Technology

innovate its product features

What. It's meant to stream music. Tf do you mean?

Round #451 of telling people to stop using Spotify and consider one of the many, better alternatives.

So is there an alternative that’s comparable? I am done with their price increases.

I assume Apple Music?

I would suggest anyone bothered by this to look into xManager.

Anyone have an alternative with the same content, offline play, and integration into Android Auto? I would love to switch if something meets my needs.

Summary:

• Spotify has announced another price hike for its subscription plans in the United States.
• This price increase comes shortly after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek sparked outrage among music fans and creators by claiming that the "cost of creating content is close to zero."
• Many musicians and music fans condemned Ek's comments, arguing that music is not just "content" and that it is costly and time-consuming to create.
• Despite the backlash, Spotify is increasing its standard Premium plan by $1 to $11.99, the Duo plan by $2 to $16.99, and the Family plan by $3 to $19.99 per month.
• Spotify claims the price hikes are necessary to invest in and innovate its product features, but this reasoning is questioned given Ek's "content" cost comments.
• Spotify is less vulnerable to customer churn compared to TV/movie streaming services, as users are less likely to switch music streaming providers due to the hassle of rebuilding playlists and losing personalized recommendations.

So now that Tidal has moved its Hi-Fi tier price down to match Apple's wtf is Spotify doing? Charging more than the competition, paying artists less, and not even offering lossless?

Related:

• Spotify's royalty system has faced criticism for not paying artists their fair share (Nov. 29, 2023, MSNBC)

The platform does not pay according to a per-stream rate, but rather puts all the revenue from subscribers and ads into a giant pot, and divides that share according to their respective "streamshare." Under this model, artists are estimated to receive between $0.003 to $0.005 per play.

That's about to change. Beginning early next year, Spotify will only pay royalties to artists whose tracks have been streamed 1,000 times in the past 12 months, effectively locking out the smallest artists from the "streamshare" pot. The money that would have been paid out to these small artists — which Spotify said amounts to $40 million a year — will instead go to "those most dependent on streaming revenue."

According to Spotify, artists generally don't pocket the earnings from tracks that have under 1,000 streams anyway, because they don't meet the labels and distributors' minimum withdrawal amount. The company also says it does not make any additional money under the new model. But musicians have said they feel the model is “putting a number on art," and industry experts said that this change essentially makes Spotify the arbiter of which artist is deserving of payment.

There has to be a way for multibillion-dollar companies to both keep music accessible and appropriately compensate musicians — especially fledgling, independent ones.

• Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me (Nov. 30, 2023, The Guardian)

Spotify will stop paying anything at all for roughly two-thirds of tracks on the platform. That is any track receiving fewer than 1,000 streams over the period of a year. Tracks falling under this arbitrary minimum will continue to accrue royalties – but those royalties will now be redirected upwards, often to bigger artists, rather than to their own rights holders.

This sounds incredible, but there’s nothing to stop it. And their primary business partners – the three major labels – are cheering the change on because it will mean more money in their pockets.

Spotify Premium in practice has new benefits!

More specifically: Lyrics that they took away from regular users some time ago.

Another day, another moment of being thankful for my dedicated .mp3 player.

The average person: Spotify sucks and is making me hate them even more

Shareholders seeing layoffs followed by AI replacements for those workers and then repeated price hikes: 🤑

Smh I want to get off Spotify for tidal but I don't feel up to teaching my parents how to use a completely different music app

After watching how similar business practices torched Twitter, I think this dude is underestimating the general public's commitment to just sail the high seas.