I remember going to Europe from the USA around 2012, and everyone was already using Spotify. Their music experience was vastly superior to ours. IIRC, they were based/avail in countries with really loose music copyright laws. Was that what made the difference? They grew huge where they could, before the hammer came down? Then too big to fail?
Again, IIRC, when the US music labels wanted to shut them down, they instead said: "hey, why don't you just buy a big piece of Spotify. We are already your distro. F the artists." I remember thinking that this was a gangster move. (btw, I still refuse to subscribe to Spotify.)
Between 2006 and 2016, no one in the Nordics and Eastern Europe cared about piracy. By the time Spotify became prominent enough in the West to compete with music sales, it had already mainly been legalized.
Grooveshark was in the US, which has a very litigious business climate and is world-leading in copyright enforcement.
I can't think of a more plausible explanation. But I will say that breaking laws to later legalize is still only a successful strategy if one doesn't get caught. If anyone thinks this is a good strategy, I'd say there's survivorship bias going on.
> I'd say there's survivorship bias going on.
I agree that there is definitely survivorship bias happening here. However, what exactly is the punishment for failure? Is it worth the risk?
I also agree with your assessment, by the way.
Which cultures are we talking about? I assume not the US.
Look at Sean Parker - Napster got sued to oblivion, he became first president of Facebook and made literal billions.
His cofounder (Shawn Fanning) didn’t make it quite as big, but still sold a company to Blizzard for $30m. Plus whatever he made out of HNT.
Neither seemed to suffer any kind of stigma for their involvement in arguably the highest profile piracy startup.
As a personal philosophy, please, someone help me avoid nihilism!
imo the difference is that spotify at least tried to hide it
when you searched for songs on grooveshark you'd get names back like "Tame Impala - The Slow Rush (2020) Mp3 (320kbps) [Hunter]"
also IIRC grooveshark never even tried to set up revenue share with labels/artists
Spotify cheated behind the scenes and a veneer of following the rules, which eventually transitioned into actually following the rules and paying out artists
> Speaking of industry incestuousness, I suggest you read more about Tencent’s 9.1 percent stakeholding in Spotify, which is awe-inspiring in its spider’s web of vested interests. The short version: Tencent Holdings is about to own 10 percent of Universal, which in turns owns around 3.5 percent in Spotify, which in turn owns around nine percent in Tencent Music Entertainment, which in turn is part-owned by Universal’s two main rivals (Warner and Sony), but remains majority owned by Tencent Holdings, which in turn owns 9.1 percent of Spotify. (And, yes, no kidding, that’s the short version.)
Sorry for the tangent, but I've always wondered: does Tencent's partial ownership of Reddit give them any access to Reddit's internal data? Is that how that generally works, or am I making uninformed assumptions?
The answer is probably a bit more nuanced, but broadly, you're making uninformed assumptions. Blackrock own about 5% of Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, and we don't see people throwing around accusations that they're fiddling with their runnings.
I used to work for a company that Tencent had a minority (but significantly larger than 9%) share in, and they approximately 0 influence in our operations. Some places will be different, but if you've ever worked anywhere with a parent company you'll be familiar with just how untrusting the subisidiaries are. Honestly, I think the best way of thinking about it is the Larry Ellison Lawnmower joke - they're not out to get you, they don't care.
Whether or not that remains to be true going forwards who knows, but that's the same of any organisation anywhere in the world, and as someone who lives in Europe I'm far more concerned about what the US is doing right now.
Tencent, despite being a for-profit company, may still have political motives pushed onto them from the very top. This is true for all chinese companies (because if they don't "comply", the very public example of jack ma is the answer).
Now, of course, it doesn't mean this power is utilized all the time or everywhere. It simply means that the opportunity exists for such power to be weld if the state calls for it. Just because it hasn't happened so far doesn't mean it can't. It's different from Ellison Lawnmower, because the political differences between the countries.
Thats not true, at all.
They have donated millions in the 2024 election alone to a number of politicians[0]. They definitely have political motives
[0]: https://dallasexpress.com/uncategorized/blackrock-giving-big...
How do you figure?
Please paste this above all future comments you post to save HN readers’ time.
Seriously? You can say that with a straight face?
> Tencent, despite being a for-profit company, may still have political motives pushed onto them from the very top. This is true for all chinese companies
And that definitely won't happen in the US [0].
The fact that the US is now voting in the UN with Russia, Iran, NK, which mindlessly pushes the EU towards China is mind-blowing, and entirely understandable.
source: EU born, lived most of my life in the USA, then back in the EU for the last 10 years. I will truly miss the century of Pax Americana, and I hope for the coming century of Pax Europa.
The name "Tencent" is based on its Chinese name Tengxun (Chinese: 腾讯), which incorporates part of Pony Ma's Chinese name (Ma Huateng; 马化「腾」) and literally means "galloping fast information".
So maybe it's just concidence? Their first product was also a messenger software so I don't see why they would name themselves "ten percent". The investing thing came later.
A different context for the proverb "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun YOU!"
If Spotify was really the wolf they wouldn't have to pay Universal billions. Not that much has changed really.
They were already the teacher's pet. Grooveshark was the one that was always getting suspended, before ultimately being expelled.
Survivorship bias is when two cases face the same selection process, not when one fails for taking an opposite approach.
For example, Grooveshark was a direct competitor for Spotify with similar apps and features around the same time[0]. It got sued out of existence by the music industry, and back then quite a lot of music on both had that bootleg audio quality that sure points to piracy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark