaming is so cheap is because it's a commodity. There's several multi-billion dollar corporations all competing with largely identical products. There's not much else than price to compete on.

Video services compete on exclusive content, so they can make subjective value considerations around how valuable certain content is to certain groups.

And, related is that there's a royalty/copyright structure in music that means those multi-billion dollar companies can stream almost anything they want for a known low dollar amount.

There's also an almost infinite supply of good music--past and present--out there. There just isn't a lot of incentive for most audio streaming services to invest in exclusive content--the odd podcast notwithstanding.

If streaming got too expensive, I'd just buy more music now and then. I managed fine before streaming and I'd manage without it. But then I have a big library.

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