• EnderMB@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Sometimes, I see some of the takes on here, and it’s hardly surprising that the fediverse isn’t particularly popular.

    Spotify are somewhat responsible for their current position. They hired too many people, extended into markets they didn’t need to enter, and have a CEO that has blown money in places that didn’t need it. Let’s not forget that Spotify spent $300m on sponsoring FC Barcelona, which could have allowed Spotify to employ ALL of the employees it laid off for 1-2 years. Spotify had no need to give $200m to Joe Rogan, either! That’s half a billion spunked up the wall on decisions that have done nothing for the company but cause grief. Instead, they could have focused their efforts on paying more out to smaller artists that provide the long tail for their service, while also making deals to promote merch and tour dates where possible.

    With that being said, if you think that Spotify didn’t play a huge part in making music streaming accessible you’re just being contrarian for no reason. They provided (at the time) a solid application, good connectivity with services like last.fm, and had the social connection sorted from the start. Once phones took off, Spotify removed the need for mp3’s for the majority of people, largely killing iTunes. Spotify was the winner of the music streaming wars.

    Frankly, a lot of people were praising Spotify for their “good” severance package, but IMO shareholders should be livid, and should be calling for a new person at the helm.

    • Darkhoof@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Completely agreed. If they focused on their core business they would’ve already been in much better shape.

    • joel_feila@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yeah spotify did wind up how most people listen to music, and podcasts. They had what people wanted and made it cheap. Then they also made a lot of decisions that wasted money. Dont know for certain but i doubt the exe there stopped geting big bonuses or pay cuts over those decisions

    • small44@lemmy.worldBanned
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      2 years ago

      In it’s whole history, Spotify only made profits in two quarters and if I’m not wrong the other streaming services aren’t profitable either so it doesn’t looks to me that the problem is just over hiring but the nature of streaming business itself You also underestimate the power of sponsorship especially sponsoring sport. I’m sure a lot of people are using Spotify just for that. Investing in podcast make sense because it’s more profitable than music, Spotify need to diversify it’s revenues. You said that Spotify have good connectivity with lastfm but that’s not true. Most of issues lastfm users have with lastfm is related to Spotify.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Sometimes, I see some of the takes on here, and it’s hardly surprising that the fediverse isn’t particularly popular.

      You genuinely think the reason the fediverse isn’t popular is because people have negative opinions of Spotify? As if these opinions wouldn’t also be prevalent on Reddit? As if having to see opinions you didn’t agree with was ever holding reddit back to begin with?

      And yeah, Spotify made music streaming accessible, but the overall problem is they did what all tech companies at the time did: burned money to establish themselves hoping the profit would come later.

      You’re praising them for killing iTunes, but maybe iTunes didn’t need to be killed. Maybe breaking markets with a type of streaming that wasn’t profitable and fucked over artists has given us a few years of good streaming, but the honeymoon is coming to an end, and we’ll all be worse off when the stockholders start demanding profit.

      Same thing that happened with YouTube, basically. Company runs something at a loss for so long they’ve effectively broken the market and now that it’s time to make money, we’re all fucked over.

      • Strykker@programming.dev
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        2 years ago

        No it’s not because people here don’t like Spotify, but the stupid ass takes y’all have that lead to Spotify hate bleed through in half the other content on here that people don’t like either.

        That fact that you thought ops comment was about disliking Spotify specifically reinforces it.

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          This problem existed on reddit too but it seems concentrated here, like all the people with shit takes who got ignored on reddit came here so there voice could be heard.

          I wish the fediverse the best but at this point it feels like it’ll never progress past the few hundred thousand point due to the highschool level analysis of socioeconomic problems.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      IMO shareholders should be livid

      Why? Shareholders gave Spotify billions of dollars - they expect the company to spend that money. Shareholders are quite capable of depositing their own money in a bank if they didn’t want it to be spent.

      My take is Spotify hired over 5,000 employees over 2020 and 2021 when the economy looked great. Then Russia Invaded Ukraine in 2022 screwing the global economy and particularly Europe which is Spotify’s biggest market. They’ve laid off about half the people they hired, which is unfortunate… but it’s understandable. The couldn’t have foreseen the economic shift.

      Spotify removed the need for mp3’s for the majority of people, largely killing iTunes

      Huh? Apple’s music service has about a hundred million users. Up from eighty million a few years ago. Spotify has more than twice that, but iTunes is hardly dead.