https://medium.com/brain-labs/why-spotify-struggles-to-make-money-from-music-streaming-ba940fc56ebd
For anyone wanting to rage at Spotify, I'd remind you that Spotify has never actually turned a profit. They lose money on every single paid user, and even more on free users. Tl;dr of the article (sorry for the account-wall) is that Spotify is contractually obligated to give around 70% of every dollar it makes to the labels, who then eat most of it and give a few crumbs to the artists. If you want to support artists, buy their merch, their physical albums, and go to their shows. If they're independent, they may actually see some non-trivial revenue from streaming as well.
Spotify may also be contractually restricted in what level of access they can offer for free - licensing can be very messy - and they also do need to create enough incentive to actually make the paid tier worth it. Given that a month of access to essentially all music ever costs about as much as a single CD did back in the day, it feels like pretty incredible value to me, personally. Yes, you can of course always pirate if you want to deal with the hassle of that, but you should at least keep it in the back of your mind that, if everyone did that, we wouldn't have any music to enjoy at all. If the cost of streaming or buying music is genuinely a burden, I wouldn't blame you that much for pirating, but if you can afford it, I do think the value really is there, if only to avoid the sheer hassle of pirating and managing a local library. And if you really think that streaming is just uniquely corrupt and terrible, CDs haven't gone anywhere.
But if you can easily afford to pay for music and you still refuse to, at least have the honesty to just admit that you want to get things for free and you don't care about anyone involved in creating it getting paid for it, without dressing it up as some kind of morally righteous anti-capitalist crusade. It's normal to be annoyed about having to pay for things; we all are, and we all want to get things for free. Just admit that instead of pretending your true motivation is anything deeper.
Well, if you don't pay with money, you're paying with your attention. Do you think they create this huge service just for funsies?
Tbf, out of all media streaming services across movies, series, and music, Spotify has the highes bang-for-your-buck. It's still like Netflix at that time when there was only Netflix and you could watch almost everything on one platform. I still buy records that I like on physical media like vinyl, but Spotify is such a great deal for convenient listening to all music out there.
What a shame it would be if this drove more people into using those awful cracked versions of the Spotify apk that give you most of the premium features without a premium account. Truly the godless heathens over at xManager (https://github.com/Team-xManager/xManager) must be rejoicing over this.
I have the family premium plan and honestly love it. I haven’t downloaded an mp3 in years because Spotify is so convenient. As far as subscription services go, this one is top tier for me.
Now when we look at movie streaming.. well that’s what the music streaming could have been like. What an absolute mess.
I've been using Spotify for almost 2-3 years. The only thing I can say is the app gets DEGRADED EVERY YEAR!!!! They do their best to bring more and more bugs with each update. I'm done with Spotify shit, also they removed a lot of regional songs from my country. The only reason I pay for Spotify is because I can download/rip their music and store it on my Plex Server.
Spotify in on itself is worth paying for BUT...
Their app for android sucks blue donkey balls and I'd happily pay more if I'd get to use a slightly less retarded cousin of this app.
The other but:
Spotify in on itself is not very bad right now and basically could and SHOULD continue as-is forever.
However, the economic system as it currently is requires it to continually come up with new crap that nobody needs nor wants (see also all Microsoft software that went from absolute shit thirty years ago to absolute slimey shit with lots of useless but pretty ding dong bells attached to it with a nice camera hidden inside to spy on the insides of your butthole) and it only a matter of time before...
Some exec gets hired there that promises to double their revenue, then implements some shit that will double their revenue once, gets this exec his bonus upon which he immediately quits to go to the next company to fuck over with a pineapple, leaving Spotify with a huge exodus of users, a dwindling service, and two years later it's dead.
I've seen this cycle with too many large companies, and it's the same story over and over. Be it Boeing, Disney, just about all large game companies, etc etc..
The free version is completely useless on smartphone. I hope the limitations won't come to the desktop version
They just need to add commercials for Premium that have horns or police sirens and they'll be all set
And Netflix and other streaming services, despite supposedly saving us from cable, re-invented cable.
But the good news is, maybe it's time to get the good old iPods/DAPs back into the mainstream again. You can have a big SD card with all the music and podcasts you could ever want without tying yourself to a specific service.
All these companies want to control what content you consume. Just walk away.
I tried it free once, and found it generally unusable.
Like it was filled with annoying adverts, but it wasn't adverts for other people. It was adverts for itself. All overly chipper voice actors going "Wow, is it true that Spotify Premium is just £9.99 a month?" as if that's how anybody has ever talked in the history of humankind.
The free version is funded by paying customers. The only purpose it has is to annoy you into paying.
I was happy to use Amazon Prime's version for a bit, and then they decided that merely paying for Prime wasn't enough, and I had to pay special extra fees to listen to albums. So I got Spotify instead, because fuck giving more money to Amazon.
Use Spotube. It isnt have these limitations. You get premium spotify for free 😆 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=oss.krtirtho.spotube
Plz spread the word, it is the only way we can move them to right way, if they feel it...
Try this instead
My biggest issue with Spotify was that they were changing the main screen layout what seemed like every other week. Like bro I don’t do podcasts so keep them off my homepage.
I ended up canceling and going to Apple Music because we were already paying for their other services and it was cheaper with their bundled membership. I also have a Plexamp server with all of the music I have ripped over the years and actually prefer that to Apple Music
If you're using Android, check out xmanager. It's basically a free cracked version of Spotify Premium.
xmanager
Good excuse to plug ListenBrainz. On ListenBrainz you can track the music you listen to whether you listen to local files or services like Spotify. ListenBrainz also supplies you with playlists to discover new music based on what you've listened to so far. It's a great solution for music lovers that don't want to depend on companies like Spotify.
Spotify kind of sucks. I've been using Bandcamp for years (though they sold to epic and then got sold to some vultures, so they might be doomed)
If I buy one album a month for a year, that's about the same as a subscription except I get to keep what I bought. And after a few years I have a big library and don't need to buy as much. And the musicians get a bigger cut.
If you're listening to stuff that's not on Bandcamp I don't know what to tell you. Probably buy it from elsewhere, or if it's old just pirate it because it should be public domain anyway.
I don't know why anyone would give Spotify money when they pay Joe Rogan to spread vaccine disinformation and union bust.
I use YouTube music. It's far inferior to what Google Play Music was, which was literally perfect, but it's not Spotify and I really think it does mixes best of all. Apple Music is so very Caucasian, I gave it a shot but it just comes back to the whitest music possible every time.
Permanently Deleted
Seems I've picked the perfect time to get back into Mini-disc!
Deezer+Deemix -> Jellyfin -> Symfonium
Spotify has been like that for years now on mobile devices. At least here in Germany
Funkwhale is pretty cool to those who use spotify. I love this playlist: https://open.audio/library/playlists/596
@alphacyberranger This is why I still use my 160GB iPod Touch + Soulseek
Looks like this is India only?
Give Vimusic a try!
Oh did they remove the 5 skips per day maximum?
Neat!
I mean, it's radio but you pick every song they play on the station. Still an upgrade
So Spotify couldnt become profitable just by hawking my personal info and invading my privacy? What kinda shit company are they?
GOT IT
I pay for Spotify but my dad has the free version. They don't even have the ability to queue specific songs. Oof.
Dude, I thought for a second that the voyager app for Lemmy is showing me this
spotube
You dont have to pay for radio receivers just ads for listeners.
no fucking way you have to pay to select specific songs in playlists? 💀
Oh sheesh I hipe this doesn't change on the Web browser.
I personally use Stingray music Its free, ads are under 5 seconds if there are any
Another lost of reasons to use YouTube music. Not that they don't have the right, or good reasons to do this, but the free experience is much better over here. Especially if you use an app like Innertune
Does xManager not work anymore or do you use apple?
Informative and Unfortunate.
No.
I already canceled and started sailing the high sees.
I'm just looking on from the sidelines to see them burn.
Ah yes that's where their development resources for all the last 5 years went: fucking up the paid experience with minor tweaks and fucking up the free experience with major tweaks.
I pay for this shit for my whole family and don't know a service with anywhere near the same library, I'd jump ship in a heartbeat to a service with both a complete music library and a first-class podcast listening experience for web/PC users.
Very fair.
Are you complaining or its just an FYI?
Spotify would be a good deal at ten times its price, and then maybe they could actually pay people something.
As an artist, though, this shit is infuriating. And as a human being. It's like having a fucking Tesla or something, a car that gets nerfed by software updates and corporate greed.
I can not program, but I am really going to start pushing myself to learn. But, my idea, and anyone feel free to use this, is an open source self hosted (like p2p or torrent) music, movie, fuckitanything app. This has to have been thought of already. Essentially we need to figure out how to decentralize everything. Yes, we need a central exchange kind of like a bazaar or market, but the actual exchange happens from individual to individual. And yes, there are more intricacies like group orders.
Yay, more enshitification. Glad I dumped them 2 years ago.
EDIT: enjoy licking those capitalist boots @Blackout, you fucking oxygen thief.
