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Comment by brink | Hacker News Reader

> “So that we can continue to invest in and innovate on our product features and bring users the best experience, we occasionally update our prices,”

I don't care about your innovation. I haven't cared about a single new feature that's come out from Spotify in the last 5-7 years. I find myself listening to Spotify less than ever these days anyway. These prices are too much for me, so after ~10 years of premium Spotify, I'll be cancelling this month because I'm not getting enough value. I'll find other avenues of discovering new music.

Benn Jordan predicted the demise of Spotify last year, and I'm starting to believe he might be right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU

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> I don't care about your innovation. I haven't cared about a single new feature that's come out from Spotify in the last 5-7 years.

I agree, and I'd personally extend it to say the same about almost every other subscription-supported software product I've rented in the last 10 years.

From my perspective as a user, "innovation" broadly means changing my product to chase some other users who were previously reluctant to buy in when I did. Sometimes I'll get something beneficial myself, but the more likely outcome is that I'll be paying to see my interface cluttered with countless things I was content not having around and the specific UX details or features I did like massaged out through A/B tests focused on these later adopters.

A content subscription model generally makes sense for catalog-streaming products like Spotify, but the software subscription model is often ruinous to user experience for long-term subscribers.

Cancelled years ago. What they call innovation is re-inventing the UI and making it actively worse (which led me quitting). They don't understand that I just want shit to work as efficiently as possible in the background.

Can’t justify their valuation based on being a utility.

They haven’t added anything useful in quite a while. Sometimes I get on there and play some old playlists I enjoyed years ago and haven’t bothered to export, but maybe I should . I’ve been just using the free version. All ever really wanted or needed was a way to make lists, a good search engine, a good “what is this song, and access to community created playlists.

I used to care about Spotify's innovation but they still haven't made anything close to as interesting as the APIs and dev platforms they used to promote and then killed. Also Echonest.

Somehow the base functionality has been stuck in a one-step-forward-one-step-back loop for the past 5 years or so.

It's someone poetic that the last generation saw companies crumble from failing to innovate and now a new generation of companies is heading towards ruin from over innovating.

I honestly prefer the Spotify app from 7 years ago to the one we have now. It's not innovation, it's just bloat.

There are a million way I'd like improve Spotify (mostly implementing better management of the music I already like rather than funneling me towards new music) but I also remember a time not too long ago when hearing a new album was much more expensive and difficult. I used to pay $17 a pop for new CDs regularly, and as a kid in the 90s, that was real money! We might argue that the current equilibrium is unsustainable for and unfair to artists, but for consumers, Spotify/priced streaming is a huge advancement.

Tidal is a Spotify clone that is just fine and has the added benefit of not sponsoring Joe Rogan.

I don't really have feelings about Joe Rogan, but I'll check it out, thanks.

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