The Story of Spotify

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A note about the exclusive podcast content, we filmed it but unfortunately there was a major audio issue so we couldn't upload it. I've been away for 3 weeks (bet you didn't notice) so it wasn't feasible to re-record it.
Spotify is a massive titan in the music industry, but how did they get so large and how did the company start?
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-- "New Thinking" written by Dagogo Altraide --
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//Soundtrack//
Jacob A & Neevald - Everything is Alright (Going Deeper Remix)
Aleksandir - Between Summers
Aviino & Aso - A Deeper Understanding
Boy Willows - Quick Stop By
A Zed And Two L's - Fila Brazillia
Leon Vynehall Midnight on Rainbow Road - Boiler Room Debuts
Fhin Ft. Chløë Black - Irréversible (Private Agenda Remix)
Sean Williams - Fray
Burn Water - Power
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» Collection of music used in videos: • ColdFusion's 2 Hour Me...
Producer: Dagogo Altraide

[@wintermint77]

3:17 He’s right. I know numerous people who stopped pirating music because of Spotify. Taking down Pirate Bay and various other torrenting sites didn’t do anything except inconvenience people, but offering an affordable and convenient option did.

[@someshittomakeyouhappy]

Classic example of how capitalism is supposed to work give people a better more efficient and convenient product and you will often succeed

[@wintermint77]

@@someshittomakeyouhappy I agree. It’s also a perfect example of capitalism’s tendency toward monopolization. Other players exist in the market, but Spotify has a significant majority market share (thus an effective monopoly). Plus, the other players are all also large companies (Apple, Google, Tencent, Amazon) because smaller companies can’t compete.

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

It being a freemium experience killed pirating. And its so basic and obvious anyone can and could do it. It's literally taking the basic idea of file sharing (napster) and mixing it will freemium ad revenue business model. It's genius yet as simple as bread. They are screwed when the record companies compete. Spotify don't own or create any music. The music labels are just too lazy and prefer to have a third party distributor all in one place than split and argue over the pie.

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

@@someshittomakeyouhappy classic example of how capitalism is a basic idea anyone could have done, agreements with those that hold power and wealth to screw producers out of more money to offer an easier more convenient but predatory product to the consumer than before Yeah? Yeah, sounds about right.

[@wintermint77]

@@lifeunderthestarstv I hope that they continue to be lazy then lol. If they decide to rock the boat, then we’ll have the same problem that we have right now with a million different video streaming services.

[@bad_money]

Another genius Spotify move is the whole “personalization of users”. The yearly wrapped they do. I think that’s one of the things that gives them so much more leverage over Apple Music.

[@winchester289]

No one comes close to even competing with Spotify atm

[@unnamed3893]

Spotify is miles ahead from everyone else

[@khaledfareed5081]

@@unnamed3893 can't argue with that

[@valoranttv1856]

I don't think Spotify are going anywhere for the foreseeable future

[@wesleyem3]

It's the only reason I got Spotify. I could use KZbin music with my YT Premium but it's just too cool not to have.

[@Marloez82]

I went straight from downloading illegal music to Spotify because it was just so much easier. It’s a brilliant tool to discover new music that’s catered to what you already like. I’ve been a happy user for over 10 years and never looked back at my SoulSeek days 😁

[@Waldo-Manfred]

SoulSeek never looked back at you either

[@Marloez82]

@@Waldo-Manfred okay tommy 😑

[@dwerg1]

Same, I pirated a lot of music until Spotify came along. I got invited to the beta fairly early and I still use that account to this day, I still remember before they had real ads, just some guy reading some message after a few songs to illustrate where ads would be placed.

[@themodfather9382]

Is this a joke? Spotify rips off artists like crazy and the interface sucks balls. You're all plebs.

[@alb5560]

Soulseek days 😅 I remember that. It used to be so painful

[@nnjjee1]

Spotify did not come up with the idea for online music on-demand or even streaming. Not sure who did but RealNetworks and Zune preceded them with subscriptions and millions of songs and synced to devices. Spotify just nailed the experience and executed well.

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

This. They are basically the next Netflix. They don't have competitors. As soon as the big 4 record labels decide to actually compete digitally Spotify is dead. They don't create or own any music. Netflix atleast had product. Spotify is just a distributor.

[@philip7922]

@@lifeunderthestarstv netflix was the same until they started producing their own content. That said I doubt spotify could start producing their own content in comparison to the amount of artists out there and will end up just like netflix. Chopped up into pieces with no more good content and subscribers fleeing.

[@rkgsd]

Spotify learned from Pandora.

[@chotra]

@@lifeunderthestarstv if i had to pay 3 different subscriptions to play 3 different artists i would go straight back to pirating. its not the same as netflix because of how engrained streaming music has become in our lives (or mine anyway, i listen to music anywhere from 4 to 12 hours a day)

[@imranahmad2733]

Mass adoption of mobile and home broadband also made the services popular, the older services would have probably been as popular if the broadband technology and access was there.

[@musicbysazid]

It's not about who came first, it's eventually about who did great first. Spotify proved that well.

[@SynthD]

Slacker was miles ahead of Spotify. But heard mentality trumps all.

[@oneyebat7839]

Right! It's not about who's on first, but what's on second and I don't know on third.

[@luisgentil]

I signed up for Spotify Premium years ago when I was once at a barbecue where people were listening to KZbin playlists and putting up with constant ads. I paid for a month just so I wouldn't be bothered with ads. Since I had a whole month ahead of me, I created a playlist with 10 or so songs to listen in the car, and the algorithm took care of the rest, making me daily lists of songs it figured I would like. Now maybe 95% of my favorite songs were suggested by Spotify's algorithm. My old SD card with a playlist painstakingly put together out of Google searches, music forums and torrent downloaded discographies was completely forgotten.

[@keithalwajieh9839]

This was exactly my experience! I never have to subscribe to 100 music promotion channels anymore. I do miss them but it’s been such a time saver

[@ankurakashady]

The sheer pain of storing the tracks on Western Digital Passport HDD & then loosing those tracks and years of collection due to data corruption ..Spotify is a bliss for me

[@waterkei]

Spotify has some many great features. The 'number' radio is amazing. Whenever I like a song, I just put on the number radio on that song and helps me discover so many other great tracks.

[@N0N0111]

I remember my internet provider would freely include spotify access. After couple years they stop it, you know they got you addicted to the new thing and they knew you would happily pay $10 a month for it now. They had a smart marketing strategy over and over, that was the key to becoming so big.

[@orion10x10]

I still remember being in the early access U.S Spotify in 2011, what a time lol I also remember one of my friends buying all his music from iTunes, I thought he was nuts 😂

[@ericjanuar2563]

Wow, now that you mentioned it, I looked up my email history and saw that I requested the early access invite on July 15, 2011 and got my invite on July 17, 2011.. and yes, it always boggled my mind how some people willing to spend so much on iTunes..

[@orion10x10]

@@ericjanuar2563 Those were the days, I was literally 13 lmao but it's wild how much different things are now

[@orkhepaj]

just a typical apple user

[@SmallLittleMicky]

One thing KZbin Music can't be faulted for is the sheer choice available. I used to have a Spotify premium account but I couldn't find lots of artists and tracks that I like but I was able to find them, and a whole lot more, on KZbin Music. Thus I dropped Spotify and opened a KZbin premium with KZbin Music account - the added bonus of which is no ads in KZbin videos. A win-win for me.

[@mddsddsdshs6397]

soundcloud would probably be the best for discovering artists that are more niche, ive gotta use distribution services to get my stuff on spotify, apple music and youtube music and thatll take some time but if i wanted to i could stop writing this comment, post a track to soundcloud and come back and hit reply in seconds. soundcloud also got commenting which i cant understand why spotify doesnt have that.

[@SpacedogD]

I think stolen indie music being put on spotify is a very common thing that is not really addressed by spotify. A few musicians I've followed all mentioned encountering vert similar things, music they put on youtube gets stolen and put up on spotify.

[@Stolidpig]

It's a sad effect of any media that has a low barrier. Anywhere you can share content people will share others for convenience and personal gain. There is not currently an accepted approach to verifying content creators, an interesting problem they surely could solve if they had the willpower.

[@pem]

it's more of an issue with how easy it is to upload to spotify with distributors. you can pay $20 for distrokid and put unlimited music up, and it's approved most of the time.

[@wilesaquatics]

Maybe they should upload to spotify instead

[@Koenigjay]

Wrapped is by far one of the best marketing campaigns of all time, and most competitors have not caught up, they're not even close.

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

Yes and no. It's now facing the same issues we saw with MySpace and people making a huge deal about THEIR music to others. Human psychology doesn't work that way. Last year it got mocked a lot. It's a personal thing for sure.

[@Theshabadaman]

@@lifeunderthestarstv Spotify gets an insane amount of publicity from all the memes, that's exactly what they want

[@RazielXT]

Sometimes Im guarding what Im playing specifically so that it wont "taint" my wrapped 😀

[@TheSpiritOfTheWest]

yaayayayayaaayayayayayayayayya

[@quas3728]

Last FM did it way before spotify. Also Last FM can include the music that are not on streaming like pokemon ost and 90s underground hip hop.

[@STAG162]

nice to see a story about a turnaround to success instead of failure. while the fails are intriguing and just as digestable, the successes are a bit more inspiring to watch.

[@maxman3318]

Here after finishing The Playlist on Netflix. Great mini-series, entertaining

[@tryandy3295]

since i started subscribing to spotify years ago, i dont think i will ever leave the platform. it feels incomplete without spotify, like it is part of me now.

[@brianm3160]

Same

[@fcallum77]

I'm from the UK. I remember being stood in the living room in 2010 and my dad was listening to something on Spotify, using the web browser built into a PS3. Even using that clunky browser, it was awesome to see how smoothly it all ran. Each song he wanted seemed to be there too. Spotify were the first to do it right!

[@tigana]

What I love about Spotify most is its recommendation algorithm. I found my favourite band because of it and I'm genuinely happy to pay them for their work.

[@lfc-europe]

Not particularly related to the content but I leave random songs on repeat overnight with the volume down to help struggling bands. You may not have heard of U2, but I've made them a few quid.

[@orion10x10]

Brooo 🤣😂💀

[@volvo09]

Wtf? And U2 struggling? Pretty sure I have a 33 record from them. They have not been wise with money.

[@wokeclub1844]

You're a an absolute madlad.

[@huntrrams]

I remembered the first time Spotify came to the US market, I knew this was going to be a revolutionary product. During that time, sites like KZbin,SoundCloud , Napster, Grooveshark, Turntable FM, Pandora, Jelli ,Songza and ITunes were my only options for listening to music in the early 2010s. When Spotify came I love listening to any song without a sample bit, personalization and able to create playlists. Love it or hate it. Spotify is a game changer.

[@andip9053]

Omg I remember grooveshark!

[@FermentedGrumpyGrapeSqueezit]

Spotify was a app on fb before it became standalone you didn't know it was gonna be what it is stop it you narcissist

[@SynthD]

Slacker was better. It’s a shame so many people didn’t know about it.

[@huntrrams]

@@SynthD Omg yess slacker was great!

[@MrLombardi]

It's funny how still the same ordinary songs get pushed to the top of the chart because of large payouts. Funny how that works. Spotify in simple terms is pushing money from Record Labels pockets into theirs while paying out less to the artists. Genius idea

[@vylbird8014]

It's always been that way. Even back in the days of radio. The practice was called 'payola' - labels paying radio stations to play their music, because radio airtime drives record (or cassette, or CD) sales.

[@missnellaful]

…yes! We still have to pay for: INTERNET, ELECTRICITY, WI-FI, PHONES, TELEVISION, RELATED SERVICES, HIDDEN FEES, CONTRACTS, WIRE REPAIR PLANS, and other related or unrelated services in our out of order to get the music product. In a utopian world it would be up to THE GREAT MUSICIANS TO STOP AND FIGURE OUT A SERVICE THAT COVERS A PACKAGE FOR THEIR ENTIRE PROJECT!!! Some may be guilty of too many crimes?!?!?!?

[@AuthoressPluto]

My only issue with Spotify is that not enough of the compensation gets to the actual artists. The music industry has always been predatory.

[@BobbyGeneric145]

Exactly. The labels received shares in spotify to allow their music to be used.

[@denisegore1884]

I've never willingly listened to the radio since becoming hooked on Spotify.

[@NoodlesXD]

I found this whole video really interesting...im a live sound engineer, I know the pay out can be bad for artists so I will go out of my way to make a playlist full of popular bands AND local bands so they get a play....I also keep my playlists running (but muted) when the live bands are playing so that adds to more plays. Yea some times, it might only be 2 songs get played a night from one local band....but its a playlist snd its my job so sometimes I will do 4 metal nights a week, thats where ill play local metal bands....ill do some jazz bands, again, I play local jazz stuff etc etc. A lot of times when im playing a local band a gig-goer will come up to me and ask "whos this playing" and ill mention the local band....added plays I hope, unless they are really drunk and forget haha.

[@pem]

i don't think muted plays count, just fyi

[@missnellaful]

Thank you for your insight. When Neil Diamond said, years ago that songs were, “…like new babies, once they were born, they were no longer yours.” Not a direct quote. I am still learning about how the new artists’ EXPECTATIONS, differ from the forefathers and mothers of the historic period in my lifetime. Grateful for the COLDFUSION AGE. I still cherish my CD’s and RECORDS and have never downloaded any music… don’t like the sound. I have purchased multiple copies of my favorites! 🦖

[@earthling_parth]

I used to like Spotify's recommendation system but then I tried YT music and I was blown away. I'm not sure if it has improved right now or not, but it wasn't even a competition when I started YT music. Also, for the same price of Spotify, a YT premium subscription gets you YT and YT music ad-free which is a much better deal in my opinion. I can't go back to Spotify after tasting YT music even if YT music lacks basic features like a sleep timer.

[@guacfiend]

YT is great, but if you want sound quality you would go with spotify, apple music, or even tidal. YT music is always compressed down to 320kbps; so is spotify, but spotify does sound a tad bit better ime.

[@budgetking2591]

but spotify is free, also without the adds, adds are easy to remove.

[@leftofyaba]

the recommendation system on YT music is really really good and definitely better than Spotify’s. The fact that YT music accurately recommends songs that are more likely to appeal to me compensates for its lower sound quality.

[@SoWhat1221]

Yeah, I miss KZbin Music, but I made the decision to drop KZbin Premium when they killed dislikes, and I'm sticking with it.

[@earthling_parth]

@@budgetking2591 YT music also has a free tier with ads though - same as Spotify 😅

[@YearsOfLeadPoisoning]

Bandcamp will always be the far better platform for artists. It's direct support, pays on average an order of magnitude more, and I have full control over my releases. Spotify is a blight.

[@fennecfoxfanatic]

didn't bandcamp get bought out by epic recently? i wonder how this will affect it

[@forcetheedges]

Bandcamp is great, but I think the main drawback is that you can't create playlists or just shuffle an assortment of songs. And if you only have an artist profile, you can't follow other artists, you have to create a separate fan profile for that.

[@SBImNotWritingMyNameHere]

If Bandcamp was anywhere as convenient, I'd definitely use it But the huge difference means me and vast majority of people will stick with spotify (Not a cost issue, but a quality of life/ convience issue)

[@YearsOfLeadPoisoning]

@@forcetheedges My main music player is an iPod classic, so it's the most convenient for me. Buy the digital album, own it forever. No internet required, no subscriptions, no chance it's pulled for some reason.

[@quas3728]

@@YearsOfLeadPoisoning Also local music player is way better than streaming platform. We still can't use genre tag and year tag on spotify. That's a basic feature of all local music player.

[@HShango]

I used to pirate music in my teens (I'm 28M), but when Spotify came and conquered, I settled with Spotify permanently, became one of their consumers.

[@galateahq6240]

For controversies I am surprised you didn't talk about recording companies paying Spotify to get their artists on playlists to manipulate audiences and music charts.

[@supastar25]

Exactly...that's a massive problem

[@KanishkaWijesuriya]

Where I live, torrenting is pretty much the thing. Late 2000's we used Limewire to get music and then used modded spotify apps. Until recently even I used a modded Spotify app file. But then realized how affordable Spotify is for everything you get. Music is something we listen to almost everyday and paying a monthly fee that barely scratches my wallet is something I'd pay for. It's like how pirating Adobe and Office software makes it a free choice for many of us that eventually it forces corporates, companies and large scale businesses to use it as well. Pirating is free advertising for major software. Similar to it, what spotify does is pretty much bringing free advertising for musicians and singers to build their platform and boost ticket sales, etc. Record labels and artists should stop expecting major income from online sources but choose it as a method of advertising and brand promotion. Price of entertainment is dependent on it's viewers and listeners. If you increase the price to a point where people will just not subscribe anymore, you make nothing. So it's pretty clear that Spotify succeeded because it gave listeners what they actually wanted. Entertainment is what it is at the end of the day. The value of it is based on what the people are willing to pay for it while making sure artists get a fair pay based on what it deserves. It's a whole different world now.

[@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley]

I appreciate Spotify for allowing me to listen to more niche songs without needing to go through KZbin (which would then also affect my recommendations and I prefer to keep the algorithms from each platform separate), Bandcamp or other platforms. I don't listen to the usual popular songs, most stuff being obscure instrumentals or instrumental covers...or just songs in other languages (namely Japanese, lol. Though I'm getting a lot of Chinese and Korean recommendations now. And I had a great Vietnamese song on my favorites but it was removed 😢). I wouldn't have found these if I didn't have a platform where it learned my interests and recommended new things based on that.

[@CutiePi]

I'm a software engineer so I had automated my piracy to be very efficient, but indeed Spotify is too good to ignore. Good price, great value. Wished the streaming services would understand the problem with them splitting in a bunch of stand alone services will just bring back piracy.

[@kevinj9270]

What do you expect a monopoly? There's not enough money to go around from a simple $20/mo subscription.

[@SweBeach2023]

The success of Spotify really comes downs to the simple fact it was developed and released in Sweden. As one of the leading music-producing nations and one of the leading IT nations while still being small enough with a population of only 10 million it proved the perfect testing-ground. The infrastructure were all in place for a rapid rollout, while the market were small enough that any unforeseen consequences could be mitigated.

[@cl8804]

lol

[@aliancemd]

Initially sounded ridiculous but you are kind of right but not for the reasons you mention. If they tried to do this in US, they would of been sued by Sony and the others, they would of not had enough time to grow - big US companies usually try to kill the competition early.

[@Clarity-808]

you sound so confident! but that's not how it works. the company relied on labels giving them rights, and they didn't give them european rights in the beginning because they were in Sweden.

[@nnadozieebere8726]

Coldfusion is the finest tech documentary channel out there 🔥

[@betterchapter]

Running spotify is like having a personnal DJ that knows my taste and will prepare my mixtapes.

[@MrWaheedulHaque]

Oh man i miss limewire. It wasn't the illegal music for me, it was the amazing remixes people made of songs that made it amazing

[@s7even760]

Who all are watching from Karunya University

[@David-yi1hf]

🖐️🖐️🖐️hi steve

[@David-yi1hf]

How's your gf

[@nidhinpaul5741]

lol.

[@s7even760]

Who all are from FDR Hostel

[@s7even760]

@@David-yi1hf how's your boyfriend

[@RT710.]

If anyone is gonna get rich I’d much rather it be the musicians and artists that make our lives beautiful and colorful. Sure, the distributors and platforms deserve to be highly compensated too- but not at the price of all but ‘owning’ the artists and their work. Power to the people and the workers

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

Spotify is the worst thing to happen to the music industry since file sharing. And all these music "fans" that have never played music or even own an instrument just want their ear drug fix. They don't care about the industry, community or future of the quality of the product or the lives of the producers. Just that they get their fix.

[@CountOulaf]

@@lifeunderthestarstv who ever the fuck cared about that anyway. You generally buy a product because you like it, not to support the creator

[@odst2247]

@@lifeunderthestarstv it’s amazing for the consumer, and that’s what mattereds

[@odst2247]

@@lifeunderthestarstv and I mean, yeah people just wanna listen to the music they like…that’s normal! Ain’t no one worried about other shit like “how’s the producer doing” 😂

[@MichaelWashingtonAE]

Playing a musicians/artist/'s music on Spotify does not get us any power and barely any $$ It's a complete joke... Talk to musicians and composers about what we make on spotify. I took my stuff off, I make more selling downloads and even physical CDs and vinyl in person (not including online sales) vs what I made have more listeners on sporify... It's a joke. Good for some marketing purpose "being seen" or "exposure", a joke we musicians have... But to even make a part of a living or be able to reinvest in recording the next album? No.

[@themangix357]

You should cover Rimac next. It was also a small car company that suddenly blew up to the point it got Bugatti.

[@tdrm]

Rimac is a success story and yes they work with Bugatti, however Bugatti is still under the control of Volkswagen. Yes on the surface the new Bugatti Rimac joint company is 55% owned by Rimac and 45% by Porsche. However Porsche also owns 22% of Rimac, so at the end of the day Porsche owns 57.1% of Bugatti. Porsche is 100% owned by Volkswagen.

[@Filthy_Casual101]

“A product better than piracy” is the reason Spotify was the first subscription service I ever bought (and remains my only active one) back in 2015. No more searching for 256 kbps .mp3 files and navigating obscure websites/album torrents that likely took up multiple hours every month. I gladly paid $10 for literally everything I could possibly listen to and legally.

[@venzislavsimeonov4545]

Spotify is starting to look more like Netflix financially tbh

[@vanesslifeygo]

"Has our boy turned to a life of crime?" "Soon, Daniel could charge $5000 per website." Yeah, I'd say that is a crime. $5000 for a website. Holy....

[@althalusian]

Back in the day some companies charged extra $30,000 for 'password protection' i.e. adding a simple .htaccess file to a website

[@tdrm]

You think $5000 is a lot? You can only get Wordpress type stuff for that price nowadays. Actual good custom sites are $100,000 minimum.

[@mottosson]

The problem with artists getting paid so little is largely caused by the record labels taking a very large cut of the income from Spotify. I feel that Spotify is getting all of the blame when the problem is a bit more nuanced.

[@lifescansdarkly]

Spotify pays artists $0.00437 per stream. I don't think it's nuanced.

[@kevinj9270]

Definitely not nuanced. They pay so little but that's just what happens with a subscription, there's not enough money from streaming to pay fairly.

[@N....]

11:27 that's really disappointing. I remember hearing that Google Play Music paid the most to artists compared to other services, and I was really frustrated and disappointed when they shut it down and forced everyone to migrate to KZbin Music. I assumed artists were still getting relatively the same payout, but hearing this saddens me...

[@drachna]

It might be because it's one of the cheapest music streaming services going. KZbin Premium with KZbin Music costs me something like 7 euro a month, opposed to a tenner just for Spotify. I'd imagine that a majority of my subscription goes to KZbin rather than YT music.

[@leonardo-on4ht]

same. I even though that perhaps yt music would pay the same as spotify, but the reality is truly disappointing.

[@mddsddsdshs6397]

probably so many more people uploading to youtube music than google play music tho, more competitive

[@N....]

@@mddsddsdshs6397 Isn't it based on what people actually listen to though? And in my experience Google Play Music had way more content that just isn't available anymore on KZbin Music.

[@JanetheCurious]

Hi Dagogo! I am a fan of the music you create but I think you haven't released the song you have on your end credits, The Memory Module. It is brilliant. Good stuff!

[@ColdFusion]

Thanks mate. I did release it, I just changed the name to "Power"

[@JanetheCurious]

@@ColdFusion Awesome! Keep making music Dagogo! 😊

[@shackelletelfer2134]

I'm having trouble finding it myself

[@Dhananjayyelwande]

Cant seem to find it

[@lacroquetarecords]

Would love to know the bad things. The recent talk between Rick Beato and Ted Gioia shows that spotify is not as good because its not passion about music but passion about users. It wants sucriberse not musicians or listeners. Where as record stores have value in every step of the way.

[@luap4981]

MagnatesMedia already did a great episode on this months ago. Still very interesting stuff for someone who grew up downloading music and still prefer to have whole music albums on my devices rather than streaming random tracks

[@random-sc6ts]

Yess

[@jesusamenbro]

The main reason I stuck with Spotify was they didn't ban accounts that were using Spotify apk version. I used to use their premium service for free for 3 years without ads and-demanded song play on android. However one day they cracked down on it. Yet they still allow users to keep their account and buy premium. I've accumulated a large playlist of songs and artists. Since then I've bought premium and been using it for 6 years now.

[@helmutthat8331]

I think that Apple's role in this story was unfairly minimized. The first legal online music store to compete successfully with piracy, forcing the record labels to recognize that online will replace CDs and play ball, the idea of playing music on your mobile device with ear pods, the idea of just listening to a single track instead of the whole album, etc. All were pioneered by Apple with their iTunes software and iPod hardware.

[@Axel-is2sp]

As much as I hate apple I have to agree with you. Itunes was the place to go to download music for the longest time. The only other real option being songs people uploaded to youtube illegally. It was only really around 2010-13 that Itunes started to lose that grip. Big fan of spotify though out of all my monthly subscriptions it's the one I feel I get the most value out of because I use it everyday and it happens to also be the cheapest.

[@jacobhuff3748]

I still prefer iTunes in terms of buying music. Spotify and KZbin music if you’re looking for something new but I like to have at least a digital copy of the music that can be ported from device to device on short notice. Guess I’m just old.

[@Axel-is2sp]

@@jacobhuff3748 yeah that's fair. Personally I just listen to that many different genres, bands etc that it's honestly way more economical to pay for the service rather then each song/album individually. Plus spotify's reccomendations system is great. I've found some of my favourite bands through it.

[@jburke.mp4]

Agreed they made the iPod a product better than piracy

[@Axel-is2sp]

@@jburke.mp4 Yeah I feel like most people are willing to pay for something if it's easily accessible and fairly priced which back in the day it was. Apple these days not so much though. Most iphones start at the $1000 dollar mark which is just ridiculous.

[@monstar5746]

You should watch "The Dark Side Of Spotify" by Barely Sociable, it includes many things that aren't mentioned in this video.

[@ePICS8]

I gave up paying Spotify Premium 2 years ago when I realized I was paying for music while using YT mostly and getting those Annoying Ads. Now I just pay YT Premium, no ads, i can lock my phone while listening to a video plus I have YT Music which is a Spotify in and out itself

[@TDrudley]

I have both. Sure, I guess KZbin might be better if you know what you wan to listen to, but for new music just given to you on a platter, Spotify is king.

[@netlob]

Another thing Spotify does best is the whole third parties apps section. It's things like Spotistats and Discz that make the Spotify experience even better.

[@howyoudurrinhunneh]

Nothing Spotify can offer is better than ad free KZbin.

[@kvxtr]

Many of the songs i listen on youtube are not even on spotify i cant jump from platform to platform for music Rn i only listen to songs on youtube the songs which are on spotify are also on youtube but songs which are on youtube are not there on spotify The bug that spotify is you only get to listen what they show most of the time its like that many old songs are not even there on spotify only these new Garbage like songs which is terrible btw are there

[@TDrudley]

I thought you had to pay for KZbin for listening on mobile in the pocket. Unless you use some less than legal thing.

[@xtramoist9999]

Yeah, I've been with Spotify premium since I found out about them in Australia 2013-14. Pirated music was easy to find from trusted sources back in the day, but a friend of mine was telling me about Spotify's algos and discovery of new music etc, and it was cheap. Spotify shit all over anything else at the time, including apple music. Pirating music was convenient over everything else of it's time, the path of least resistance. Then Spotify one-up'd it - while pirating music was free monetarily (assuming no energy costs), it would still take you days or weeks to build up a catalogue of music (depending on internet speeds and seeders) of artists you already knew of and put them on a device with enough capacity to play back what you'd like. Resistances... Spotify did away with all that. Searching for artists was easy, instant playback with decent quality, a solution to finding new artists far beyond record labels' capabilities, little data storage needed and luckily for us in Aus, back then, some carriers were offering deals with streaming services that didn't count toward your monthly data cap - which would be a win, win, win, win. (me, carrier, Spotify and the artist. rofl)

[@DJTrancenergy]

Interesting, I did exactly what you said. Only that I've been collecting my music since 2003, I was not even 12 since I started to become a music junkie, call the radios to ask for the music they play (how would I have LOVED a Shazam app back in the day, I knew someday sometime smth like it would become big) and now I have an ever growing pile of music that I happily listen to everyday, without paying a single cent. I mostly separate it by genres or styles that I think for myself. To discover new music, back then, I used the type the genre of whatever I wanted to listen to in Ares (similar to Kazaa) and downloaded random songs from the list. Truth be told, I kept most of them and I listen to them till today. I also can't stand much of the current music nowadays, there's hardly a few songs that I like, which I can easily identify with Shazam and download them from a some good websites. I don't think I'll ever feel the need to use Spotify. I'd feel a bit of an idiot paying for something that I've been for free almost 20 years. As well as the fact that I hear some songs are not listed there. One of them being a true favorite of mine.

[@rkgsd]

Well Spotify seems to have finally figured out a lot of its subscribers don't want to pay $10 a month but they want more options than they get on the free tier. Pandora figured out the same thing long before them hence the $5 mid tier with ads.

[@OverclockMedia]

Personalization of playlists like Spotify Wrap, Discover Weekly, automatic playlist mashups with friends, personalized playlists and more. This is what will heavily keep me on Spotify.

[@louwjhl7227]

I miss the days of listening to a cd from start to finish, getting to know the album sound and appreciate all the tracks, not just the radio hits. I find it really hard when streaming, just so easy to listen to something else

[@supastar25]

Exactly...and also most albums are arranged on purpose sometimes to tell a story from track to track and all the skits in-between etc...just hard to get that from streaming

[@tnaxpw]

Tried using Spotify back in 2014, to this day I can't register an account on my email, and support isn't helpful with it. I both buy and torrent albums, and than restream them to my phones via rpi+docker.

[@drunkenn1nja]

Lol I love how we all had the same path of pirating music and then going to Spotify, been using it since it first came out, idk but there’s something so seamless and user friendly with the app that I don’t mind paying for it, (plus I had gotten in trouble with my internet provider for pirating music so)

[@dr-k1667]

Hope this video gets you even more success with your previous and newly released albums. You do great work. Thanks for making tech history fun.

[@AgentSmith911]

It's a shame that 80% of the money goes to the middleman (distributors like Spotify, record companies like Sony etc. ) and only 20% to the artist. I understand that they need to pay for expenses too, but a lot of it is just greed for more.

[@VladPayne]

Spotify for me was just a winner because of two things - damn easy to register, I just entered my mobile phone and carrier charges me monthly fee. No fiddling with setting up payments and stuff like that. And the second part is remasters, that sound VERY good despite it being 320 kbit 44kHz max. The only downside is spotify removing music they don't like or an artist can remove it or even rename it and it vanishes from your playlist (grays out)

[@Kaotonix]

what a well done video - thank u very much man! I can definitely say it's difficult to to make a living off Spotify, even when you try to do everything right. Last year I released 52 songs, a song a week for 52 weeks and I was incredibly consistent, with (imo) great quality but it didn't really scratch the surface. Marketing is super important. I learned a lot however!

[@DanielleAlek]

This might be a weird reply, but I think your music's pretty good, here's some completely unsolicited marketing advice. Feel free to ignore. As someone on both sides of the industry, music works MUCH different from a lot of other social media promotion. As a consumer, I find when someone releases frequent singles, I just wait for the actual album to drop and listen to them all then. And as someone in the industry, I know that things like Spotify actually prefer album releases to singles and EPs, and are more likely to feed a song into the algorithm if it comes from an album. The atmosphere of "Nobody listens to albums anymore" has given a general mood of "So therefore albums aren't important", but honestly neither statements are actually true. My advice would be to take the effort you're putting into frequent song releases and put that effort into a cohesive album. Then, weekly releases on platforms like KZbin and TikTok to market it. Things like music videos, lyric videos, even visualizers can go a long way, but they have to be distinctive enough to make someone want to click on it. Something that gets the feeling of the song across visually and entices the audience in, y'know? When I looked at your KZbin channel, I found myself not really knowing what to click on because all the thumbnails were similar and didn't really convey a "mood" to me. I just picked something at random, but it's equally likely that someone else might end up just clicking away entirely when they see that. Hope you have a great day! Sorry if this was weird lol

[@Kaotonix]

@@DanielleAlek hey! Thanks so much for putting the time into such a thoughtful and informative response - I didn’t think this was weird at all! I appreciate your insights, and will take to heart what you said. It’s helpful to know u think my songs are pretty good, and the feedback about the mood and what you experienced when going to my channel was much appreciated and helpful. I definitely made the thumbnails similar for the experiment itself, but will be doing what you suggested when I market my album (almost finished!) I’ll also be experimenting with a bi - weekly release cadence as well. Thank u again!

[@Kaotonix]

@@DanielleAlek can I ask what part of the industry you work in?

[@DanielleAlek]

@@Kaotonix I'm a freelancer who just does general media production, so my own work takes a huge backseat. Usually when I get paid for music, it's soundtracks, but I do some more traditional production stuff sometimes, too. I find myself doing promotional material like music videos, album art, ect. more often than I find myself doing actual music production these days lol

[@SatisfyingWhirlpools]

Spotify is probably my most used app on my phone

[@FrankyFF_GamingZone]

Hey dagago awesome content man your voice and communication skills are great man keep it up bro

[@subhradipsaha9518]

Imagine, Martin shouting Stupefy but Daniel heard it Spotify

[@GTarget-95]

How Vince McMahon killed WWE

[@ganesang5537]

Dagogo, invest in microphone pop filters and a spell checker, and this doc will be impeccable.

[@soutakanaka463]

Soundcloud is FAR superior and MUCH better for Indie Artists. But also big artists such as DOJA CAT were discovered on Soundcloud.

[@eastfrisianguy]

I love your documentaries! Thank you for your great work! In 2012 I got my first smartphone and Spotify became available in Germany. Until then I was still running around with MP3 players and the songs on them ... well, at best they were copied from CD or at worse from KZbin with absolutely poor quality. I tried Spotify and was thrilled and as a student I only paid half! The app was very slow at the beginning and crashed more often, but that changed pretty darn quickly. I tried four, five different streaming services last year because Spotify wanted to raise prices here ... either the battery management was terrible or the apps miserably programmed or I did not find what I was looking for - I came back to Spotify again remorsefully and will probably not leave anytime soon.

[@AmirZaimMohdZaini]

I had been enjoying Spotify for years until I decided to move to Apple Music because of couple of thing: 1. Lossless quality audio on most albums or songs compared to Spotify which they did hyping but went dust. 2. Sometimes, I'm enjoyed my own local homegrown songs which mainly non-English. However, the enjoyment hampered with some of these tracks were grayed out, thinking that these local homegrown songs getting geo-blocked but actually it was something else which is the label really restrict the streaming access unless you already bought the album but no one bought any album on Spotify yet, only Apple Music does via iTunes instead. 3. I don't need to worry about some of albums or tracks being disappeared or ended up unplayable at all when I bought the album in the first place. Buying an album on iTunes was kind of backup plan if the song/album getting removed from streaming service in the future. But for Spotify, the only thing you can do is stream recording these tracks, like the way on how you are recording music onto cassette tapes. Download from other source is the second thing.

[@budgetking2591]

cool story

[@hongsStuff]

They didn't give up, but done it the hard way by "making it good enough for people to give up free music", which is bold and insane!

[@mdturnerinoz]

dagogo: you missed a key player for downloading music in 2000 or so: Liquid Audio. They had downloads with downloading legal per your credit card etc. Jobs/Apple bought their IP assets for iTunes/iPopd after LA shut down. Two of my sons worked there is how I know all of this.

[@JisMortal]

“You can never legislate away piracy… The only way to solve the problem is to create a service that’s batter than piracy.” That’s why a lot of people are leaving video streaming sites like, *cough cough* Netflix, and going to the Bay for booty. It’s just not better anymore. With their recent anti consumer practices, drop in content quality, drop in “exclusive” content, and many more competitors in the video streaming space, alot of people see it better to save the (up to) $240 USD annually and go back to piracy. The slight convenience of having an App with some stuff you may want to watch on your Tv, Phone, and PC just isn’t worth it.

[@dashofawesome64]

History has showen it always starts amazing but slowly crumbling away in trying to get as much money out of it as possible. And so they loose to ball to really make the world better and probably more money on the long run. But he it all has to go fast.

[@JisMortal]

@@dashofawesome64 there are many pros and cons of going public

[@kimkimpa5150]

Plus, paying for movies and series means you financially support the ped0philiac Hollywood, and we don't want that. The Bay is still open, it never left.

[@VariantAEC]

Uh... what about SoundCloud? I guess it's newer (though it was in the U.S. sooner than Spotify) so it doesn't matter?

[@KJ4EZJ]

Couldn't believe they weren't mentioned. They have an interesting history too, having started basically streaming illegally and slowly transitioning to legal. But it is much more used friendly IMHO, and I love I can link anyone to (almost) any song and they don't need an account or an app to play it.

[@Numberoneiosgameplay]

For many smaller artists on spotify, the real reason why they can't make a living on the site alone is because of phone farming fraud. Barely Sociable made a video about it that goes in depth on the scheme. The saddest part about it is that Spotify does nothing about it because it doesn't hurt them financially, it only hurts the artists themselves.

[@rkgsd]

To be clear, Spotify wasn't the first major subscription music streaming service. Pandora debuted in 2000. Pandora was the first music app automakers included on vehicles and aftermarket car stereo manufacturers were putting Pandora button controls on head units. Spotify didn't debut until 2008. It was more of an answer to Pandora's algorithms. Pandora was the king of the hill until Spotify started gaining popularity, but Pandora still has a sizable following.

[@guillermogutierrez710]

It was weird to me that when I went to the US to visit my cousin in 2018, he was using Pandora. But in our home country, everyone was using Spotify. The same happened in 2007, I opened a MySpace account because of them, but back herr we were using Facebook only for over a year. That and MSN Messenger for chat.

[@TDrudley]

Wasn't pandora more of a radio thing? You couldn't pick your songs all the time?

[@rkgsd]

@@TDrudley You could (and still can) pick your own tracks and artists with the higher tier just like Spotify.

[@TDrudley]

@@rkgsd Ah, paying tier?

[@rkgsd]

@@TDrudley $5 mid-tier offers unlimited skips, replay, search and track save just like the premium $10 tier, just with ads like you get on the free tier.

[@YosshiSVK]

Yearly Wrap is like opening a Christmas gift, love that thing..

[@Ynhockey]

02:05 Downloading music from the Internet (including Napster back in the day) is largely legal in the US and many other countries (especially the ones with a fair use clause); it's "making available" (or sharing/facilitating) music that's a crime.

[@TheSkottStudio]

Nostalgia Dreams is amazing, I'm super glad you mentioned it in this video. Making both these videos and that music is special.

[@africa_explained_tv]

For those looking for a less pie in the sky view of Spotify, the channel, Helloyassine does a great job of highlighting the platform's shady behavior.

[@vintyprod]

there's exactly 1 reason why i've been subscribed to spotify for 9 years and counting. the recommendation algorithm.

[@mVic8]

It’s amazing that “tech” business have such terrible apps. Spotify, Apple’s Podcast App, OnlyFans, and many others have atrociously bad websites and apps IMO. If the Spotify dude would spend some of that moonshot money on making a better app, he’d get another customer. Even though (on paper) it’s better than Apple Podcasts and YT Music apps, the sheer glitches, buffering and lag make it untenable for me to use. I’m sure other people either have better experiences or have acclimated to the Spotify app but every time I’ve tried it over the years it’s been a quick “nope!”

[@Enne-]

Same.... I truly dislike their app. I dont like the interface, I do not find it user friendly. As a free user, the user experience is absolutely horrible, and doesnt seem to get better whenever I try to give it another chance, which makes me question what would I be paying for if they wont improve or show me the pitential of the app.

[@turbo11]

Idk man, seems like a subjective issue. I like the interface honestly

[@ILovePancakes24]

Crappy interfaces are part of being high tech.

[@suraj.nanglot]

@11:50 music name?

[@jefffan171]

Such a great look at this game changer of the industry. I would love to hear your thoughts as a published musician after the Spotify investment video. Featuring an appearance from Billie Eilish, Spotify proudly added they'll be bringing Spotify Hi-Fi to its premium based subscriptions and full 16 Bit, 44.1 kHz audio by the end of 2021. But nothing happened and whole subject has been dropped with no plans (it seems) to go ahead. This means that despite it 170 Million premium subs. Everyone is stuck with their 320kbs services vs every other platform offering "lossless" or higher with Deezer, Tidal and Amazon to name a few with "Hi-Res" audio. With its low pay to artists and poor audio quality. What is your take as a musician? Do fans "sample" a lossy version via Spotify and then if they like it? Support your work via a artist direct purchase or physical edition ? Based on 1/5 the audio of a CD? Any point of view would be interesting to hear about :-)

[@PvtAnonymous]

wasn't it clear from the very start that it would be highly unlikely they could offer lossless, especially at the same $9,99? They wanted to play catch-up with Apple Music at the time and couldn't pull it off, end of story. I left Spotify 2 years ago because of all the vanishing music and their redesign where they basically killed the library, this news that they STILL haven't figured it out is just icing on the cake and even more proof that it was the right decision to ditch them.

[@detailsmove]

KZbin crawled so SoundCloud could walk so Spotify could run

[@ohnoitsthenoooo]

I switched over to Apple Music for a couple of months and the entire time i missed the convenience and ease of use that Spotify offered. The playlists are much better and it’s easier to discover new music on Spotify than on Apple Music. Plus having podcasts and music together in one app is great. Apple Music is still so clunky and doesn’t feel like a modern app. Though I still hate the idea of paying for streaming music, Spotify is easily the most convenient way to listen to music on the go that’s available right now

[@hlopplopp7066]

Wow, 4 minutes ago? ColdFusion is the best.

[@Marius-vw9hp]

Now that all the major movie production companies is leaving Netflix and starting their own streaming platforms, I would not be surprised to see the same happening with music. The big game companies left Steam ages ago to start their own platforms. I bet people will have one app for every major label out there, and only use Spotify for indie music.

[@decentrob8126]

I’m not sure about that. Music is so much easier to pirate compared to movies and games. If every label would lock their own music behind a paywall like Disney and HBO and force Spotify to take it down then piracy would probably skyrocket. And also movies and games are more associated with owning companies. Everyone knows that Stranger Things is on Netflix, or the Marvel shit is on Disney. Everyone knows that GTA is made by Rockstar. No one knows which label owns Ed Sheehan’s latest album. The album is associated with him and not the label. Just my two cents

[@TDrudley]

I don't remember which, but one big game company closed their own service to go to Steam. Also, geez, the amount of free games Unreal have to give out to get people there, it's almost sad. I don't even bother getting the free games.

[@Marius-vw9hp]

@@TDrudley Fortnite is the 2nd most played game in the world I think. I dont know why Epic Games has so many freebies on their platform tbh.

[@Marius-vw9hp]

@@decentrob8126 I agree, but I think thats the way all the big entertainment companies are headed. Most big artists are under one of the big four (EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group). They would promote their streaming service using the artists, so people would know evenually.

[@TDrudley]

@@Marius-vw9hp They have so many freebies to get people to use their platform, why else? Fortnite might be hugely popular, but that doesn't make their platform, people ONLY play Fortnite on their platform and use steam for other games.

[@herbie747]

Now all they need is Lossless audio, like all their competitors.

[@Lumino3]

I was that Napster, Limewire and torrent downloader! I downloaded everything in those years but I stopped when I discovered Spotify. I was tired of having to wait for all the downloads to come in and my folders growing to epic sizes (Terabyte sizes) and preferred direct access to music and podcasts without having to save all the files. The best feature is to be able to use it on every device I have including the car radio. Just activate Blue Tooth on radio and on your phone, connect and open Spotify on your phone. I was the only one using it so I could listen to my chosen songs while gaming. Then I got frustrated with the radio in the car, it did not have a cd player of course but it did have Bluetooth that was needed for the navigation app. So I started testing something, would Spotify work on it and it did! Now my husband uses Spotify everywhere too. On his phone, pc, tv and car radio! And all this for an affordable price! I can even connect to a Spotify group set up by my gym, so I can have my music played in the entire gym and all my fellow gym people add to the list too. Very sociable when sharing music with strangers haha! (I already shared with friends on Spotify so this was new to me). I just hope that Spotify doesn't go full woke as it has had episodes of a leftist tantrum here and there. But at least it allows most creators on there if not all so far unless the artists themselves pull if off like we have seen a few months ago.

[@dafff08]

imagine calling a 13 year old to build a website and having to pay him 5 grand. i think i see a pattern here. nothern european countires have one of the most gifted people in the world, despite being population wise one of the smallest in the world also. notch, pewdiepie just to name a view. introverted societies with high standards of education and living and a pragmatically minded mindset, will produce one of the most elite folks on the planet. unlike a certain declining country, which is now plagued with extroverted hotheads, egoists and poorly educated delusional people.

[@xShibux]

If you want sound quality for a decent price, go with apple music. In combination with apple one you get apple tv+ on top. And if you want to discover new music and good recommendations fit to your taste, go with youtube music. In combination with youtube premium you get YT ads free. For now Apple one + Youtbe Premium is the best combo to get. My guess: Web 3.0 will disrupt this industry again, cutting out the middleman for fair compensation to the creators, benefits for the users and censorship free, like Audius.

[@6581punk]

The internet was supposed to revolutionise music, it's made everything 10 times worse for the most part.

[@moho472]

It did. It's easier to publish your music for people to listen to, and it might be easier to gain an audience; but it is also easy to download your work without compensation, along with people plagiarizing your work. It's a catch-22.

[@caigvaar]

why ?

[@synsam12345]

You are so wrong. Every technology has just increased the accessibility for music and made it easier and easier for new artists to get discovered. I don't understand why you think the world was better when culture was gatekept by radio stations and record labels.

[@moho472]

@@synsam12345 You're right. It solved the issues of the powerful conglomerate that is the record label, but it created it's own set of problems, like I mentioned above. In the end, I see this as a net positive, but it's also a catch-22

Would love to know more about Deezer now. Thanks! 👍

[@sudhindrakopalle7071]

Listening to music has undergone a massive, unimaginable transformation in the last 20 years. Cassettes to CDs to MP3s and from boomboxes to walkmans to CD players to MP3 players to apps. I find Spotify extremely sticky and have never hesitated to be a paid subscriber from Day One that it launched in India. All my podcasts and songs are exclusively on the app. I wish the app did more about helping discover good music through a social network/sharing but that apart, is almost the perfect place to be.

[@KengCheong]

Another amazing feature that others can’t seem to replicate is the recommendation feature, more importantly is how accurate it gets at recommending relative musics. I had to switch to other streaming apps coz of location restriction and that’s the one feature I miss the most.

[@mwj5368]

Thanks Cold Fusion for a great video. My two solo piano albums CD's sold 4,000 copies and other musicians said that's a lot. I never "toured" and I think they might do well online. I'm a musician/songwriter and don't know much about putting my music out to Spotify. From what I understand I don't submit to Spotify I submit to a distributor who submits to Spotify is the way it sounds. So what distributor do I send to if I want my music on Spotify? Can the distributor only submit to one entity at a time and they are the ones, not me, who decide where my music goes? What is a good one for my two albums, one is 60 minutes, the other 70 and all of 100% solo piano music? Any advice is appreciated!

[@g4meboy13]

I was a pirate of the early 2000's and Spotify is now a mainstay in my phone computer and TV

[@ethandowie3907]

Nothing I love more than seeing a cold fusion business story post as I’m leaving work!!

[@appletree6741]

For quite a while I thought you’re David Kipping from cool worlds - your voices are both so unique and yet alike

[@arvy8434]

Spotify's default dark mode is also one of its charm.