I've been told by people in the position to know that the 2010-era streaming services (Rdio, Spotify, Mog) were all effectively the same company: owned mostly by the music studios (in exchange for licenses) with a minority stake for each's particular founders/investors. As Dalton Caldwell cautioned in 2011, licensing costs make music startups are nigh impossible [1].
For people who are willing to pay for a music service, it seems pretty hard to beat Google Music's value proposition. Because it's a Google service, it can afford to compete as much as it needs to on price, and it also includes ad-free access to all of YouTube. I certainly wouldn't want to be a startup vying for that same $10 per month against one of the most popular content plays in the history of the Internet.
Your people in the know are wrong. The labels own a very small part of e.g. Spotify - around 5% - and the rest is VC and the founders. Deezer's IPO documents were clear on where the ownership of that service lies.
It's not that the labels own Spotify -- it's that by issuing limited-term licensing deals, and owning all of the music, they'll be able to charge whatever they want for their music, leaving just a little bit on the table to keep Spotify in business. Spotify reports $100m in profit? Just raise licensing fees by $90m at the next contract. Spotify won't have the leverage to walk away.
Similar to Netflix, Spotify will need to create some reason for consumers to stay with Spotify, likely with some kind of music or music experience that is Spotify-exclusive like Netflix-exclusive TV shows. Also, Spotify has invested a lot of effort into its curated playlists -- this is an attempt to get people to listen to Spotify the way they watch Netflix -- fire it up and watch/listen to "whatever's on," instead of searching Taylor Swift and getting angry when they can't find it.
I read it more like, because the music startups are so dependent on the licenses they are practically owned by the music industry ( though not technically) which I thought was kinda insightful.
Spotify also has a native(-ish) OSX client (can you use Google Music outside the browser?) and excellent playlist drag/drop and sharing support. Plus, I love their iOS user interface. No other service has come close in either area.
A couple of years ago Spotify rewrote their clients to use CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework), so since then their clients are in some sense native and in some sense not, and much more consistent across platforms.
Anyway, I agree with you that they have been pushing the envelope in terms of mobile functionality, especially iOS. Lately I'm not happy with how Android has crippled their lock screen experience by screwing up the lock screen widget API - but that's not Spotify's fault.
To any Spotify skeptics, I highly recommend trying the premium service. The social feed, cross-device sync, BPM matching for runners, collaborative playlists, Spotify Connect (ability to switch and control music playing on another device), Algoriddm Djay integration, all changed the way I experience music. Their radio/suggestions engine is not as good as Pandora's, but is slowly improving. The only thing that is sort of a letdown is the visualizations API, but I can see why it's not a priority.
> A couple of years ago Spotify rewrote their clients to use CEF
Eh. And not to sound like a cranky old man, but that shit sucks.
It's ridiculous that their "app" needs 20-30 seconds to boot on a modern computer. It's a damned music player. Plus, when the machine is under load, it skips like a 1993 disc player. And the damned thing crashes routinely.
Pre-CEF I was terribly impressed by their mac client. It's been a pretty ugly cliff they've fallen off though. They did a developer blog post some time ago detailing how teams are all using separate JS routines and libs... and I have to say, I wasn't surprised. It's rare that a popular app regresses in performance and usability quite as much as they have.
You have to use 3rd party apps to get Google Music outside the browser, but it's still essentially just using the regular web page with the addition of being able to use the media keys.
It requires a bundled by default, Google Music app. If you disable or delete it, the media keys will stop working. Here is the download link for the app :
I use Google music, mostly because I got in on it early and get it at small discount for $7.99/mo.
I use it on my phone, in my car (via bluetooth from my phone home stereo (via bluetooth from my phone), television (via chromecast from my phone), and laptop (via the web).
It also allows me to upload my offline library, which was unique when it came out (I think?) but isn't so much now (right?).
My wife has Spotify, and she uses it the exact same way. Eventually we'll decide on one based on something trivial (like me being willing to switch, and she being not willing) and do a family account. And once we do, that will be that until the service closes or changes drastically. The services aren't that much different.
No uploading your offline library was not unique when it came out nor unique now. Initially Apple's implementation was much better since it fingerprinted the song and linked it to their library so you only had to upload songs not in their library.
And actually the services are quite different if you spend a lot of time with them. I switched from Spotify to Apple Music and now considering buying both.
Google Music has definitely used fingerprinting for some time - I think from its inception. I haven't used Spotify for a long time, so I'm not sure how it works.
Spotify does not allow you to upload your music or anything like that. You simply have access to their full catalog, and can choose to download any part of it for offline consumption.
Correction: A local spotify install can find music on your computer which can be played through the spotify client, but you cannot UPLOAD this music for use on other clients.
The Spotify desktop client can act as a Media Player for your other media, but you cannot upload it like you can with other services (which would be pointless, seeing as you already have access to 100% of Spotify's catalog).
For people who are willing to pay for a music service, it seems pretty hard to beat Google Music's value proposition. Because it's a Google service, it can afford to compete as much as it needs to on price
I thought something similar about XBox Music, I figured with Microsoft's money it would never go away and it would have at least as good a selection of music as other music only services. I am right on the former, wrong on the latter. When I gave Spotify a shot I found they had a larger catalog of songs than XBox Music (particularly indie bands).
I guess it comes down to XBox Music is probably a loss leader or at least a runt service that doesn't get much love at MS but at Spotify, it's their ONLY business. Maybe Google is different than MS as far as how much attention they put into their music licensing (and there is the added YouTube benefit you mentioned) but it's something to consider (or at least really compare catalog access).
For indie bands, it's not so much Spotify's efforts as the bands' effort themselves that has gotten them on Spotify. If you're an indie band, you're going to take the effort to make sure that your music is showing up correctly on iTunes, Spotify, and other popular services.
I guess this is a good place to give a shout out to jmtulloss, who is one of the many talented engineers responsible for implementing the Rdio web interface...
... as well as plug https://spotbot.qa/, which he is working on with another early Rdio employee.
It seemed strange to me as well (esp after seeing how much outside funding they had raised), but the people I heard it from seemed both credible and adamant. It's also possible that the cap table has changed since I heard this (years ago) and now.
I agree with you about Google Music. For those lucky enough to sign up early and get the $7.99 price, it is easily the best pay for streaming service out there.
I have used Google, Spotify, and Pandora, and in my experience, Google's hands-off auto-generated playlists are extremely high quality. They also have great radio/curated playlists via the Songza acquisition.
Spotify is a clear winner for a social experience, but I think you're really underestimating Google on the other dimensions.
Coming from Rdio, I'm genuinely curious where you find the social experience in Spotify. Is it all in FB?
In Rdio I really enjoy the comments feature and how generally constructive it tends to be. In addition it's easy to find people with similar musical tastes in the list of recent listeners - I've followed people via this mechanism and found great music as a result. I don't see how to do the same in Spotify at all. Spotify shows me that 300k people listened to a band, with 18k new listeners today, but no individual link to any of them? And none of them can comment, post reviews, or link to music videos or trivia? Where's the user generated/curated content?
Granted I haven't used Spotify in a few years so it may just take me some time to find all of the things that are immediately at hand in Rdio in Spotify's (imo less friendly) UI.
Man I took the ability to follow people based on musical tastes for granted - I spent so much time looking for people all over the world who were listening to interesting stuff and ever morning I download a few albums I found on the Trending page.
I'm just lost with Spotify and Google music, I go there and see pictures of Justin Bieber and I don't know what to do. Apple Music is a little better but it's a totally different approach, being told what's good by record labels and "tastemakers".
The way Rdio did it just seemed natural, like going over to someone's house and checking out their record collection. I almost think the others are avoiding letting you see who is listening to what so they and the labels can push more Beiber stuff.
I agree with your take on social with Rdio & Spotify. Rdio was the strongest in this category.
Still, Rdio could have done more to emphasis finding your music "friend" - someone who has the similar preferences. It was the differentiator.
I don't know about debatable so far as Apple's advantage.
They have radio stations by Dr Dre, Drake, Joshua Homme and countless other musical figures. Not to mention operating Beats 1 24/7 in London, NY, LA. It's pretty impressive (if that's what you're into).
I've used Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Xbox Music (Now Groove Music), and I find Google Music's recommendation engine by far the best. They even have a "I'm feeling lucky" feature that plays a set of curated music to your interest randomly.
This make a lot of sense to me. Every time this discussion comes up, I'm stuck wondering what the hubbub is, since I've never wanted for anything more than Pandora. In fact, Pandora is perfect for me, since I very specifically do not want to curate my music at all beyond choosing a song, artist or genre and letting it pick stuff I might like. Letting me thumbs up/down stuff to get it better to my tastes is just gravy.
I sure as hell don't want to actively pursue and catalogue music new to me, that just sounds tedious.
Check out Songza if you haven't already. Curated pre-defined stations by genre takes things even a step further than Pandora as far as not wanting to manually curate.
I find it the "easiest" music app to use because you just pick a channel and go.
As little as I actually count on the service, and have yet to update my files with tracks since about 2013, Radio Reddit is one of the few I know of that legitimately side-steps the licensing issue. It's more of a discovery service than streaming service, so to speak. Niche market.
Heck, if ReverbNation or BandCamp wanted to get into the 'stand-alone, broadcast/streaming, exposure and small payment per play' market, they could have a distinct advantage in that their content sources are, predominately, unsigned and able to negotiate in good faith (in theory). Could be a great way for new bands to get noticed...could also be an unlistenable mess of garbage without human curation. Sort of a counter-community to SoundCloud, which I see as more of dealing with label pressures in ways ReverbNation/BandCamp would avoid.
>Heck, if ReverbNation or BandCamp wanted to get into the 'stand-alone, broadcast/streaming, exposure and small payment per play' market, they could have a distinct advantage in that their content sources are, predominately, unsigned and able to negotiate in good faith (in theory).
Yeah, but also the very big disadvantage that nobody cares for those artists [1], even for the better ones among them.
This kind of "long tail" [2] idea never panned out, because it turns out most people mostly go for the few acts at the top -- and, heck, even those today are not doing very well, sales and streaming licenses wise.
Maybe nobody cares yet because nobody has made a sufficiently compelling alternative.
Almost everyone I know has at least some bands they like that aren't one of the few acts at the top. Local bands, side projects, anti-establishment punk bands, whatever.
My little working class town is a miniature hotbed for small bands. They don't all make weird punk or whatever, tons of them make music that would be really nice for café ambience.
But from visiting cafés around here, it does seem like the only music that exists is the repeating top 20. I don't think anyone actually likes this, though. I certainly don't.
Somebody could make it fun and easy for cafés and friends and whoever to play that music. That would have a very real value.
ReverbNation would need a lot of curation on top their rewards-for-uploads model to make it listenable. Unlimited skips wouldn't be enough for the early adopters to enjoy the stream.
I was thinking about this a little more and realized that ReverbNation already has a "pay-for-listens" model where artists/bands have to fork over cash to have 'a community' review tracks and give a rating on a 0-10 scale. If a song hits higher than 8, it's allowed to submit to big name outlets (CBS Radio, etc) through their platform. So, I think it's kind of a flipped model - the people who listen to ReverbNation as a curation function are, more than likely, paid to sit there and go through the submissions.
Fair points and I can see your perspective, but also think you're kind of too focused on the notion of streaming revenue as the goal for unsigned bands/musicians/artists. Even signed to a major label, the income is negligible.
However in other avenues, such as 'music review' and licensing for film/commercials, there's a genuine thirst for finding the "next big thing" and getting involved with the artist before the 'long tail' even gets started. My favorite example is Chvrches, which turned free publicity into a viable career. Yes, there are only a few at the top who have the quality and capability, but that's kind of the point of curation, review, and promotions teams - if they don't find something new, somebody else will.
Remember all that buzz around whichever indie/unknown group was featured in an Apple commercial? That's more what I'm talking about, because they probably made more from the commercial and initial sales bump than they ever will/would from streaming revenue, and that's just the nature of the business. Hot today, cold tomorrow, better make something new to stay in the game.
It's interesting that the music studios are pushing for consolidation in the streaming audio market. Even if they do own a piece of the companies it seems like that could come back to bite them in the future.
I wonder if Google or Apple is in a stronger position to compete on price, and if either of them can accomplish what Amazon tried to accomplish with books until the Hatchette dispute.
For people who are willing to pay for a music service, it seems pretty hard to beat Google Music's value proposition. Because it's a Google service, it can afford to compete as much as it needs to on price, and it also includes ad-free access to all of YouTube. I certainly wouldn't want to be a startup vying for that same $10 per month against one of the most popular content plays in the history of the Internet.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTOlrN5-UGU