<story><title>Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/03/spotify-opens-at-165-90-valuing-company-at-30-billion/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_zachs</author><text>Starting their own label is exactly what they need to do to remain competitive. It&amp;#x27;s exactly what Netflix ended up doing and I think it&amp;#x27;s turning out pretty well for them. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if Spotify tried poaching higher-level strategy people from Netflix.</text></item><item><author>synaesthesisx</author><text>I do love Spotify as a product, however I don&amp;#x27;t think it will scale the same way Netflix does. Spotify is at the mercy of major record labels, and as their books become more transparent the record labels will squeeze every dollar they can for licensing. That is, unless they find a way to upend the record industry entirely.&lt;p&gt;Spotify has a unique position with their amazing  discovery&amp;#x2F;recommendations engine- they could potentially start their own &amp;quot;label&amp;quot; and promote their own artists that sign on. Small&amp;#x2F;independent musicians could see more exposure and Spotify can deliver more music tailored for individual tastes. I&amp;#x27;ve personally found myself listening to lots of small&amp;#x2F;indie artists as a result of their algorithms, to the point that these now make up the majority of my listening experience.&lt;p&gt;I think getting into concert tickets&amp;#x2F;streams, merchandise etc could help them potentially capture quite a bit of value in the future as well.&lt;p&gt;I know the comparison is similar to original content &amp;amp; Netflix - but keep in mind there&amp;#x27;s an opportunity cost with media (one can only consume X amount of shows&amp;#x2F;songs within a period of time). The more attention Spotify can divert away from the major record labels the better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bogomipz</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;quot;Starting their own label is exactly what they need to do to remain competitive. It&amp;#x27;s exactly what Netflix ended up doing and I think it&amp;#x27;s turning out pretty well for them.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a common refrain that Spotify can just &amp;quot;pull a Netflix.&amp;quot; And this is very unlikely.&lt;p&gt;Firstly no matter how much opriginal content they could create, if they don&amp;#x27;t have back catalog it&amp;#x27;s going to be a total non-starter for the mainstream. A streaming service that has no Beatles, Pink Floyd, No Motown, No AC&amp;#x2F;DC etc is going to shed users pretty quickly.&lt;p&gt;Also music and movies occupy very different spaces in peoples lives - emotionally, socially, where and how they&amp;#x27;re consumed and shared etc.&lt;p&gt;People need music for their commute, for their workouts, for their parties, at bars and for their workdays. People only need movies when they&amp;#x27;re home or maybe stuck on an airplane.&lt;p&gt;Lastly Spotify needs to stay in the record label&amp;#x27;s good graces. If they were ever to be viewed as a competitor or a thread to any the big 3 record labels it would be reflected in punitive price increase when it came time to renegotiate their licensing deals.</text></comment>
<story><title>Spotify opens on NYSE, valuing company at almost $30B</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/03/spotify-opens-at-165-90-valuing-company-at-30-billion/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_zachs</author><text>Starting their own label is exactly what they need to do to remain competitive. It&amp;#x27;s exactly what Netflix ended up doing and I think it&amp;#x27;s turning out pretty well for them. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if Spotify tried poaching higher-level strategy people from Netflix.</text></item><item><author>synaesthesisx</author><text>I do love Spotify as a product, however I don&amp;#x27;t think it will scale the same way Netflix does. Spotify is at the mercy of major record labels, and as their books become more transparent the record labels will squeeze every dollar they can for licensing. That is, unless they find a way to upend the record industry entirely.&lt;p&gt;Spotify has a unique position with their amazing  discovery&amp;#x2F;recommendations engine- they could potentially start their own &amp;quot;label&amp;quot; and promote their own artists that sign on. Small&amp;#x2F;independent musicians could see more exposure and Spotify can deliver more music tailored for individual tastes. I&amp;#x27;ve personally found myself listening to lots of small&amp;#x2F;indie artists as a result of their algorithms, to the point that these now make up the majority of my listening experience.&lt;p&gt;I think getting into concert tickets&amp;#x2F;streams, merchandise etc could help them potentially capture quite a bit of value in the future as well.&lt;p&gt;I know the comparison is similar to original content &amp;amp; Netflix - but keep in mind there&amp;#x27;s an opportunity cost with media (one can only consume X amount of shows&amp;#x2F;songs within a period of time). The more attention Spotify can divert away from the major record labels the better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simias</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not convinced. You don&amp;#x27;t consume music the way you consume TV shows and movies, it&amp;#x27;s often a more &amp;quot;passive&amp;quot; activity where you start a playlist in the background while you do other things. You can do that with movie&amp;#x2F;TV shows of course but a movie will last you ~two hours while a TV show can literally last you days or weeks at a time without input if you really like having The Office in the background while you do other things. Assuming that you can afford buying subscriptions to various services it&amp;#x27;s not massively annoying to have to use HBO Go to watch Westworld and Netflix to watch Arrested Development. It&amp;#x27;s not as good as having a unified service but it does the job.&lt;p&gt;If like me you like composing playlists instead of playing one full album at a time then not having the vast majority of your music available on a single service is a huge deal breaker. When I hear a song out there and I want to add it to my playlist I expect that it will be available on Spotify and the vast majority of the time I&amp;#x27;m right.&lt;p&gt;If I need to go hunt for songs on various services and I can&amp;#x27;t easily make a single unified playlist with all of it I think it&amp;#x27;ll be back to piracy for me, it won&amp;#x27;t be less convenient and it&amp;#x27;ll be much cheaper.</text></comment>