Spotify Plans to Take on Netflix and HBO with Streaming Video Service | Hacker News Reader

Spotify Plans to Take on Netflix and HBO with Streaming Video Service

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30 pointshornokplease50 comments

Classic Spotify. Extending to new markets while neglecting the problems and concerns of their existing user base. I've been a Spotify user since before they were in the US (using a proxy), and have been a paying customer ever since they expanded to the US.

To see how bad the problem is, check out the reviews for their Android app [1]. For years they've released update after update for Android, adding new features and breaking old ones, without addressing the #1 feature request by Android users (many of them paying customers): landscape mode. I've been playing Spotify in my android dock (home and car) by tilting my head 90 degrees to scroll and navigate for a long time. Makes for a fun driving experience.

Android users have been getting so frustrated, I've seen a few saying to the effect of, "I'm editing my review to remove a star every time you release a new update without landscape mode." Needless to say, there are lots of 1-star reviews. It's actually a ritual for me now. Every time they release a new update, I like to see what obscure feature they were able to think of this time (usually something like "Added Portugese language support" (no offense to existing users who actually did request this)), and then go read all the new reviews from pissed off users. I'm pretty sure Spotify must have an internal bet going to see how long they can go before adding and fixing the features their existing users are actually asking for.

My point to all this? Yeah, this announcement sounds about right.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotify.mo....

I don't understand why they would move to video. Why not take the concept but apply it to their current business model along with a splash of Amazon's ebook business model?

In other words, fund and produce music exclusively for Spotify. Pay some big and/or some up-and-coming names lots of money to go exclusive. Then change the payout for bands that self-publish through Spotify.

This breaks the music publisher's stranglehold while seeming far less risky than going straight up against Netflix, HBO, and Amazon in original video content streaming.

>This breaks the music publisher's stranglehold

Spotify is owned by the music publishers.

I don't think exclusivity is something a musician would do, it would just lead to massive piracy and fans who can't listen to the music without signing up to yet another music service.

How about they focus on launching in other markets first? I heard they were launching in Canada, months ago. Still nothing. And now they want to take on video?

One thing at a time Spotify.

Fix their iOS app as well.

Have you seen it recently? I was very happy with it the last few flights/road trips I've used it on. A year ago it was awful--crashing all the time--but now it feels quite polished.

It's OK. It drains battery like mad and doesn't stream worth crap (I get maybe one song in five to play). But other than the battery issue, offline mode works reasonably well.

My theory about the battery usage is that Spotify uses Vorbis for encoding their files, and iDevices lack a hardware decoder for that.

It's pretty good, but it's astonishing to me that it still lacks type-ahead

I see a lot of complaints about companies not doing business in every country. When I look at the tangled mess that is the worldwide copyright system, I feel privileged, not entitled, to services like Spotify and Netflix. They've put a lot of work and effort into making their service legal and profitable (not an easy combo), and so if they're not available everywhere, I give them the benefit of the doubt. Every company would love to be ubiquitously global, but the copyright system is what's blocking them, not their own ineptitude.

I'm incredibly happy that Netflix launched in Uruguay, and currently pay for 4 subscription (mine, my parents' and my uncles').

Service is great and the total of the 4 subscriptions is less than ONE crappy local cable service (which is a monopoly by collusion of the 4 local firms).

How do they handle the language? Does everyone understand English well enough, or do they have subtitles?

Every movie available has at the very least Spanish and Portuguese subtitles, and most have dual audio as well.

Much better than a DVD actually :) and a LOT better than cable (I strongly dislike dubbed movies), no stupid messages at the beginning, and can I usually listen to English audio with Spanish subtitles (my family does as well, we all learnt English).

The downside is that the movie selection is even more limited than in the U.S. - but since I'm not a movie buff, it's more than enough for me. And they have a lot of shows that aren't otherwise available (like Top Gear, which I needed to download from the net since it wasn't legally available in my country before).

The last time I used spotify, it was because somebody linked to a playlist on facebook. I usually like this person's music taste, so I clicked the link, expecting to hear some music.

You must download our client

Groan.

I downloaded and installed the client, and good job devs, the playlist started playing (I don't think I even had to click anything, seriously good job.)

What I was completely NOT okay with, in any capacity was that all of the songs I listened to were broadcast to all of my facebook friends.

Would this be the same for film?

"Ryan just watched Bellflower on spotify video!"

"Ryan just watched a documentary on prostitution on spotify video!"

"Ryan just watch Gigli on spotify video!"

No thanks.

I can understand complaining about having to download the client - that's annoying - but the Facebook settings are easily fixed.

And they're fixing the concern of downloading the client by implementing the web client, but that's still in beta at the moment.

When I linked my pre-existing spotify account to facebook a week or two ago, I was explicitly offered the option to disable that feature as part of the account linking wizard. And obviously you can disable it in the preferences. It's a big oversight that they didn't give you the same prompt as part of that otherwise very slick story you described.

Rdio

You can easily turn that off in the preferences http://i.imgur.com/fm8jEnY.png

Ok. There's the attraction that Spotify might have had for that kind of market, along with some synergies in its structure i.e. 1) major shift within an old & monopolistic industry being left behind by new technologies and 2) similarities between the larger music and video industry that Spotify can leverage (having learned from music already). THAT said, the road to disruption can be taken through a highly profitable niche first - avoiding the pressure of being omnipresent from day 1, which is what Spotify will inevitably do. We're in the film space and I'm happy about this development. Competition within new online distribution channels is only good for us.

I have to say that not having used Spotify at all in the past few years I'm amazed at all the feedback about their client. I liked to show off how it was significantly faster to browse and play music than iTunes on a local library. When I last used the service the client was tiny (a few hundred kilobyte), worked under WINE with some modicum of support from the developers. Of course it did have one major issue which led to me leaving it - the inability to throttle let alone disable use of P2P (I know, there are various methods that could do this externally).

I don't understand why everyone wants to be a online video distributor for the Hollywood studio system. You're at the mercy of studios that are, at best, ambivalent about online video. Netflix's costs are sky high and they have to deal with huge swaths of content that is unavailable to them due to exclusivity deals with competing providers. Why on Earth would anybody want to get into this business?

Frankly, I don't understand why any of the movie/TV studios need Netflix when they can simply sell their own content direct to the consumer via Internet.

I'd say the studios "need" Netflix largely because people want all of their content accessible in one place, and Netflix has established itself as one of the major places people like to get it.

You're right, though, it's a very competitive space, and if the studios could get their crap together, they could certainly destroy Netflix. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced they're flexible enough to do it.

> Frankly, I don't understand why any of the movie/TV studios need Netflix when they can simply sell their own content direct to the consumer via Internet.

Because they remember what happened to them the last time they tried this trick (actually they don't remember that well but we will come to that). Let me explain, it all dates back from Hollywood infancy.

So, let's go back to the beginning of cinema at the very start of the past century. Edison just invented the kinetoscope which is seen as a novelty. Immigrants, mostly Jewish, looking for work see in the exhibition of such shows a way to make a living, bought projection material and funded the first cinemas, the nickelodeons.

Quickly, it appeared clear to the most entrepreneurial that to make customers come back, you need a constant flow of new movies to show. They decided to move to production and fled the east cost settling in California in order to avoid paying Edison for his patents (kind of ironic, isn't it ?).

Most of these people came from the distribution sectors. They understood its importance and quickly passed contracts with theaters circuit. These circuits actually predate cinema era . They were initially showing vaudeville. In the end, the biggest studios of the period ended in possession of their own movie theaters distribution circuit.

As long as studios were numerous, everything was fine. But, the formation of the MPPDA what will become the MPAA in 1922 by the then three majors studios started making some players uncomfortable and independents quickly accused them of forming a trust.

Then comes the 30's. Talkies become the norm. Productions costs skyrocketed. Early players like Warner won big and started buying smaller studios. By the end of the decade, Hollywood was entirely dominated by five really big studios.

As production costs were so high, these studios were in the habit of bundling movies when selling them to make a profit even on the not so stellar ones. As a non-negligible share of cinemas were owned by the productions company and thus buying blindly, others had to buy bundled too (generally the whole season) or be unable to show the blockbusters. The majors add shifted the production risk for them to exhibitors putting all independent in a difficult position.

Thankfully, it was another time. The federal government was still somewhat working and the studios were sued by the Department of Justice in 1938. It reached the Supreme Court in 1948 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...) whose verdict went against the studios. Finally, they had to separate themselves from their distribution outlet and laws were passed ensuring a more fair market.

Now, the really funny part is that the way these same studios actually sell their catalogue to digital distributors is strangely similar to the bundles they used to sell to cinemas in the 30's. But, as they don't have their own distribution network, they don't fell under antitrust law.

TL; DR : Because they lost an antitrust case against the US government in 1948 for owning large part of the distribution circuit and using bundling practices not that far removed from the way they sell their catalogue to digital distributors.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Spotify, you seem like nice people, I know some people who work there. You all seem like smart cookies. Please, focus on your core business and develop it. There's so much that still needs doing, and improving, and working on.

I'm honestly a happy subscriber and think £9.99 is ridiculously good value for money, but if they think trying to go after a completely nightmarish market which is currently being contested by many companies with many more years experience.

Argh.

I hope they aren't planning to bundle their music and video service together and charge more. I already have Amazon Prime because of the volume of stuff I tend to order from Amazon, and I have Netflix and Spotify.

If I have to choose between the last two, Spotify will be replaced. Easily. Hell, Spotify hasn't even figured out a way to let users sort their playlists.

No one knows whether NetFlix strategy of financing content will work longterm...

Why wouldn't spotify finance content creation in the business where they have the most market knowledge before jumping in to video? Video has to be just as hard, if not harder than music to make a profit from right?

Is there a reason that funding original/exclusive content in music wont work the way that it has in video? (the way that it has worked for HBO/Showtime etc and that Netflix is now trying it?)

I think it could work in theory, but the risks appear to be higher. I speculate that it's easier to build a successful TV series than it is to build a popular record.

I'm no expert in the music industry, but I've played in multiple bands, gone on national tours, and have friends who are legit rock stars so I know a thing or two. But like I said, the above is speculation and I'm no expert.

I think the biggest problem would be the piracy caused by only releasing music on one retailer. It would also cause difficulty for fans (I use Rdio and have to switch to Spotify just to hear the new album from a band I like?) which is something I doubt musicians want to do.

I would think there's no reason not to release it everywhere (I assume syndication will eventually happen to netflix produced content because why leave additional content revenue on the table?)

Thx for sharing. Any stats on how the funnel works in music vs movies/shows? I assume the same percentages apply across content (roughly) in terms of bands signed - > platinum records for music, vs. movies greenlighted to record shows for movies.

Isn't Spotify losing money hand over fist so as a result this is just going to dig a deeper hole since they're taking on the juggernaut that is Netflix?

Would it not make more sense for them to partner with or challenge Vevo? Getting into music videos seems like a much more natural step.

Offline mode for video would be fantastic.

Their most recent desktop update is a total disaster, their support services are wholly incapable of responding to email in any decent fashion, they still do not provide release notes...

Seriously, go read the community forum response to their recent updates. Unmitigated disaster might be an overstatement for how poorly they're launching updates.

Spotify, you're already overextended. Your staff categorically cannot keep up with what you're asking. Your software is stretched and bugs are flooding in. Each release is introducing MORE broken features and half-baked implementations of last years catch-phrases.

Please, Spotify, stop expanding and start fixing. I've been a loyal customer for some time but I will leave and I will take my money to a company that is actually capable of releasing working desktop software on a schedule...

The web player (currently in beta) is much better. I don't even use the desktop version anymore. I'd guess they gave up on the desktop client to focus on the web and mobile.

I hope they start to shift focus back. I don't know why anyone would use the website when there is a desktop app available that responds to media controls on the keyboard. I started using Rdio and never use the website. Spotify's site is definitely better than the dekstop client but I don't see why anyone wants it on the web.

I didn't think anyone used those keys. My current keyboard doesn't even have them. There's no technical reason a web app couldn't support it, but I don't know how standard the scancodes are.

There's no technical reason a web app couldn't support it

There is- the media keys work no matter what application you're currently focused on. A webapp couldn't do that, unless Chrome extensions allow you to do something weird.

And a web version is far more convenient than a desktop one- you can just load it up anywhere. Spotify's desktop app has slowly got slower and more resource-hungry.

>> "And a web version is far more convenient than a desktop one- you can just load it up anywhere"

I just use the mobile app when I am away from my own computer.

I have a laptop and I use the multimedia keys.

Spotify has always responded to my media keys in a buggy fashion. Sometimes I have to press play/pause twice to get a response. Almost every time I pause with the keyboard, it resumes playing by itself about 5 minutes later--highly annoying.

I just realized my media key for "skip to next" was double registered by Spotify, so it would always skip the next song and move to the third. It took a few truncated albums to figure that out...

+1 - I've been a subscriber for 2 years and it feels like it's becoming less and less and less about the music. I built the first iOS app with their API ( http://mixtapesapp.com ) and have been debating porting it to Rdio just so I can switch myself.

Check out Rdio. It's a super simple UI, focused on the music, and more importantly IT WORKS.

The only downside is that their catalog is missing a few exclusives that Spotify was able to get.

This. Rdio is great.

What are the problems you are having? All of the upgrades on OSX have been fine to me, no crashes at all. I also like the new version that lets you easily follow other users, thats how I've discovered a lot of good new music.

I agree, early versions of spotify felt like a jukebox application that happened to pull songs from the internet.

New versions feel like a half baked social network.

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