Hard to be too upset about this. Everything’s getting more expensive, and I’m assuming music rights holders have been squeezing Spotify more and more. I’d love to go back to music piracy, but having an enormous library available at a moment’s notice is worth the extra dollar to me. I do have a pretty huge collection of video game music since the big N refuses to license their music
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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I love they have to sensationalize the title because if they said “raised prices by a dollar” most folks would wonder why it’s a headline.
It's the only price hike I don't mind. I like the service and I use it all day. By far the most content I get for my money.
It's the ONLY company i pay for media. I don't pay for movies and tv shows. It's ridiculous. Like, you need 60 billion streaming services to get the content you want. With music, any given media platform is gonna have the same or similar music libraries. None of this exclusive shit.
Eh, I pay for Netflix and Disney+ (have the bundle, so I have Hulu too). Before I had Disney+, I had Amazon Prime, but I decided I wanted Disney+ more. I'll probably go back to Amazon Prime at some point, or maybe get HBO or something. I don't listen to enough music for Spotify to be worth it, so I mostly listen to audiobooks from my library if I want something to listen to.
My point is, you don't need to have every streaming service all the time, just stick to one or two until you've watched everything you're interested in, then switch to something else.
My main complaint is when looking for something specific. It's almost always more expensive as a digital rental vs Redbox, so I just refuse to pay more for something that costs the company less. I borrow a lot of movies from my local library, and occasionally get Redbox if I want a recent release, mostly out of stubbornness to pay $5 or whatever for a 24hr rental.
Spotify pays very very little to artists per stream. Tidal is a better streaming platform to send money their way.
Tidal doesn't pay that much better; no streaming services do.
If payouts to artists matter to you then buy their music outright from platforms like Bandcamp and Qobuz rather than stream their music for peanuts.
Tidal, Apple music and Deezer pay better, yt music pays worse. Source: i have music on all of these plattforms.
You can also buy any merch of theirs and that will make them more than lifetime streaming of all the services combined.
What’s going on with tech, recently?
Netflix cracking down on password sharing, reddit’s API changes, every streaming platform raising their prices, YouTube fighting against adblockers and potentially charging creators for visibility… the list goes on and on, and it seems to be coming from every direction all at once.
Am I missing some huge financial change in the tech investment sphere that has affected Silicon Valley (ie. freakout due to the SVB collapse)?
Or is this just a case of companies seeing each other get away with squeezing consumers, and following suit?
All of them are built on venture capital and borrowing money used to be "free" so investors were fine with borrowing with 0% interest and spending them on all the shiny tech projects. Now with interest rate being 5.25% they all of them all demanding return on their investment and companies that never in their lifetime were profitable are forced to come up with a way to make that money.
I’d love to read more about this, do you have a reference??
A good overview: https://fortune.com/2022/12/28/investing-outlook-2023-fed-interest-rates-stocks-inflation-cheap-money-era/amp/
It's been the talk since quite some time ago and it's finally here.
The keyword is "the end of cheap money" if you want to Google some more.
What kind of effect would this have the share prices? I guess for Spotify a $1 isn’t super crazy for people to accept, you’d think it’d rise?
At the very least, profitable companies can maintain their valuation. Unlike, say, Twitter valuation which dropped to a third of what Musk pay for because it's losing even more money after the takeover.