Spotify + extreme bias towards X # of artists due to rights ownership = potentially crap experience for listeners.

I don't disagree, if you look at the way Netflix pushes their own content over what used to be entirely studio movies and network TV shows you can see a current example of how this plays out.

I was thinking that if Spotify kept the same experience for listeners that they had now in order to grow their subscription base, and just reported higher earnings for the artists they had signed versus ones signed to a 'different' label, that over time as contracts came up for renewal people would move over to Spotify.

Don't you think that as long as it's good users won't care? Netflix would likely have succeeded without originals but would have been nowhere near as pervasive. People were tired of the network crap and wanted content accessible everywhere. They delivered on those.

Good content is good content. For music - it's even better if it's not yet well known because for some reason people think more highly of themselves for being an early fan. Early discovery favors audio moreso than video. So pushing originals (newly signed artists) is a great strategy for Spotify. So long as it's good music.

I don't understand the appeal of this model. Do you really want to have to subscribe to 5 different streaming music services, one per label, just to listen to all your favorite artists?

I'm admittedly not a particularly big music person but I'd have trouble seeing subscribing to multiple music streaming services unless one of them was for some obscure sub-genre I was really into. A lot of music seems to be ambient. If there's some artist I really need, I'll but a CD now and then.

Mind you, I don't like video being fragmented but that's a more deliberate choice a lot of the time for me. I'll subscribe to a few places based on available and original content--somewhat grudgingly to be sure--but I accept those are my options.

For this reason, I don't understand tech valuations.

Google is worth 1000B, general motors is worth 60B.

Why? I'd contest GM has more 'stuff' and abilities to do 'anything'. Google has a bigger population, but what does that translate to when the value of tech might be lower.

I'm not saying tech isnt more valuable, but there might be something wrong with google being 1,700% larger market cap than GM.

Well, GM has required direct government assistance in the recent past in order to stay solvent. Google is rolling in liquid assets.

GM exists in a very competitive industry with major competitors at or above their capacity, while Google has maybe 1 or 2 competitors in several of various industries, and dominates several independently and almost completely.

GM might be able to claw aware market-share from competitors, and end up more valuable, but not by that much. Google is in the sort of position that allows them to potentially capture a brand new industry if one appears.

GM could (relatively) easily get broken up or get massively devalued to to a large market event or by falling behind in an industry that is rapidly changing shape from what they are accustomed to. Google falling out of existence/dominance would almost have to be the result of a fundamental societal shift at this point (or anti-monopoly legislation somehow), and they could throw enormous amounts of cash at problems for years before facing insolvency (from my understanding).

Compare the difference in their profit.

Starting their own label is not going to make the labels that they depend on very happy, and as such would be a very bad idea until it's impossible for the labels to survive without Spotify.

Spotify definitely doesn't have enough market share for that to be true, and it's not clear that they ever will. Youtube has always had more free listeners than Spotify and Apple Music is set to surpass Spotify in number of paid listeners sometime this summer.

I'm not aware of many distributors that have successfully made the jump to labelhood. Caroline is the only one I can think of right now.

They can't pay them as well.

I'm curious how you get to that conclusion, care to share your reasoning?

If they could do it and reduce costs that way, they would have done it already. In the Netflix case, licensing third party content was cheaper than creating their own and probably still is. Creating their own content acts as a differentiator for their service with the potential for future cost savings