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Comment by consumer451 | Hacker News Reader

I am not young, and I was around for both. What was the difference?

I remember going to Europe from the USA around 2012, and everyone was already using Spotify. Their music experience was vastly superior to ours. IIRC, they were based/avail in countries with really loose music copyright laws. Was that what made the difference? They grew huge where they could, before the hammer came down? Then too big to fail?

Again, IIRC, when the US music labels wanted to shut them down, they instead said: "hey, why don't you just buy a big piece of Spotify. We are already your distro. F the artists." I remember thinking that this was a gangster move. (btw, I still refuse to subscribe to Spotify.)

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https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/who-really-owns-spotif...

> Speaking of industry incestuousness, I suggest you read more about Tencent’s 9.1 percent stakeholding in Spotify, which is awe-inspiring in its spider’s web of vested interests. The short version: Tencent Holdings is about to own 10 percent of Universal, which in turns owns around 3.5 percent in Spotify, which in turn owns around nine percent in Tencent Music Entertainment, which in turn is part-owned by Universal’s two main rivals (Warner and Sony), but remains majority owned by Tencent Holdings, which in turn owns 9.1 percent of Spotify. (And, yes, no kidding, that’s the short version.)

Damn. Thanks for that. Oof.

Sorry for the tangent, but I've always wondered: does Tencent's partial ownership of Reddit give them any access to Reddit's internal data? Is that how that generally works, or am I making uninformed assumptions?

> Is that how that generally works, or am I making uninformed assumptions?

The answer is probably a bit more nuanced, but broadly, you're making uninformed assumptions. Blackrock own about 5% of Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, and we don't see people throwing around accusations that they're fiddling with their runnings.

I used to work for a company that Tencent had a minority (but significantly larger than 9%) share in, and they approximately 0 influence in our operations. Some places will be different, but if you've ever worked anywhere with a parent company you'll be familiar with just how untrusting the subisidiaries are. Honestly, I think the best way of thinking about it is the Larry Ellison Lawnmower joke - they're not out to get you, they don't care.

Whether or not that remains to be true going forwards who knows, but that's the same of any organisation anywhere in the world, and as someone who lives in Europe I'm far more concerned about what the US is doing right now.

Blackrock does not have any political motives at all, and is purely interested in management competency and money.

Tencent, despite being a for-profit company, may still have political motives pushed onto them from the very top. This is true for all chinese companies (because if they don't "comply", the very public example of jack ma is the answer).

Now, of course, it doesn't mean this power is utilized all the time or everywhere. It simply means that the opportunity exists for such power to be weld if the state calls for it. Just because it hasn't happened so far doesn't mean it can't. It's different from Ellison Lawnmower, because the political differences between the countries.

>Blackrock does not have any political motives at all

Thats not true, at all.

They have donated millions in the 2024 election alone to a number of politicians[0]. They definitely have political motives

[0]: https://dallasexpress.com/uncategorized/blackrock-giving-big...

> Blackrock does not have any political motives at all

How do you figure?

> Blackrock does not have any political motives at all

Please paste this above all future comments you post to save HN readers’ time.

> Blackrock does not have any political motives at all, and is purely interested in management competency and money.

Seriously? You can say that with a straight face?

> Tencent, despite being a for-profit company, may still have political motives pushed onto them from the very top. This is true for all chinese companies

And that definitely won't happen in the US [0].

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo

> as someone who lives in Europe I'm far more concerned about what the US is doing right now.

The fact that the US is now voting in the UN with Russia, Iran, NK, which mindlessly pushes the EU towards China is mind-blowing, and entirely understandable.

source: EU born, lived most of my life in the USA, then back in the EU for the last 10 years. I will truly miss the century of Pax Americana, and I hope for the coming century of Pax Europa.

Damn is that how they got their name? Does Tencent just mean "Ten Percent?"

Wikipedia says this about the name:

The name "Tencent" is based on its Chinese name Tengxun (Chinese: 腾讯), which incorporates part of Pony Ma's Chinese name (Ma Huateng; 马化「腾」) and literally means "galloping fast information".

So maybe it's just concidence? Their first product was also a messenger software so I don't see why they would name themselves "ten percent". The investing thing came later.

The difference could be the attitude towards piracy, especially in the legal system.

Between 2006 and 2016, no one in the Nordics and Eastern Europe cared about piracy. By the time Spotify became prominent enough in the West to compete with music sales, it had already mainly been legalized.

Grooveshark was in the US, which has a very litigious business climate and is world-leading in copyright enforcement.

I can't think of a more plausible explanation. But I will say that breaking laws to later legalize is still only a successful strategy if one doesn't get caught. If anyone thinks this is a good strategy, I'd say there's survivorship bias going on.

I am totally on-board with your assessment, but also please add at least Spain to the loose music IP regime at that time.

> I'd say there's survivorship bias going on.

I agree that there is definitely survivorship bias happening here. However, what exactly is the punishment for failure? Is it worth the risk for the founders?

Well, I suppose one might say there's no risk so long as the corporate veil isn't pierced and the company is limited somehow. But that is a bit cynical and reductive. In cultures that hate piracy, the personal reputational risk is high. Besides, company officeholders are sometimes sued personally for their company’s ills. Even if they can defend themselves, it will cost much money and years of stress. Another risk, I suppose, is various opportunity costs—one wastes time and funding that could have been better used.

I also agree with your assessment, by the way.

> In cultures that hate piracy, the personal reputational risk is high.

Which cultures are we talking about? I assume not the US.

Look at Sean Parker - Napster got sued to oblivion, he became first president of Facebook and made literal billions.

His cofounder (Shawn Fanning) didn’t make it quite as big, but still sold a company to Blizzard for $30m. Plus whatever he made out of HNT.

Neither seemed to suffer any kind of stigma for their involvement in arguably the highest profile piracy startup.

> I am not young, and I was around for both. What was the difference?

imo the difference is that spotify at least tried to hide it

when you searched for songs on grooveshark you'd get names back like "Tame Impala - The Slow Rush (2020) Mp3 (320kbps) [Hunter]"

also IIRC grooveshark never even tried to set up revenue share with labels/artists

Spotify cheated behind the scenes and a veneer of following the rules, which eventually transitioned into actually following the rules and paying out artists

I was using Spotify Beta way back when, and they absolutely had songs named like that as well. I specifically remember one of Pink Floyd's albums (pretty sure is was a copy of the wall) as such.

grooveshark aggregated from blogs and other web sources. If I recall correctly you could follow links back to those places. Back then the web was full of decentralized independent writers doing music reviews or producing mixes or capturing new bootlegs from live shows. Grooveshark indexed those and made them playable in one location, but I don’t think it ever hosted any of the files.

The difference is that Grooveshark was always a pirate product, and didn't try to hide it. The UI had rough edges, but the library was massive, just like the old Napster era. Spotify was a growth hacker startup bro project, influenced by iTunes.

So maybe without Grooveshark there would be no Spotify?

A different context for the proverb "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun YOU!"

They way I would describe it is, one wolf aspired to domesticate itself, the other remained wild and died by the law of the jungle.

Hah, I rather would say one of the wolves got strong enough to play with the big dogs. And is now making the rules of the music jungle biz.

Disagree. Spotify is not a wolf. The people who actually OWN the content are the wolves. And that is still the music labels.

If Spotify was really the wolf they wouldn't have to pay Universal billions. Not that much has changed really.

Spotify had a big library of fully licensed music as early as 2008 in European markets. They were the next evolution of the record label-friendly post-Napster music startups.

They were already the teacher's pet. Grooveshark was the one that was always getting suspended, before ultimately being expelled.

A dog can be brought to heel and will comply because it prefers the warmth of the campfire to the cold of the wilderness. A wolf will do wolf things until it dies. Or in this case, is hunted into extinction.

Then I'm not sure if this is a great example of the survivorship bias. One company tried to hide the piracy, the other didn't. One company operated from piracy-friendly countries, the other operated from a piracy-hostile country.

Survivorship bias is when two cases face the same selection process, not when one fails for taking an opposite approach.

Grooveshark had no ads and a much larger library in the early days. Also, you could upload your own tracks into the public listing. Iirc it was quite easy to embed a track or playlist as a widget into your personal website which was very cool in the era of non-walled-garden-internet. But it wasn't advertised as much as Spotify, not as many people used it, and the founders were the subject of tragic circumstances.

If you cant beat them, join them..

As a business practice, yes, exactly. Good idea!

As a personal philosophy, please, someone help me avoid nihilism.

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