8 ms·

Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers

88 points by neilpeel 10y ago

exmuslim 10y ago
So that's like ~$400M of income per month? Their expenses are mostly royalties and those are probably spare change compared to that income. Not bad!
- nerdponx 10y ago
  Maybe now they can start building basic quality of life features like offline Last.FM scrobbling that have been in demand for 4+ years!
  - bpicolo 10y ago
    They already have offline for anybody with premium. It's a slider on any playlist to download it to disk. Though I may misunderstand what you're asking for, as I don't quite get the Last.FM comment.
    - gaadd33 10y ago
      He's asking to have offline plays saved and submitted to Last.FM when you go back online vs attempting to send them to Last.FM even when offline
  - dominotw 10y ago
    I imagine, they want people to do all their music listening on spotify, implementing scrobbling would seem counter to that goal.
    - ablation 10y ago
      They've already implemented scrobbling, I think the previous poster was asking for offline plays to be scrobbled too.
      - dominotw 10y ago
        Oh I didn't know that. thanks.
  - bouk 10y ago
    I doubt a significant number of people use that feature to make it worth for them to spend time implementing it
  - rco8786 10y ago
    I use offline all the time?
- jasode 10y ago
  >So that's like ~$400M of income per month? Friendly fyi... if we're talking about a company's financials instead of a human's salary, the precise term would be "revenue" instead of "income". Income would be revenue minus costs. Spotify doesn't have any positive income.[1] >Their expenses are mostly royalties and those are probably spare change compared to that income. No, it's not "spare change". In fact, the unfavorable licensing terms[2] to the record labels (58% payment) are preventing Spotify from turning a profit. (Keep in mind that so far, Spotify has never turned a profit.) They also took on $1 billion in new debt with exploding terms[3] which pressures them towards an IPO. A bad timing of the IPO wouldn't help them at all. I don't see how the financial numbers work in favor of Spotify. It looks like the only companies that can afford to stream music would be Amazon/Apple/Google. Digital music streaming is a brutal business and all 3 major streaming companies Spotify/Pandora/Rhapsody have been losing money for years.[4] It's now 2016 and nobody has found a way to make profits. Their subscriber growth numbers keep making the headlines so people mistakenly assume those companies are financially successful when they're not. [1]http://www.statista.com/statistics/244990/spotifys-revenue-and-net-income/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/244990/spotifys-revenue-a... [2]http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-contract-three-major-labels-wants-pay-less/ http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-contract-three... [3]http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/17/will-spotify-have-an-ipo-in-2016.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/17/will-spotify-have-a... [4]http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/02/18/profitless/ http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/02/18/profitless/
  - k-mcgrady 10y ago
    >> "In fact, the unfavorable licensing terms" According to the source you posted Spotify has been given favourable license terms since it started whereas competitors like rdio have had to pay more and have since went bust.
    - jasode 10y ago
      >According to the source you posted Spotify has been given favourable license terms I can see why that report's statement is confusing. To clarify, that sentence was only comparing Spotify's "better" licensing terms to Rdio. It's about the licensing costs relative to a competitor. However, in absolute numbers, it's a licensing cost percentage that's still too expensive. Spotify wants to renegotiate the percentage to be less than 50%. Spotify's "better" rate of 55% compared to Rdio 60% did not meet this more favorable threshold to turn a profit. The "favorable licensing terms" I was talking about was in absolute terms (company profitability) and not relative terms (compared to another competitor).
- odabaxok 10y ago
  Here it is 5.99 EUR (~6.8 USD) / month. So, based on that price, it should be like ~$270M. Also, you can have a family subscription for 6 people for 8.99 EUR (~10.1 USD). I wonder, if such subscriptions are counted as one, or for every member separately.
  - matthewking 10y ago
    Where is that? EU wide? In the UK its £9.99 which I've always found too expensive compared to services like Netflix, NowTV, Amazon Video etc. Personally I feel the price point should be around £5 or less, otherwise I can buy an album every other month on iTunes and own it forever, so for me at least this price point doesn't work.
    - odabaxok 10y ago
      It is in Czech Republic, but I see now, that you can change the country in the footer and you will see different pricing.
      - k-mcgrady 10y ago
        Yeah Spotify pricing varies pretty drastically from country to country.
  - boodm 10y ago
    $4.99 for US students: https://www.spotify.com/us/student/ https://www.spotify.com/us/student/
- ci5er 10y ago
  COGS is going to be ~60% of revenue. That's the royalties. Gross Margin = Gross Revenue - COGS. We're down to under $160M. Spotify has (or had) 1600+ employees. If these were US (CA) based, we'd estimate higher, but since Europeans are relatively "cheaper", let's call it $75K/employee all-in (taxes, benefits, etc.). That's probably light, and doesn't take into account rent or data centers or any expenses, and that costs them ~$120M. That leaves $40M for "everything else". Assuming that their employees are indeed "as cheap" on average as guesstimated above. Conclusion: they are surely losing money.
hedora 10y ago
I'm happy their subscriber counts are up, but I've noticed a steep negative trend their library selection in the last month. I poked around a bit for more info. All I could find were complaints that they don't publish this information anymore. Does anyone know how to see if my anectdote is a trend? Perhaps they lost some contracts with major labels, or perhaps there is a way to probe their search API to estimate their library size.
- cache-monet 10y ago
  I have noticed this as well. I actually cancelled my subscription and will continue using Google's service which has more of the music I listen to available in the US.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure I read that their contracts with all the major labels ran out a few months ago and they're still renegotiating. Maybe labels are removing small amounts of music in the mean time to force the issue?
- matt4077 10y ago
  Maybe the golden age* of music subscription services is ending, following in the footsteps of these services for video: - A startup negotiates contracts with most/all content providers - said startup becomes a sensation - Google, Apple & Amazon enter the market, signing similar deals - Content providers realize the value of their material and negotiations become more complicated - The services want need differentiation and it can't be price because they all have more or less the same lower bound of licensing costs - The startup's contracts are up for renewal. They don't have the financial background of Apple/Google/Amazon and loose a few contracts - There are now 5-10 services and each one has some exclusive content, overlap in the libraries keeps shrinking - I go back to bit torrent because 10$/mo is already more per year than I paid for music in the first 25 years of my life total. * length: about 3 years or as it's commonly called "A good Netflix"
  - UlyssesSKrunk 10y ago
helthanatos 10y ago
Spotify has achieved what no normal entity could. Go them for having a relatively decent free to play with, I'm assuming, a good pay to play model as well.
- JTon 10y ago
  In Canada, one of the major wireless providers offers Spotify premium accounts bundled in with mid and high tier data lines (i.e. 2 years of Spotify premium "for free"). So I wonder what other providers around the world do this, and how many of the 40mm are part of this group.
  - wjoe 10y ago
    Same in the UK, Vodafone include Spotify with some of their plans.
  - vasco 10y ago
    Vodafone does this in Portugal.
  - farslan 10y ago
    Same in Turkey as well. They have a partnership with Vodafone Turkey
  - nicolas_t 10y ago
    I have accounts on both Deezer and Spotify because of bundled accounts on wireless providers. So far I prefer Spotify but only because of the Discover Weekly feature.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Spark - Nee Zealand.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  Free to play won't be around long imo. Since Spotify first launched for me in 2009 the free offering has got progressively worse. The second the labels can drop freemium they will and I don't think we're too far away from that.
santialbo 10y ago
I hope they add lyrics again. They ended their partnership with musixmatch a few months ago and haven't offered an alternative yet.
- dorianm 10y ago
  They had Spotify apps, the two most popular were lyrics apps. Then they removed the apps and added lyrics inside Spotify, and now there is no more lyrics at all. Obviously that's a very demanded feature so they must have a strong reason not to have it anymore (legal issues probably). I personally used it all the times for improvised karaokes so I'm very upset to not have lyrics on demand anymore.
  - davidsawyer 10y ago
    They still have Behind the Lyrics for some songs on the mobile app, which shows a mix of lyrics and info about the song and artist.
    - dorianm 10y ago
      I can't make it appear on my app (iOS) and the help link [1] shows that's it's enabling comments from Genius about the lyrics, so not the actual lyrics synced. [1]: https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/behind-the-lyrics/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/beh...
  - aantix 10y ago
    Try the RockIt app for karaoke sessions. About every song imaginable..
- buckhx 10y ago
  The lyrics were simple and great. I was surprised how much I missed them when they were gone. A Genius partnership would be perfect, but Genius seems to think they're god's gift to Earth so that will probably never happen.
- circa 10y ago
sc90 10y ago
How many of these were gained via discount promotions?
te_chris 10y ago
Good on them. Now can their stupid, over-zealous designers stop messing with the product by removing actually useful features such as "Most Played" filtering of your library, etc etc.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  And can they sooner or later stop recommending vocal trance to me? If there was any machine learning at all going on at that place it should have picked out that peculiarity by now.
bogomipz 10y ago
Does anyone know what percentage 40 million is of their total subscribers? From what I know thats the number they need/want to see growing.
- gtirloni 10y ago
  They have north of 100mi users in total.
- fons 10y ago
  Historically it's been around 30%
bearcobra 10y ago
I wonder how many of these 40M users are like me and are searching for other options. I'm using Spotify because of an intro offer, and my Google Play account exists almost solely for the discount on other content. Both have enough annoying design quirks that I've also tried Tidal and Apple Music, but their recommendation engines left me wanting more. Based on my love of Rdio, I'm really hoping Pandora's rumored new streaming service becomes a viable alternative.
- emanuelev 10y ago
  Not sure if it's just melancholia, but I do think rdio is still totally unbeaten in terms of personalised playlists. It was absolutely amazing! Also, the audio quality seemed far superior compared to Spotify or Apple Music.
- circa 10y ago
  I could not agree more. I was a big Rdio fan and went to the ways of Apple Music because the family plan is so cheap. Wish they would integrate Last.fm and a web interface though. The 12.5.1 version is a step in the right direction though. Along with iOS 10. Excited to see what Pandora will offer as well.
  - solaxun 10y ago
    I know it's easy for me to be an armchair quarterback but I have to say it. Although I am currently and somewhat reluctantly paying for it (for now), Spotify's UI makes me want to strangle someone every time I use it. I can never remember exactly what ridiculous combinatoric puzzle of screens I need to cycle through in order to get where I want to go. It feels like I'm trying to enter a fucking launch code for a nuclear submarine just to play a damn song. God forbid I'm running and hit the wrong screen, then I have to stop, fiddle for 3 minutes, and start again. Also the stations are incredibly shallow. If you pick a station on Pandora, you will have hundreds of songs that are generally well selected in my experience. If you pick one on Spotify, you get maybe 20-30 songs. The one major benefit to Spotify is that you can pick any song you want. However, if you pick a genre, you're likely to be inundated with shitty cover bands that you have to painfully sift through in order to find the actual playlist your looking for, because '70's hits' could be anything from Led Zepplin to your next door neighbours cover band. TLDR - incredibly over complicated UI, shallow stations, too much spam music.
ArtDev 10y ago
I pay for Spotify but it sucks because: 1) I can't play it on multiple devices at the same time like every other service I subscribe to (Netflix, Hbo, Hulu). If I ever upgrade to a"family" account, I have to make new accounts for each person (including my kids). 2) The UI sucks. I can never find the queue list, so I never know what is playing next. Adding items to a playlist is should be easier. 3) The web app is really broken. You have to install the Spotify software to use the service. 4) Offline playlists randomly decide they have not been downloaded yet. 5) Nothing by the Beatles. Like every other music service, the only way is to rip your old CDs or torrent them. One feature I do like, listening to local music files on the Spotify software. Like, for example, the Beatles. I really wish Grooveshark was still around! [edit] Now that I read that Spotify (and similar companies) are actually losing money I realize that I shouldn't be so hard on them.
- vel0city 10y ago
  The Beatles are available on Spotify, have been for several months. https://open.spotify.com/special/thebeatles https://open.spotify.com/special/thebeatles It make a lot of headlines when it happened. http://www.recode.net/2015/12/22/11621674/the-beatles-are-coming-to-apple-music-spotify-and-everywhere-else-on http://www.recode.net/2015/12/22/11621674/the-beatles-are-co...
Coincoin 10y ago
They still haven't redownloaded their UMG library to fix the horrendous watermark issue. Everything from UMG before 2013 is very low quality due to a bug with their watermarking technology at the time. This includes all the best classical music labels.
bogomipz 10y ago
Between March(they announced 30 million) and now - roughly 6 months later they added 10 million new paid subscribers? How is that even possible? That would average out to 1.6 million new subscribers a month. Reference: http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-30-million-subscribers-apple-music-11-million-subscribers http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-3...

88 points by neilpeel 10y ago

So that's like ~$400M of income per month? Their expenses are mostly royalties and those are probably spare change compared to that income. Not bad!

nerdponx 10y ago
Maybe now they can start building basic quality of life features like offline Last.FM scrobbling that have been in demand for 4+ years!
- bpicolo 10y ago
  They already have offline for anybody with premium. It's a slider on any playlist to download it to disk. Though I may misunderstand what you're asking for, as I don't quite get the Last.FM comment.
  - gaadd33 10y ago
    He's asking to have offline plays saved and submitted to Last.FM when you go back online vs attempting to send them to Last.FM even when offline
- dominotw 10y ago
  I imagine, they want people to do all their music listening on spotify, implementing scrobbling would seem counter to that goal.
  - ablation 10y ago
    They've already implemented scrobbling, I think the previous poster was asking for offline plays to be scrobbled too.
    - dominotw 10y ago
      Oh I didn't know that. thanks.
- bouk 10y ago
  I doubt a significant number of people use that feature to make it worth for them to spend time implementing it
- rco8786 10y ago
  I use offline all the time?
jasode 10y ago
>So that's like ~$400M of income per month? Friendly fyi... if we're talking about a company's financials instead of a human's salary, the precise term would be "revenue" instead of "income". Income would be revenue minus costs. Spotify doesn't have any positive income.[1] >Their expenses are mostly royalties and those are probably spare change compared to that income. No, it's not "spare change". In fact, the unfavorable licensing terms[2] to the record labels (58% payment) are preventing Spotify from turning a profit. (Keep in mind that so far, Spotify has never turned a profit.) They also took on $1 billion in new debt with exploding terms[3] which pressures them towards an IPO. A bad timing of the IPO wouldn't help them at all. I don't see how the financial numbers work in favor of Spotify. It looks like the only companies that can afford to stream music would be Amazon/Apple/Google. Digital music streaming is a brutal business and all 3 major streaming companies Spotify/Pandora/Rhapsody have been losing money for years.[4] It's now 2016 and nobody has found a way to make profits. Their subscriber growth numbers keep making the headlines so people mistakenly assume those companies are financially successful when they're not. [1]http://www.statista.com/statistics/244990/spotifys-revenue-and-net-income/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/244990/spotifys-revenue-a... [2]http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-contract-three-major-labels-wants-pay-less/ http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-contract-three... [3]http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/17/will-spotify-have-an-ipo-in-2016.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/17/will-spotify-have-a... [4]http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/02/18/profitless/ http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/02/18/profitless/
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  >> "In fact, the unfavorable licensing terms" According to the source you posted Spotify has been given favourable license terms since it started whereas competitors like rdio have had to pay more and have since went bust.
  - jasode 10y ago
    >According to the source you posted Spotify has been given favourable license terms I can see why that report's statement is confusing. To clarify, that sentence was only comparing Spotify's "better" licensing terms to Rdio. It's about the licensing costs relative to a competitor. However, in absolute numbers, it's a licensing cost percentage that's still too expensive. Spotify wants to renegotiate the percentage to be less than 50%. Spotify's "better" rate of 55% compared to Rdio 60% did not meet this more favorable threshold to turn a profit. The "favorable licensing terms" I was talking about was in absolute terms (company profitability) and not relative terms (compared to another competitor).
odabaxok 10y ago
Here it is 5.99 EUR (~6.8 USD) / month. So, based on that price, it should be like ~$270M. Also, you can have a family subscription for 6 people for 8.99 EUR (~10.1 USD). I wonder, if such subscriptions are counted as one, or for every member separately.
- matthewking 10y ago
  Where is that? EU wide? In the UK its £9.99 which I've always found too expensive compared to services like Netflix, NowTV, Amazon Video etc. Personally I feel the price point should be around £5 or less, otherwise I can buy an album every other month on iTunes and own it forever, so for me at least this price point doesn't work.
  - odabaxok 10y ago
    It is in Czech Republic, but I see now, that you can change the country in the footer and you will see different pricing.
    - k-mcgrady 10y ago
      Yeah Spotify pricing varies pretty drastically from country to country.
- boodm 10y ago
  $4.99 for US students: https://www.spotify.com/us/student/ https://www.spotify.com/us/student/
ci5er 10y ago
COGS is going to be ~60% of revenue. That's the royalties. Gross Margin = Gross Revenue - COGS. We're down to under $160M. Spotify has (or had) 1600+ employees. If these were US (CA) based, we'd estimate higher, but since Europeans are relatively "cheaper", let's call it $75K/employee all-in (taxes, benefits, etc.). That's probably light, and doesn't take into account rent or data centers or any expenses, and that costs them ~$120M. That leaves $40M for "everything else". Assuming that their employees are indeed "as cheap" on average as guesstimated above. Conclusion: they are surely losing money.

hedora 10y ago

I'm happy their subscriber counts are up, but I've noticed a steep negative trend their library selection in the last month. I poked around a bit for more info. All I could find were complaints that they don't publish this information anymore. Does anyone know how to see if my anectdote is a trend? Perhaps they lost some contracts with major labels, or perhaps there is a way to probe their search API to estimate their library size.

cache-monet 10y ago
I have noticed this as well. I actually cancelled my subscription and will continue using Google's service which has more of the music I listen to available in the US.
k-mcgrady 10y ago
I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure I read that their contracts with all the major labels ran out a few months ago and they're still renegotiating. Maybe labels are removing small amounts of music in the mean time to force the issue?
matt4077 10y ago
Maybe the golden age* of music subscription services is ending, following in the footsteps of these services for video: - A startup negotiates contracts with most/all content providers - said startup becomes a sensation - Google, Apple & Amazon enter the market, signing similar deals - Content providers realize the value of their material and negotiations become more complicated - The services want need differentiation and it can't be price because they all have more or less the same lower bound of licensing costs - The startup's contracts are up for renewal. They don't have the financial background of Apple/Google/Amazon and loose a few contracts - There are now 5-10 services and each one has some exclusive content, overlap in the libraries keeps shrinking - I go back to bit torrent because 10$/mo is already more per year than I paid for music in the first 25 years of my life total. * length: about 3 years or as it's commonly called "A good Netflix"
- UlyssesSKrunk 10y ago

helthanatos 10y ago

Spotify has achieved what no normal entity could. Go them for having a relatively decent free to play with, I'm assuming, a good pay to play model as well.

JTon 10y ago
In Canada, one of the major wireless providers offers Spotify premium accounts bundled in with mid and high tier data lines (i.e. 2 years of Spotify premium "for free"). So I wonder what other providers around the world do this, and how many of the 40mm are part of this group.
- wjoe 10y ago
  Same in the UK, Vodafone include Spotify with some of their plans.
- vasco 10y ago
  Vodafone does this in Portugal.
- farslan 10y ago
  Same in Turkey as well. They have a partnership with Vodafone Turkey
- nicolas_t 10y ago
  I have accounts on both Deezer and Spotify because of bundled accounts on wireless providers. So far I prefer Spotify but only because of the Discover Weekly feature.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Spark - Nee Zealand.
k-mcgrady 10y ago
Free to play won't be around long imo. Since Spotify first launched for me in 2009 the free offering has got progressively worse. The second the labels can drop freemium they will and I don't think we're too far away from that.

santialbo 10y ago

I hope they add lyrics again. They ended their partnership with musixmatch a few months ago and haven't offered an alternative yet.

dorianm 10y ago
They had Spotify apps, the two most popular were lyrics apps. Then they removed the apps and added lyrics inside Spotify, and now there is no more lyrics at all. Obviously that's a very demanded feature so they must have a strong reason not to have it anymore (legal issues probably). I personally used it all the times for improvised karaokes so I'm very upset to not have lyrics on demand anymore.
- davidsawyer 10y ago
  They still have Behind the Lyrics for some songs on the mobile app, which shows a mix of lyrics and info about the song and artist.
  - dorianm 10y ago
    I can't make it appear on my app (iOS) and the help link [1] shows that's it's enabling comments from Genius about the lyrics, so not the actual lyrics synced. [1]: https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/behind-the-lyrics/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/beh...
- aantix 10y ago
  Try the RockIt app for karaoke sessions. About every song imaginable..
buckhx 10y ago
The lyrics were simple and great. I was surprised how much I missed them when they were gone. A Genius partnership would be perfect, but Genius seems to think they're god's gift to Earth so that will probably never happen.
circa 10y ago

sc90 10y ago

How many of these were gained via discount promotions?

te_chris 10y ago

Good on them. Now can their stupid, over-zealous designers stop messing with the product by removing actually useful features such as "Most Played" filtering of your library, etc etc.

reitanqild 10y ago
And can they sooner or later stop recommending vocal trance to me? If there was any machine learning at all going on at that place it should have picked out that peculiarity by now.

bogomipz 10y ago

Does anyone know what percentage 40 million is of their total subscribers? From what I know thats the number they need/want to see growing.

gtirloni 10y ago
They have north of 100mi users in total.
fons 10y ago
Historically it's been around 30%

bearcobra 10y ago

I wonder how many of these 40M users are like me and are searching for other options. I'm using Spotify because of an intro offer, and my Google Play account exists almost solely for the discount on other content. Both have enough annoying design quirks that I've also tried Tidal and Apple Music, but their recommendation engines left me wanting more. Based on my love of Rdio, I'm really hoping Pandora's rumored new streaming service becomes a viable alternative.

emanuelev 10y ago
Not sure if it's just melancholia, but I do think rdio is still totally unbeaten in terms of personalised playlists. It was absolutely amazing! Also, the audio quality seemed far superior compared to Spotify or Apple Music.
circa 10y ago
I could not agree more. I was a big Rdio fan and went to the ways of Apple Music because the family plan is so cheap. Wish they would integrate Last.fm and a web interface though. The 12.5.1 version is a step in the right direction though. Along with iOS 10. Excited to see what Pandora will offer as well.
- solaxun 10y ago
  I know it's easy for me to be an armchair quarterback but I have to say it. Although I am currently and somewhat reluctantly paying for it (for now), Spotify's UI makes me want to strangle someone every time I use it. I can never remember exactly what ridiculous combinatoric puzzle of screens I need to cycle through in order to get where I want to go. It feels like I'm trying to enter a fucking launch code for a nuclear submarine just to play a damn song. God forbid I'm running and hit the wrong screen, then I have to stop, fiddle for 3 minutes, and start again. Also the stations are incredibly shallow. If you pick a station on Pandora, you will have hundreds of songs that are generally well selected in my experience. If you pick one on Spotify, you get maybe 20-30 songs. The one major benefit to Spotify is that you can pick any song you want. However, if you pick a genre, you're likely to be inundated with shitty cover bands that you have to painfully sift through in order to find the actual playlist your looking for, because '70's hits' could be anything from Led Zepplin to your next door neighbours cover band. TLDR - incredibly over complicated UI, shallow stations, too much spam music.

ArtDev 10y ago

I pay for Spotify but it sucks because: 1) I can't play it on multiple devices at the same time like every other service I subscribe to (Netflix, Hbo, Hulu). If I ever upgrade to a"family" account, I have to make new accounts for each person (including my kids). 2) The UI sucks. I can never find the queue list, so I never know what is playing next. Adding items to a playlist is should be easier. 3) The web app is really broken. You have to install the Spotify software to use the service. 4) Offline playlists randomly decide they have not been downloaded yet. 5) Nothing by the Beatles. Like every other music service, the only way is to rip your old CDs or torrent them. One feature I do like, listening to local music files on the Spotify software. Like, for example, the Beatles. I really wish Grooveshark was still around! [edit] Now that I read that Spotify (and similar companies) are actually losing money I realize that I shouldn't be so hard on them.

vel0city 10y ago
The Beatles are available on Spotify, have been for several months. https://open.spotify.com/special/thebeatles https://open.spotify.com/special/thebeatles It make a lot of headlines when it happened. http://www.recode.net/2015/12/22/11621674/the-beatles-are-coming-to-apple-music-spotify-and-everywhere-else-on http://www.recode.net/2015/12/22/11621674/the-beatles-are-co...

Coincoin 10y ago

They still haven't redownloaded their UMG library to fix the horrendous watermark issue. Everything from UMG before 2013 is very low quality due to a bug with their watermarking technology at the time. This includes all the best classical music labels.

bogomipz 10y ago

Between March(they announced 30 million) and now - roughly 6 months later they added 10 million new paid subscribers? How is that even possible? That would average out to 1.6 million new subscribers a month. Reference: http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-30-million-subscribers-apple-music-11-million-subscribers http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-3...