I use Firefox on BSD which doesn't have DRM support so the web versions of Apple Music and Deezer don't work properly. On Apple it only plays the first 30 seconds of each song and I forget what the problem was with Deezer.
Also a real app is way nicer than a web interface of course. And with libspotify I can even change songs that play on my mobile and control it through home assistant.
None of the others allow third party clients or open source. Sure it's a niche reason but this is the reason I'm on Spotify and not somewhere else. I've tried other platforms for a month but it was crap.
I only listen to big artists anyway that are well compensated.
Having to go through the iPhone two factor dance every time I want to just play music is so annoying that it's made me consider going back to Spotify.
UI quality is a subjective thing.
According to https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/audio-quality/, you can get 256~320 kbps AAC, which is completely transparent if using a good AAC encoder (FDK or Apple qaac).
Other than that my point was how incomplete it is and always was. It could be nice as additional catalogue to my music, but for me it's missing to many of my favourite songs to use it as main driver.
Edit:// in Switzerland downloading music for private use is no crime. So the initial situation was different I guess.
And they didn't start with illegal MP3s. They did have an ad-supported free tier from the start though. But it was not illegal. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
I think it's napster you're thinking of. That was an illegal sharing platform and now a mediocre paid service.
https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files...
https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4136/Spotify-TeardownInsid...
The pot splitting model Spotify uses is definitely not good but the major labels are the ones with all the power, without pot splitting they wouldn't accept licencing to Spotify because they would make less money.
At every filthy corner of the music industry you'll find a very sore spot: the big 4 labels control this industry. From fucking with artists where contracts requiring artists to pay back all "marketing and fees" before any royalties are distributed, royalties split usually 80:20 or 70:30 for label:artist, forcing artists to make their songs viral before they can be released (without much marketing support from the labels, the only reason they exist).
It's a passion industry, and just like any other passion industry it's fraught with exploitation. Just look at game development, underpaid, overworked, because there's always someone else with passion to make a game.
Also they don't technically pay artists aside from the self-released ones, most artists with bigger payouts aren't self-released so Apple Music just like Spotify is filling major labels coffers more than the artists' pockets
That's all relevant on the comparison of why Apple Music can pay more than Spotify, unsure what you didn't get but willing to clarify.
No evidence of this and it doesn't even make sense.
EU would have a field day with it and Apple likes making money wherever it can find it.
How doesn't it make sense? Apple Music has fewer paying subscribers than Spotify, Apple Music prices just like Spotify's prices vary per market, Spotify pays out 70% of revenue to royalties but Apple Music is able to pay much more per stream even though it has fewer subscribers.
Now think: where does the money to cover Apple Music paying royalties comes from? If they pay double what Spotify pay and Spotify is spending 70% of revenue on royalties, how can Apple Music pay double without costing double? Something has to cover, Apple Music is a loss leader product.
> EU would have a field day with it and Apple likes making money wherever it can find it.
Apple is making money through its aggregated services (iCloud + TV+ + Apple Music), if Apple Music is a loss leader but makes people contract the bundle which is a money maker for Apple, they will lose money on Music.
Because streaming platform do not pay per stream making pay per stream a meaningless metric.
Spotify has ~half of its users using the free tier (with ads) and the other half are subscribers. On average a subscriber generates waaaaay more revenue than free users ( this is visible in Spotify's financial results). Apple does not have a "free" version. If Spotify were to simply abandon their free version and became paying subscribers only like Apple, pay per stream would almost double but at the end of the month, artists (and Spotify) would get less money. Which is preferable ? More money at the end of the month or higher pay-per-stream ?
On top of that music streaming is very seasonal (total music consumption varies by month) so pay-per-stream is not even a stable metric.
Their pro-rata model is a joke. It's designed to favor big labels who btw are also shareholders of Spotify.
For those who don't know, the money of subscriptions goes into a big pot and then it's distributed based on the total number of plays. Which means the subscription I'm paying, for the most part, doesn't go to the artists I listen to but instead goes to the big labels who represent popular artists.
It's as if, back when people bought physical records, Madonna got money when you bought a record from some indie band.
$19.80 goes to one artist, and $0.20 to the other. 99:1.
edit: Maybe what you're getting at is that the person who listened to only one song should pay 99x less. Then it really would be pay-per-play. But Spotify is a subscription service. What else should they do with my extra $9.90? Send it all to the one artist? That would be interesting... but then what if I don't listen to any songs in the month? Bank it and send it to the spread for the following month?
So, it's like 99:1 ratio, but 99 side is Lady Gaga and friends, and 1 is all the indies and niche artist around the world together.
Before streaming with pro-rata royalties, when you bought a record, some money went to the artist of the record (after distribution cuts etc).
Of course Spotify doesn't care. They have to give up 70% of their revenue anyway. But the distribution of this money is the important part and of course pro-rata benefits big labels who have control over the catalog on Spotify and are shareholders.
I refuse to use anything Apple out of principle.
Slightly lower price for the same catalog size.
For Spotify, which I’ve been a paid subscriber from basically day one, the UI went downhill from incredibly great (I do have fond memories of the first client in Qt) to a total mess without any consistency.
Tidal is just a stagnant mess. Apple Music is not better.
I guess we are just suffering from the fact that UI are not made anymore to be useful but to influence customers behaviors.
I would assume that people with 'principles' would not use any of these subscription companies.
He's very knowledgable about music, great interviewer and seems to be in his element.
Once you've tried it there's no turning back.
People have been begging for that for ages on Spotify’s forum…
Seems like Apple pays 3x what Spotify pays? It can't be as simple as that though.
All they are really doing is using VC money to pay artists a lil bit more to seem more enticing.
I mean, respectfully, I really don’t care about their profitability if : 1) I get to pay reasonable price 2) artists are paid a reasonable prices 3) VCs are ok to throw money at it for any reason.
On the current state of affairs, everyone is happy (or at least happier than Spotify).
Is it future proof ? Probably not, but it’s a little more present proof than Spotify.
If someday this equation changes or the company collapses, well, I’ll just go elsewhere.
And if the industry is not capable in itself to handle the use case of paying a monthly fee to be able to listen to music while remunerating artists, given that humanity in general never paid as much money just for music in the whole human history, it would just mean that they are incredibly stupid and that they deserve the piracy.
At least a new player means artists and users are slightly more screwed over than before, until this batch of VC money runs dry.
Fortunately, unlike with e.g. Uber or Grubhub & similar, the music streaming startups aren't screwing society over by destroying more sustainable local competition, so I think in this case, the best course of action is to make full use of all the freebies and best deals in this space, because the more VC money we burn, the better off we (users) and artists are.
It'll eventually collapse, too, but there won't be a fallout, since all those companies do right now is compete with each other over distribution rights. The songs won't go away.
You mean labels and distributors, the money goes through a lot of people before the artists see any of it.
I'd switch to Apple in a heartbeat if it had a good client for Linux.
People are staying on Spotify just because of inertia and because "everyone" is there, not because it's the best at anything any more.