[nunez]

It’s really not though because music is a loss leader for amazon, apple and google, but it is spotify’s entire business. The only other major competitors out there are either in major cahoots with the big 3 (tidal, pandora) or gone (soundcloud, grooveshark, rdio).

Netflix has this problem too but they “solved” it by making their own content. Amazon are Google are doing the same thing. That’s the direction I see Spotify going, though I wonder why Apple hasn’t done this yet.

[fragsworth]

Music is quite a bit different, in that people spend lots of time curating their own playlists and they listen to the same songs repeatedly. It is incredibly annoying to have songs that you want in your playlists but can't get, EVEN if you pay for multiple services.

Making their own content for video has the advantage that most people are OK with opening a new browser tab or an app to watch a specific movie or show.

With music, however, you don't want to run multiple conflicting music players, especially when they don't sync up playlists and seamlessly work together.

I wonder how that will pan out. It's a significant difference.

[notatoad]

Yes, i don't think the original content strategy will work out for streaming sites the way it has for netflix and amazon. I'm not willing to open one app to listen to one album and then another app to listen to a different album. I'll use the service that has all the music i want to listen to. Whether that's piracy or youtube playlists or spotify. If any streaming service starts getting too many exclusives, it's going to just kill the entire streaming market.

From my perspective, all the streaming services should be working together to create a healthy marketplace for independent music, and providing every opportunity they can for musicians to avoid signing a big-four contract. If Warner and Sony, and UMG get their act together and create a joint venture streaming service that's the exclusive host of the content they own, Spotify, Google Music, and Apple Music are screwed.

[rvshchwl]

That is basically what happened with Hulu. The service is owned by the major content providers, such as Fox and CBS, and all of the televised content is almost completely exclusive on Hulu now, as opposed to being on Netflix. As more and more shows started to get pulled from Netflix, Netflix had to rely on original shows to make sure that they have a full catalog of streaming content. They paid over $6 billion dollars in creating new shows for 2017.

Unfortunately for music, the exclusivity has started to show up in some cases. Artists that own the Tidal service don't allow any of their music on competing services, and Apple has been signing contracts with musicians to have new content show up on their service several months in advance before it does on other services (like Jay Z and Kanye).

[majormajor]

It's been kinda the reverse in video, if my recollection of the timelines is right. Netflix's big push into originals and dropping of licensed content started to happen 4+ years ago, well before Hulu seemed to have the budget to get big shows into their back catalog.

From Netflix subscriber numbers, it's also not clear that the lost content has dented their subscriber retention at all. The talk among my friends centers much more around new Netflix originals (or even Amazon/Hulu originals) than around back catalog stuff on Amazon or Hulu. I don't understand why -- I'm utterly uncompelled by 95%+ of what they're putting out, since I don't have the motivation to deeply investigate new Netflix shows/movies every week, and however they're advertising, it doesn't really reach me -- but it's what I see happening, much to my annoyance.

[mavelikara]

You argument works in favor of Spotify too.

If they sign on 100 top artistes, it will devalue the portfolio of music held by the top 3 - for reasons you explained. Thus, the top 3 are incentivized to collaborate with Spotify.

[joemi]

> or gone (soundcloud, grooveshark, rdio)

I can't speak for grooveshark or rdio, but as far as I know soundcloud still exists. I just added a song there and listened to some other stuff a week ago. Did I miss something?

[JonFish85]

Soundcloud exists, but is likely on life support[1].

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990911

[rozenmd]

They fired a fair number of developers in San Francisco, Berlin, shut offices etc - but are still running the servers AFAIK.

[kingraoul3]

What about iHeart? They do own half the physical radio stations in the country which is still how people find new music, you know.

[dragonwriter]

> They do own half the physical radio stations in the country which is still how people find new music, you know.

IME, lots of people find new music by genre/mood/etc. curated or “like this song/artist” algorithmic stations in streaming services, not terrestrial radio.

[kingraoul3]

That is not supported by the data. The lions share of new music discovery is still done via terrestrial radio, and the brand identification people have with their favorite stations is crazy high

[dragonwriter]

Where is the data showing this?

[kingraoul3]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/radio-still-beats-digit...

[dragonwriter]

So, here's a newer piece, with opposing results:

https://musicbiz.org/news/music-bizloop-study-millennials-tu...

But it looks like the data from other recent sources are mixed, with different surveys posting widely varying data, consistent in the direction of change from radio to streaming) but not what the current leading discovery sources are or even the relative placement of streaming vs. radio.

[nunez]

ClearChannel front; they own all major terrestrial radio in the US

[nkozyra]

I'm confused. I think you're saying the same thing as the post you're replying to. The direction would be to own (or "create") the content. In other words, Justin Timberlake or someone with equal clout moves from Sony to Spotify Records (for lack of a better name).

[notatoad]

The problem with that is it creates a war for exclusives. If their competitors start doing the same thing, spotify will just end up losing a lot of their content.

and personally, unless spotify continues to have the vast majority of the music i want to listen to, i won't continue being a subscriber.

[wolco]

But if they sign the top 30 and you listen to that kind of music you will have to subscribe.

Netflicks is creating there own content which would mean spotify would need to create new bands instead of sign existing ones which most likely would fail because they are all under contract.

[jon-wood]

It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple not being in that game yet is because of their long standing agreement with Apple Records (the Beatle’s label), who challenged their trademark a while back when they started selling music. I suspect getting into directly signing artists would breach whatever agreement was made and leave Apple open to a huge trademark suit.

[tzahola]

"In 1978, Apple Records filed suit against Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for trademark infringement. The suit was settled in 1981 with the payment of $80,000 to Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business. A dispute subsequently arose in 1989 when Apple Corps sued, alleging that Apple Computer's machines' ability to play back MIDI music was a violation of the 1981 settlement agreement. In 1991 another settlement, of around $26.5 million, was reached.[54][55] In September 2003, Apple Computer was again sued by Apple Corps, this time for introducing the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, which Apple Corps asserted was a violation of Apple's agreement not to distribute music. The trial opened on 29 March 2006 in the UK,[56] and in a judgement issued on 8 May 2006, Apple Corps lost the case."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps#Apple_Corps_v._App...

[dragonwriter]

Apple does directly sign non-label artists to exclusive deals with Apple Music, but so far that's mostly established artists, they haven't put money into discovering and developing artists.

[remir]

Apparently Apple is gearing up to create their own video content.