[themagician]

There was a time when Spotify was the underdog—a scrappy music startup fighting the good fight trying to legitimize streaming. I remember jumping through hoops to get a prepaid European debit card and using a VPN just so I could sign up for Spotify back when they blocked US users from using it.

Spotify isn't that company anymore. It's a public company that isn't profitable and now has to answer to investors every quarter.

They are trying to build a moat around their business. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they shut down API access entirely. Their investment in podcasting is another example of an attempt to put a walled garden around content (i.e. public radio).

Spotify isn't little. Sure, it's not as big as Apple… but literally no one is. Spotify is a $25 billion company that doesn't care about you or artists. They care about finding a way to be profitable. That means putting up walls and ramping up ads.

I think what pisses me of about Spotify is how they still want to pretend like they are the small startup, full of designers with their cute hand drawn graphics, being bullied by evil corporate American shills. It's all bullshit. They are just as corporate now as anyone else.

[nailer]

> I think what pisses me of about Spotify is how they still want to pretend like they are the small startup, full of designers with their cute hand drawn graphics, being bullied by evil corporate American shills. It's all bullshit. They are just as corporate now as anyone else.

Fantano actually investigated this: the record labels rejected a higher artist % of streaming revenue from Spotify in favour of the labels owning more Spotify shares. Spotify is literally (to the extent of that ownership) the record labels.