this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
1684 points (95.0% liked)

Technology

59339 readers
5271 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Can't even seek through songs.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I doubt major labels can live without Spotify as much as Spotify need major labels. They can push users to pay for Spotify by adding more cool features for payed users instead of removing fundamental features of the free version. Forcing people to pay is never the right solution

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The labels could murder Spotify in a day if they decided to simply stop offering them licenses and went exclusive with Apple, Amazon, Tidal, or anyone else.

The labels of course do get quite a lot of money from Spotify so they don't have much of a reason to do that, but again, they really are the ones that hold the cards.

This is business. The only right solution is the one that gets them closer to financial stability. They have been developing features for the paid tier and have been exploring other revenue streams (hence the deep dive into podcasts), but ultimately, they have absolutely zero obligation to give away content for free.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, forget about reducing the labels share. I think the other points i made about finding new ways to generate more profits are still valid and better than making the free version almost useless. If spotify wasn't profiting from free users too they would shut down the free version completely

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Spotify isn't profiting at all; that's the entire problem.

It's banking on the hope that offering a limited free tier will encourage some amount of users to become paid subscribers, while offsetting the cost of operating that at least a little bit by serving ads. It's unfortunate that you can't make sufficient revenue by just operating a free tier that's truly sufficient, but those numbers quite clearly do not work.

I mean, are you saying that you would be complaining less if Spotify simply killed the free tier? I rather doubt that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You said that spotify isn't profiting at all then explained how they profit a bit for it. I'm sure they would make more profits by finding alternative way to make money like artist subscriptions than from pushing people to subscribe by making the free version almost useless and yes I would complain less if Spotify killed the free version. I only use spotify on desktop to support artists by playing a playlist of artists I want to support on repeat with almost inaudible volume. All music I really listen to is locally either from music i bought or pirated music

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What a waste or resources. It is doing stuff like this that forces the companies to put restrictions on the users. Please stop playing music you are not listening to, for everyone's sake.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not wasting nothing, it running on the background why i do other stuffs

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

It takes ads to bandwidth and server costs for Spotify. The ads on Spotify are worth less than before, because the ads have less reach. That means Spotify will have to play more ads to cover cost, and because the revenue per ad will go down. Maybe your little action has an insignificant effect, but if millions did what you did, it would have a drastic result.

Never mind that doing this will give your favorite artist a few more pennies at the cost of a different artist that didn't get his numbers inflated. You aren't doing some great good to save the planet.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, I'm not convinced you understand the difference between profit and revenue, so, with respect, I'm gonna move on here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I undersand the difference but how are they going to be profitable if they are not increasing the revenues

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think what he means is that even though they're offsetting the costs, they still aren't profiting. Let's say it costs Spotify $30 per free user per month, some of whom become premium subscribers for $10 per user per month. That means for premium users, it still costs $20 per user per month. The free users are still costing $30/month though, so they show ads to reduce that cost to $25/month, which is less of a money sink, but still not outfit