Spotify Wants More Paid Subscribers, So It Has Launched a New App To Give Away More Music For Free (recode.net) 66
Spotify on Tuesday announced a new redesigned app for free customers, its first major change to the free tier in four years, as it attempts to lure more customers into buying its subscription service. Free listeners will now get on-demand access to 15 playlists; they can play any song they want in those playlists and are no longer stuck in a world of shuffled playback. From a report: The idea: If people get more stuff without paying, they are more likely to end up paying in the long run. The new mobile app gives free users the ability to play more songs on demand, from 15 pre-populated playlists -- some of which are personalized for individual users, like its popular "Discover Weekly" feature. Spotify has always let users listen to on-demand music for free via an ad-supported option -- it's the main thing that set the company apart from other streaming services in the past. But it has limited full, free access to its library of songs to desktop users, and limited what free users could get to on its mobile app. Today's move doesn't remove those limits entirely, but gives users more opportunity to sample. Paid users get full access to Spotify's entire catalog, on-demand, without ads. The new app also offers users the ability to stream songs with lower data usage. The company says users can save up to 75% of mobile data with data saver mode while streaming on 3G.
Rolling one's own (Score:2)
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I wonder how this is affecting demand for open-source streaming software like Ampache - or the support other Internet radio stations e.g. SomaFM or Radio Paradise. Spotify seems really popular, from what I hear. Not being willing to pay to stream music, I'd like to hope that the other music sources remain very available.
I'll bet you're not willing to pay for software, or movies, or anything else you can leech or steal, right? Afterall, it's all just "Imaginary Property"...
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You missed my reply to myself, in which I stated I am perfectly willing to donate where I feel it's suited, just not subscribe to a service. But my real question was whether something like Ampache's user base is dropping because of Spotify.
Actually, I DID see that Post, AFTER I clicked SUBMIT, of course!!!
I duly apologize. Mea Culpa!!! Arguing with a bunch of Hater ACs (or just reading their tripe) gets me in a hair-trigger mood, SORRY!!!
As to your REAL question: I'm sorry; but I don't know the answer to that. BUT, I STILL Contend that there is a next-to-zero chance that this has the potential to exert any "Undue Influence" on the Shazam-Using Public, anyway. If they don't know by now who Apple is, and whether they like their stuff, I HONEST
I knew something was up yesterday (Score:3)
when I upended Xubuntu 18.4 Software and there was a huge banner for Spotify http://i68.tinypic.com/mbn3pk.... [tinypic.com]
And so it happens. (Score:1)
With $5B revenue and a loss of $1.5B, and now an IPO, they're desperate to monetize their users. But they only get more users by giving stuff away for "free", which means they sooner or later will be constrained to pull a Facebook.
Lather, rinse...
Desperate capitalism has discovered "intellectual property", which can be "manufactured" at zero marginal cost, which is great. But in its infinite greed it is just churning out as much of this crap as it can, just to realize that their customers can pretty well li
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The fees demanded by the copyright holders are unreasonably high.
That's pretty much the size of things.
So don't watch or listen to it.
That's pretty much the size of things.
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We got ourselves a Dudley do-right boys.
Why don't you just fucking leave. Your smug attitude makes you look and sound like a prick. You are not better than any of us just because you shill for Apple and tell people what to do.
Again, you are a smug, condescending prick. Fuck off you faggot.
This has NOTHING to do with APPLE: It's about government overreach, and UNNECESSARY interference in free-market business decisions that in no real way, materially limit the bottom-line choices of the general public, you fucking moron.
Think about it, COWARD.
Need a pay as you go option (Score:2)
They need an API, not an app (Score:1)
An app? Spotify, make this one change if you ever want me to take you seriously and throw you some bucks: Launch a new API. I'm not going to run your software, ever, period. (Same goes you you, Netflix.) If you don't care about people like me, that's fine. Don't take my money, if it's so important to you to avoid doing so. But for fuck's sake, don't pretend that you are desperate for more customers.
A sensible person will never get hardware, software, or services from the same place. If you have a good serv
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I don't know if it is feasible to demand an api for media data which the copyright holders will demand DRM, but spotify already has an API for everything else- I get the impression you can do *everything* with the api- skip tracks, get information, tell it to play certain tracks, but have the music actually play through their DRM software. So, 90% of what you want.
Official Spotify API [spotify.com]
Of course there is a python library for it too [readthedocs.io]
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Not hard, you require the developer to register for API access and you give them the DRM key. As part of the sign on API, they ahve to return you
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Re:They need an API, not an app (Score:5, Informative)
I used to work in the streaming video space, and if the streaming music space is anything like it is with streaming movies and TV shows, then the hurdles to this sort of thing aren't technical. It's all about contracts and rights negotiations - usually the streaming provider has to jump through all sorts of hoops to convince the rights holder to license them the content and that they (the provider) will keep it "safe".
In some cases, the rights holders have already bought in to the sales story of various DRM providers, such that their licensing terms require that you use a specific DRM. In other cases, there's a lot of CYA going on (similar to the old adage of "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"), so even if they don't dictate a specific DRM, it's hard to get them to go along with some new DRM scheme unless lots of others are already using it. So to introduce a new DRM scheme you have to get some outside security experts to audit it, get a few key rights holders and providers to buy into it, and then finally be in a position to get others to adopt it too. This takes a lot of time and money and the difficulty is compounded significantly by the fact that rights holders of high-value content will demand that some aspects of the DRM be implemented in hardware, so any new scheme has to either leverage that or work with hardware vendors to introduce new stuff, which takes even longer.
Also, this specific example (developer-specific DRM key) could work on a technical level, but even assuming you overcame the above issues, it doesn't really mitigate the risk to Spotify or the actual content owners. To them, the content is worth billions of dollars, so they'd look at it as giving Joe Random Developer a DRM key with the possibility of a sliver of more revenue vs the risk of lawsuits and lost contracts and probably say, "not a chance!".
"Spotify Wants More Paid Subscribers" (Score:2)
Then they need to cut their subscription cost by half.
There's no way I'll EVER subscribe at their current price point.
I know they are trapped in licensing fees, but the value proposition simply isn't well balanced yet. If it were, they could have as many subscribers as they want.
They seem to think they everyone would be happy to pay their fees if the free version caused more people to try it out. Good luck with that.
The market is speaking, it's too expensive. Listen or not.
Re:"Spotify Wants More Paid Subscribers" (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be your proper price point for a subscription that gives you unlimited access to music?
Would that change if the current Spotify price happened to be $30 instead of $10?
So often, people's desires happen to be "whatever the current thing is, only half". I definitely had this opinion before I took a step back, calculated what I would be have been spending otherwise on music (my substitute would be about an album a month), and decided that the $15 spotify family plan was actually a pretty good deal for me. Maybe you and other people have already done this analysis.
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Fair enough; Spotify does not give you access to all music, but for the music it does have your access is unlimited.
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let's see...
Pandora subscription is $36 per year for the phone app.
Pandora One Subscription is $48 per year.
Spotify annual is $99 per year.
Yes, I know that they offer different types of service, primarily in specific list building, but 9.99 a month or 99 for yearly is over the price point I'll pay to stream music.
So the most I could see paying would be around $48 per year.
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This is so true. I've been online since the early 1980s and "it should cost half, that would be fair and I'd pay it" has always, always been the cry.
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Pandora One is $48 per year. I have no qualms about paying that and I do. Spotify asks $99 per year and I won't pay that.
That's pretty close to half. I can do the math and be more precise but I feel that "should cost half" is a fair enough approximation.
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What? You get unlimited access to the biggest library of music in the world, with generated playlists and recommendations based on your own taste, and you think $10/month is too high?
Jayzus fuck, talk about being a skinflint.
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What they offer is not relevant to me. What I'd use is relevant to me. They can carry 20 million songs I won't listen to, and it does not change their value proposition to me in the slightest.
Speaking of the capacity of a product does not define it's value to a particular consumer. What portion of the service they would use, compared to other services prices, that is the relevant question.
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Cheap as fucking hell they are. I pay 15 a month for the family play. I have 5 people on my account. So basically we are paying $3 for each stream with unlimited access.
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I have to agree with the GP that $10/mo is too high. And it has nothing to do with being cheap.
I'm not a heavy music listener. When I leave my door, I don't generally bother taking my earphones with me. In the car I listen to news and information. I'm married with a young daughter who is still into Wheels on the Bus. I'm lucky if I have the opportunity to just sit and listen to music for an hour or two a week. Combine that with having racked up a pretty good collection of legally purchased music over
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Really? $10/month is less than 35 cents/day. Compare to movie ticket prices or any subscription service and it's hilariously cheap.
Sure, if access to music has no value to you, then it's obviously not worth it for you personally. But the simple fact is that it is by far the cheapest and easiest way to (legally) access music, in the entire history of mankind.
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They client has a search function by song, artist, etc. It's not as intuiative as one might hope but it's there.
Umm, free doesn't lead to money (Score:3)
Shelving, for the moment, the concept that I'm not going to pay forever to listen to music (because I grew up in a world where music was always entirely free to listen, and paying for it meant owning it forever), offering free music won't get more people to pay for it.
What it will do is get more companies to compete by offering their own free music. Leaving us with a system whereby ten companies each offer 15 playlists for free -- leaving me with 150 playlists for free -- which is plenty to never think about paying for more.
Add that I'm going to record those free playlists for later listening forever for free, and that they'll change the 15 from time to time, and I'll just say thanks for the free music again, sorry no one's paying your for something that really has zero value to 90% of your "customers".
I happily pay for live performances -- I pay people to work for me. I'm not going to pay for delivery of a digital product. And I'm not going to pay for you to use my purchased speakers to play your music. We're in a world with millions of songs, if I don't get your new song today, I'll survive until it's free five years from now.
Except you'll put it onto youtube for free almost immediately, where, once again, it's recordable forever.
I'm glad you're happy with your business model. Like my mother always said, and her mother before her, "if they have to wait for me to pay them, they'll starve to death first".
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Software has value to me -- it's a tool by which I profit.
Music is pure entertainment, and has zero monetary value. Zero monetary value usually means zero money paid.
I grew up in a world with free wireless radio, and free wireless television, everywhere. I've never paid to listen to music, and I've never paid to listen to news. I ain't starting now.
If you want to grow up in a world where everything costs money, then you are welcome to spend your own. You won't be spending mine.
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If you enjoy the crap that your "free" services tell you to listen too, along with the other crap they stick in, them more power to you.
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Actually, I enjoy the crap that I pay to see performed live, and I also enjoy the crap that I've purchased and own.
You see, these are songs that I've selected out of reality.
You're not listening to crap that free services tell you to listen to. You're, instead, listening to the crap that paid services show to you. Congrats. Of the millions of songs in their catalog, you restrict yourself to, wait for it, the ones that they promote.
Doesn't sound too different to me.
But again, to be clear, music has zero m
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You think because we prefer streaming that we don't go to live performances or have large collections of CD and purchased mp3s? So wrong on so many levels. Actually, since I found Spoitfy I've bought more music in that time that I bought in the last 10 years.
Spotify has over 30 million songs, and that is not just the crap the RIAA says is "music." That is thousands of independent labels at artists too, thousands. Without Spotify most of these artists would remain unknown or only to niche regions. Th
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I think you like to pay for stuff -- because you've been told to pay for stuff. There's no end of amazing stuff in this world if you want to pay more. The trick is to work less. That means paying for less.
Like I said, if you want to pay for stuff that generations have had for free, you can be the pioneers. I'm not going to start paying for what was always free.
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Your still paying for it. I just know the cost of what I'm paying.
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You know, you're absolutely right.
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Music is pure entertainment, and has zero monetary value. Zero monetary value usually means zero money paid.
I grew up in a world with free wireless radio, and free wireless television, everywhere. I've never paid to listen to music, and I've never paid to listen to news. I ain't starting now.
You position yourself as a rebel here, but you're not. You are describing the status quo of decades past when music listening options were limited to whatever music [and commercials] the industry choose to feed people. The industry fought tooth and nail against digital music [and consumer freedom] to maintain that old stranglehold on the market and your rebellion or value judgment would hand the reins back to them. You may not have paid money for that "free" radio, but you paid by having your options limite
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I actually didn't buy music multiple times. I missed vinyl, starting out with cassette tapes (metal cassettes are still the best sound). When CDs came about, I had boomboxes with both cassette decks and a CD player. With digital, I simply ripped CDs and cassettes overnight, for $0.
I'm not a rebel, you're right. But I've never been slave to a music industry only because I've never cared about music that way. I really don't care if I get the niche, or the pop, or the crazy. I go to live concerts as a pa
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...I've never cared about music that way. I really don't care if I get the niche, or the pop, or the crazy. I go to live concerts as a part of a theatre subscription, and I see/listen to whatever they bring in -- it's a small local theatre, and all of the acts are world experts at whatever. If I like it, I buy it in the hopes that they come back. Same with live music at a restaurant. The music is so background to my life, that it just doesn't matter to me.
I get it, and arguably I am similar now. Music is background, not my focus. I go to a few concerts each year. I'm happy enough with free streaming music options and the CDs/MP3s I have that I probably would not pay for a service. Your theater subscription aside, we're probably not that different in regards to our music habits.... I just get riled up when hear what sounds like pining for the days when "free" radio ruled, because radio didn't serve me well in my youth. Even though music is not as important t
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Okay, seeing as how we're so similar, I'm going to ask you this very pointed question about today's digital music streaming infinite everything options.
I'm 38, with a house, and a specific friend is similarly situated. Every few weeks, we get together for a day of "cooking-for-the-freezer". We basically look for recipes that benefit from more prep, can be done in bulk, and frozen (vacuum-packed) long-term, with a very quick, or at least very easy on-the-day effort. The idea is to be able to easily cook w
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Okay, seeing as how we're so similar, I'm going to ask you this very pointed question about today's digital music streaming infinite everything options.
You didn't ask a question... but I think I see your point anyway.... that having more options today isn't necessarily making our lives better. That it creates distractions many people would be better off without.
I'm 38, with a house, and a specific friend is similarly situated. Every few weeks, we get together for a day of "cooking-for-the-freezer". We basically look for recipes that benefit from more prep, can be done in bulk, and frozen (vacuum-packed) long-term, with a very quick, or at least very easy on-the-day effort. The idea is to be able to easily cook wonderful meals for family.
So, we do things like 20 pounds of seasoned ground lamb, ready for easy-bbq kebobs, marinated chicken thighs, flat-packed for quick thaw and instant bbq, falafel pate ready for frying, cheese blintzes that need nothing more than 20 minutes in the oven unattended, meatballs already cooked and sitting in sage broth, ready for the perfect meatball sub on-demand, that sort of thing.
Obviously, with a big 12-hour day of cooking, we put on some music. I like to simply turn on one of the random music channels on cable, and ignore it for the day. He's got six different music streaming subscriptions. So he prefers to plug his phone into my speakers, and stream whatever.
On the face of it, it's all the same to me. But in reality, every few minutes, he's changing the feed, switching songs, adjusting the volume, reconnecting, whatever.
It's the classic problem of the power to choose. When you have it, you use it. And it's just the dumbest distraction.
In my opinion.
37 here, married, house, 2 dogs, my wife and I have no desire for kids... we tend to favor cooking up big batches of soups for the freezer, or one or two large meals early in the week we can work on from the fridge. Music [or NPR] is often on when cooking. My wife usually chooses the music (more on
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F**k. 1 dog, 1 cat, not married, but she moved in a few years ago; $100K of renovations later, and there's plenty more to go. Also no desire for kids.
Hi from the other side of the mirror.
My polarizing music is jazz. It's not heavy metal, but it polarizes my beloved just the same.
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*waves* :-)
Oh yeah... I forgot to say we have cat too (black)... and we've put spent more on home renovations than I care to state publicly.
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They aren't working for me. They are working for the sender.
As has always been the case, delivery, rent, income tax, packaging, sorting, are all part of fulfillment. I'm not paying fedex, and I'm not paying those IT guys. Therefore, they aren't working for me.
I'm paying, in this case, spotify. Except I won't. Because I'm not interested in paying for delivery.
I buy lots and lots of music. I buy CDs or such from musicians directly, in support of their live performance in my local theatre -- for which I
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I can't even shuffle my collection of music in Spotify as a paying customer. A linux app doesn't make up for that.
On desktop you definitely can (both free and paid). Next to the play button there is a set of crossing-over arrows that toggles shuffle (and a set of circular arrows that toggles repeat). Not sure about mobile because it's been a little while since I had the paid app.
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You can do the same thing in the paid mobile app as well. I've never used the free mobile app.
Suckerrrrrrrrsss!!!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Don't even BOTHER to give me all your dumb arguments about how it's so much better, knows what you like, blah blah blah it's just Broadcast Radio 2.0 but you're PAYING for it one way or the other, either with ads you're subjected to or a perpetual subscription fee. Wouldn't
Select sound card in Spotify for Windows. (Score:2)
So, can we change the output audio device in Spotify for Windows, now? Understand that the masses don't care if the music playing is wrecked by alerts of different sorts, from e-mail arriving to end of page hit on their favourite word processor. But true music lovers care, that's why they have, for example, an extra usb DAC and an above average set of speakers, or want music coming out of a preamp for their high impedance headphones. Can't be that hard to have an option to change the sound card, can it?
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Nice try, NSA... (Score:2)
Cool, but still no IPv6 support on Windows (Score:1)