Spotify Raises $250 Million, Valued Above $4 Billion | Hacker News Reader

Spotify Raises $250 Million, Valued Above $4 Billion

online.wsj.com

39 pointsstevenj61 comments

I find myself torn with Spotify. I _really_ love the product and company and probably use it at a minimum 5 hours a day every single day. However I really wish artists actually earnt money from it.

http://lowerdens.tumblr.com/post/34308869231/on-spotify-and-...

If you really listen 5 hours a day, Spotify pays nearly 4x for your music as you pay to them. (calculated with 300hrs/mo, 3.5min/song, and $.0075/song)

Good thing they have so much VC money to keep the lights on for a while.

Maybe they could offer a tiered subscription model wherein heavy users pay more?

How is 5 hours a day 300 hours a month?

5 * 30 = 150

> However I really wish artists actually earnt money from it.

How so? Why do you get to decide how much the distribution model gets for delivering a good service to you? Without them, the product/service never arrives. I'm not saying I disagree with you, but I think just because the assumption that "mp3 reproduction is cheap" doesn't mean there are other forces (marketing for example) at work here. Lest we forget these services cannot be cheaply made in a factory overseas.

Your point is a little vague. I'm not suggesting at all that I should decide the distribution model. I'm just suggesting that its a shame that support for the people who make the content has to come from outside such a useful service

Sorry, but you are. In any business you have two functions (among others) - production and distribution. What you've suggested is that you want to pay more for production and less for distribution. Further, what I've suggested is that there is a widespread assumption that distribution is in fact "cheap" - when it's not.

Is the market currently efficient? That's another debate.

The comment didn't say "I wish I could dictate the profit model for this market", it said "I wish artists earned more money when I consumed their product."

Just a few ideas: Let artists sell mp3's (or other formats), and give them a large percentage / Let artists sell merchandising / Let fans pay to became VIP members of an artist to get special stuff / Let artists promote concerts to followers (and maybe sell tickets) / Allow donations directly to artists.

Why don't you donate/crowdfund and sew that tear?

Yeah, I try and do what I can to help artists I like. Unfortunately (and bizarrely) I think most people couldn't care less about the artist once they have the music.

Why not let them? Most people don't care much about music and don't get much from it either. That's the point of freemium/cheapium/dontcarium.

Spotify makes an amazing product. I went from spending hundreds a year on CDs and MP3s to just paying their subscription fee. It's like Netflix for music, except they actually have EVERYTHING you want and it's there the minute it comes out in stores.

I love Spotify, but they don't have EVERYTHING. Most notably they're missing The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

And Tool. I think it's a conscious decision on part of those bands / rightsholders since they know that fans will go buy their music anyway, so they don't have to settle for the cheap stream fees.

This is why I like Google Play Music, you can upload 20,000 of your own songs to fill in the gaps (which are increasingly few and far between)

I have Google Play and Spotify. I typically play local files through Spotify and that fills in the blanks as well.

And Thom Yorke. Which doesn't stop them from telling me "You haven't listened to much Thom Yorke recently, want to now?".

I should've said "EVERYTHING.... that I like to listen to". There are definitely gaps.

Honestly, I still think Rdio has a better product.

After using Rdio for 2 years I 've finally decided to move on ( to spotify). Here are the reasons why

1. Iphone app : a)one my major complaints was that the app never recovers from spotty connection. When network goes down music goes down which is expected ( kind of , why doesnt the app buffer music?) but when network comes back music never comes back. b) Non existent buffering: Please take a leaf from pandora's book and look at how fast their music streams under spotty(any) connection. I kept thinking 'hey they are new, they'll figure it out soon', but nothing after 2 years. c) App keeps crashing: i've had several incidents where app crashes and never recovers so i have to completely uninstall and reinstall the app ( and re download al the offline music). unacceptable. The app i have now on my phone crashes every time when it comes up( which was kind of the final straw). I can send you crash logs if you want.

2. Desktop App: Super flakey. It is gone for hours every-couple of days. All I see is a blank screen ( right click reload does nothing) . There was more than one occasion where I had to completly uninstall and reinstall the app. I could go on forever, but it boils down to this - stop doing constant/minor/useless UI improvements, UI is not as important as you guys think it is, if the apps are barely functional.

Switched to Rdio (from Spotify) over the summer. Loved the syncing (your position in a song/album/playlist is synced across all devices - start listening on your phone during your commute and resume at your desk), loved the design, and loved the social aspect.

That being said, it _really_ bothers me that they are not transparent about the quality of the music they serve. Every Rdio fanboy I've talked to says "Yeah it's definitely 320" but they don't explicitly say it anywhere. They won't give a definitive answer, leading me to believe it's not really that great quality.

For that reason (and the app crashing a lot), I unsubscribed and returned to Spotify.

EDIT: I was avoiding the quality argument - but I have a pair of Denon AHD-2000s and the difference in quality between Spotify and Rdio was noticeable. I worry about placebos, though, and wanted to go by the numbers.

Why do you need to be told the quality of their music? Does it matter what the bit-rate is as long as you can't hear the difference?

If it sounds bad, switch. If it sounds good enough, stay.

It does sound worse, but I want some numbers to back it up.

Hey this is unrelated to the topic but I was wondering why you put undersocres between "it really bothers". I have seen a few people do this on hack news and I am unsure of the meaning.

They're trying to italicize the word via markdown (which accepts either _ or * ), but HN only supports * . So _really_ should be really

Just for emphasis :) Some chat clients convert _x_ to x. I feel it does a better job than a pair of em tags.

I'm pretty sure it's 192kbps.

Why do you think it is better? I recently started subscribing to Spotify, and really the only thing I could tell that was meaningfully different between them, Rdio, and Google Play Music was that Spotify has a native client on every platform I use.

Just compare streaming on mobile apps side by side you would know how terrible rdio is.

I have and I regret to inform you that your opinion is wrong.

Things that Rdio does better than Spotify:

- Ability to assemble a collection of albums instead of just playlists.

- Ability to use the client on one device to control another, without having to configure anything.

I regret to inform you that you are a moron. Did you even read my statement? I am specifically talking about 'streaming'.

Sirius XM is valued at $22 billion; I am not very bullish on their business model long-term. I would say Spotify has a brighter future.

I am subscribed to SiriusXM and Spotify. The reason I still have the SiriusXM subscription is because of their DJs which are presently much better than any of the music discovery functionality of Pandora, iTunes Radio, or whatever. If someone can come up with a recommendation engine that would knock that out of the park, I can see SiriusXM being done.

Spotify needs to fix their android app I have been having major problems on my S4 recently. I am about to jump ship.

I can see how they can be worth 4 billion but how can snapchat be worth almost as much.

I am disappointed that the most expensive package (Premium) that was advertised for offline usage does not allow putting the music to iPod/mp3 players.

They do advertise that you can sync your music with iPod but they fail to communicate that you can NOT put Spotify music on it.

Spotify client works as an iPod sync client but syncs ONLY the mp3 files you have downloaded from other sources. So my only option is to take the music from Spotify to my training&walks by carrying an Android or iOS device. But those are way bigger than ipod nano etc.

I think you have misunderstood things.

There are two different ways of listening to Spotify on an iOS device

a) iPod sync, like you mention - only your local mp3 files

b) via the Spotify client, online or offline. see e.g. http://blog.laptopmag.com/people-follow-spotify

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. My issue is that in order to listen to Spotify songs offline users still needs a Spotify client. Whenever they advertise iPod/mp3 player sync one obviously thinks that one can transfer the music to a regular iPod. For me this is misleading. (1) But yes, I should have read https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/guides/#!/article/... first. They do warn about it.

Yes, iOS supports also iPod sync for local mp3 files in addition to Spotify client but it's a rather useless feature for most. There is no clear reason why iPod sync in Spotify is necessary at all, it is confusing the offering as it has no relevance to the music that Spotify as a service offers.

(1) https://www.spotify.com/us/#premium Listen on all your devices Download music & listen offline

I think they just added the local mp3 sync feature to avoid having to use the horrid iTunes client for that. Agree it's a bit out of place, unless you are a very particular kind of user.

I happily pay $9 bucks a month for spotify. It's one bill I'm not bummed out to pay each month. I get at least that much value out of it - probably more.

Love that they're gettin' after it.

Not only do you get more value out of it - even Spotify's cost is more than they're charging! From the article:

> Spotify's losses have also widened amid expensive licensing agreements and hefty costs related to expansion into a bevy of new markets.

Spotify routinely loses licensing and rips music out of my playlists.

Case in point: They lost several artists on "The Great Gatsby" soundtrack less than a week after it was released. It was just gone one day as if it never existed.

I moved to Google Music so that I knew when I needed to buy a song to add it to a playlist or I could simply purchase from Amazon and upload it. Playlists stay intact, and I don't have to worry about a transfer after the fact if I reformat or switch phones.

Spotify had a shot.

You could just use Spotify and buy the songs it doesn't have on iTunes. Spotify imports your iTunes library.

I don't use iTunes. Honestly I did think that would be a great feature, but being able to import what I already do own has been fantastic.

There's an option to show the unavailable songs in lists anyway, even if the song isn't playable for whichever licensing reason.

When music in my playlists loses licensing it just gets greyed out until I purchase it(expected functionality); yours actually disappeared from the playlist entirely?

In the case of Gatsby, absolutely. It was ripped out of my playlists as if I had been insane.

Normally it does get greyed out. Otherwise there is no notification (unless you are staring at the screen) that your music is gone.

I dropped Spotify in favor of Google Music because I could upload additional content I've purchased elsewhere and have it integrate in tightly with my playlists.

Spotify doe

Also, Google Music works a hell of a lot better on Android and Linux than Spotify ever did... I just wish you could keep Google from crapping free tracks all over your library.

Google Play Music All Access (great name!) requires Flash in order to play any music. Unlike Spotify, they do not have a native Linux client. If you abhor Flash for security and performance reasons, GPMAA is much worse on Linux than Spotify.

Rdio's HTML5 interface works perfectly without Flash. I recently switched from Spotify and I'm pretty happy so far.

Does GM have a free tier? That's why I've been sticking to spotify.

Their free tier is uploading your own 20,000 songs and being able to access that from any device with your Google account. The only way to have access to their "All Access" catalog is to be a paid subscriber. Unfortunately there's no free tier with access to their full streaming catalog. Which I find a little strange, since Google's forte is targeted advertising.

Spotify premium lets you do this, including sync to mobile.

I don't know about real music lovers and underground people, artsy whatever you can be with music, but as a normal music person, listening to music at work, on the public transportation and at home, I just love spotify, and it's one of the rare product I pay for;

It makes it so easy to share playlists with friends, find music (almost everything) and discover new things, it seems perfect for the normal person who listens to music.

I'm glad they raised that and hope they'll do good use of it :)

Although its not available in India yet, it was trivial to figure out how to use it in countries where its unavailable. One of the best UIs you will ever see in a music app. My movement from one place to other is seamless. Their algorithm which recommends new songs based on my listening history has worked out brilliantly for me and I am consistently discovering new good artists.

And somehow still not available in Canada...

Blame Canada!

http://static2.fjcdn.com/comments/I+m+american+we+always+bla...

It is, if you Google hard enough ;-)

Funny how Bitcoins are available in Canada before Spotify.

What if every person that heard a song over the radio had to pay $0.0001 per listen?

If a wired music mass distribution system existed before wireless broadcasting (AM/FM), wouldn't the whole business model of the music industry be different?

This thread was in the top 5 on the homepage just minutes ago, and now it's plummeting like nothing I've ever seen before. Cases of heavy handed moderation like these make me doubt the integrity of this forum.

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