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Spotify - an online music service


bickster

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4 minutes ago, bickster said:

Yes, but that isn't really the point.

People don't join Spotify for Rogan's (or anyone's) podcasts. They sell their service as a streaming music platform

Sure Spotify is pushing podcasts to subscribers but that effectively means that the music for which they pay buttons is being used to attract people to the platform where they are then getting pushed the podcasts and those podcasts have no content filter.

The artists are being used to attract people to the opinions of nutjobs. Not only that but they are paying peanuts to the artists and paying the likes of Rogan $100 million a year and when those artists that have control over their catalogues start to realise that, more may follow.

Established artists don't really need Spotify as much as the up and coming ones.

I think in this instance though, it is sadly the point.

Spotify is a subscription based service, if there are 2 million Joe Rogan fans and 0.5 million Neil Young fans subscribing then who are they going to ‘side’ with? 
 

I get what you’re saying but that horse has bolted already, unless there are major commercial changes in the music streaming space which could / would only result in a likely significant increase in the subscription fees thus hitting us, the consumers, in the pocket again, so unless you’re a musician looking to make millions out of your career I kinda don’t get the clamber for it all.

It’s a bit like when the premier league tv rights were broken up with BT and latterly, Amazon. Many people felt it was a good thing as it broke up Sky’s monopoly but what has it actually ended up doing - costing us far more to watch the same amount of football with often worse quality production and presenting teams.

 

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7 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

I think in this instance though, it is sadly the point.

Spotify is a subscription based service, if there are 2 million Joe Rogan fans and 0.5 million Neil Young fans subscribing then who are they going to ‘side’ with? 

Again, you are missing the point that nobody joins Spotify for the Podcasts, it's rather irrelevant that he's more popular, people don't join for Rogan

Sure you can listen to Rogan without subscribing for which Spotify gets advertising revenue but Spotify earns minute amounts of money from their advertising compared to their subscriptions and the subscriptions are generated through the music not the podcasts

I also think you're underestimating how popular Neil Young is too, the documentary of the making of his latest album has 350K plus views on Youtube in 6 days, the lead song from the album has double that in under a month

There's absolutely no way Rogan earns Spotify the money they are paying him, they are paying him the money to keep his product exclusive to them and that money is coming from the music artists they quite literally fleece

Neil Young doesn't need the $20k a month he earns from streaming on Spotify, he doesn't even need Spotify to promote his music, leaving Spotify will do nothing to his fanbase, they aren't going anywhere

Why should Neil Young partly fund Rogan's anti-vax / pro-fascist podcasts? He's decided he isn't going to any more

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1 hour ago, bickster said:

Established artists don't really need Spotify as much as the up and coming ones.

I've been enjoying to Neil Young's latest album (Barn) on Spotify. Now I'll have to buy the CD. 

So that's a win for Neil. 

 

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2 hours ago, bickster said:

pro-fascist podcasts

Uhm, thats a bit of a stretch isn't it? He's had a fair few twunts on from all sides but a pro-facist podcast? Nah.

His stance on vaccines is intolerable though

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3 minutes ago, bickster said:

Proud Boys are fascists in my book

Fair I guess but I think pro-facist is a oversimplification regarding branding of the podcast given the rather broad spectrum of his guests. I mean, he wanted Bernie or Tulsi as president after having them on.

Personally I prefer him to stick to commentating MMA but, hey ho. It's not the worst podcast in the world

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All this Joe Rogan stuff is just getting a bit silly now. I listen to his podcast and I enjoy it. He says some stuff I agree with, he says some stuff I disagree with. People need to stop taking him so seriously and take it for what it is.

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1 hour ago, JoshVilla said:

All this Joe Rogan stuff is just getting a bit silly now. I listen to his podcast and I enjoy it. He says some stuff I agree with, he says some stuff I disagree with. People need to stop taking him so seriously and take it for what it is.

Its not getting silly. Ignore the content for one second. He does not recoup what Spotify pay him

Why should musicians fund that by being grossly underpaid by Spotify? (see above post for that reasoning)

Then add the content on top of that, why should musicians fund someone promoting dangerous opinions that they don't agree with?

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26 minutes ago, bickster said:

Its not getting silly. Ignore the content for one second. He does not recoup what Spotify pay him

Why should musicians fund that by being grossly underpaid by Spotify? (see above post for that reasoning)

Then add the content on top of that, why should musicians fund someone promoting dangerous opinions that they don't agree with?

Oh I agree that Spotify treats artists like utter shit and underpays them. That's why I still buy CDs and Vinyl, buy merch and go to gigs whenever I can as I want to support musicians financially as much as I can.

The problem here though is Neil Young trying to deplatform him because the Covid stuff. There was a good podcast the other week where he had Josh Szeps on his show, and the issue came up regarding myocarditis and vaccines. Szeps proved Rogan wrong. Obviously, the media gets wind of this and here come all the "gotcha" articles saying how he got "destroyed" and all this. And in fairness, Rogan admitted that he was wrong and posted the article/data that lead him to believe that the vaccine carries a greater risk of myocarditis.

Now, surely this is a better way to combat misinformation? I just don't think that deplatforming people because they've seen data that makes them feel a certain way about covid is the best way to combat this. Do what Dr Sanjay Gupta did and go on there and debate him.

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Lets not gloss over what a totally useless app Spotify is when consuming the hour+ long podcast format. Yeah, I love it when it occasionally throws a fit when I switch between devices and it cant remember where I left off. Or not being able to mark an all posdcasts as played because I dont want it do default to playing something from 2019

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6 hours ago, bickster said:

Again, you are missing the point that nobody joins Spotify for the Podcasts, it's rather irrelevant that he's more popular, people don't join for Rogan

Sure you can listen to Rogan without subscribing for which Spotify gets advertising revenue but Spotify earns minute amounts of money from their advertising compared to their subscriptions and the subscriptions are generated through the music not the podcasts

I also think you're underestimating how popular Neil Young is too, the documentary of the making of his latest album has 350K plus views on Youtube in 6 days, the lead song from the album has double that in under a month

There's absolutely no way Rogan earns Spotify the money they are paying him, they are paying him the money to keep his product exclusive to them and that money is coming from the music artists they quite literally fleece

Neil Young doesn't need the $20k a month he earns from streaming on Spotify, he doesn't even need Spotify to promote his music, leaving Spotify will do nothing to his fanbase, they aren't going anywhere

Why should Neil Young partly fund Rogan's anti-vax / pro-fascist podcasts? He's decided he isn't going to any more

You're right about why most of Spotify's long-term subscribers have Spotify accounts.

But I think podcasts actually are a really core part of their growth strategy since they went public, e.g. https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/06/21/is-spotifys-exclusive-podcast-strategy-worthwhile/

Quote

The exclusive strategy

A few years ago, Spotify started signing podcasts to go exclusive on its platform. One of the most high-profile deals was The Joe Budden Show, which signed with Spotify in 2018 but has since moved off the platform due to payment disputes. In 2018 and 2019, it looks like the company was just testing the waters with this exclusive strategy, but in 2020, its pace of exclusive deals has started to increase.

The momentum started with a two-year, $100 million deal to bring The Joe Rogan Experience, the most listened-to podcast in the United States, exclusively to Spotify starting last December. It has also signed Barack and Michelle Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to podcast deals. Most recently, the company announced it has signed Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert and Alexandra Cooper's Call Her Daddy, the 18th and 15th most listened-to shows in the country, respectively, to go exclusive on Spotify this summer.

Spotify is investing tons of money to get shows onto its platform. Investors have to evaluate whether the company will get a strong return on these investments -- here's how management is likely thinking it can make money on these deals. 

 

How the unit economics will work

The obvious reason Spotify would sign exclusive deals is that it wants the listeners of these shows to move from other podcast apps to Spotify. It can then make money directly off these programs by getting them on its new advertising platform called the Spotify Audience Network.

...

The importance of podcasts to Spotify's financials

Spotify is also betting heavily on podcasts, because they can help the company increase its gross margins. Due to the high payouts the company makes each year to music labels and artists, Spotify's gross margins have not gone much higher than 25% over the last few years, and will struggle to expand much more since these variable costs scale every time it adds a subscriber to its service. 

Podcasts free up Spotify from these high variable expenses -- that is, if it can execute on expanding its advertising network through its internal studios, exclusive shows, and the distribution services it owns (Anchor and Megaphone). Management is guiding for gross margins to rise to 30% to 40% in the intermediate term with a lot of that expansion due to its podcast investments.

So podcasts, while less popular than music, are easier for Spotify to cut out middlemen and competitors, and thus generate bigger profit margins and more reliable revenue.

Now it's a publicly traded company, whatever faint vestiges of a soul it ever had will have been chewed up and shat out by McKinsey types. Everything will be about turning it into an even bigger juggernaut.

What's really concerning is how Joe Rogan manages to be so popular despite being such a thick, annoying word removed. It's mad that a business would even see a spreadsheet where cancelling Neil Young is generating more $$$ than cancelling Joe Rogan.

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7 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

So podcasts, while less popular than music, are easier for Spotify to cut out middlemen and competitors, and thus generate bigger profit margins and more reliable revenue.

That may be their plan and thinking but  Spotify's Advertising revenue is absolutely dwarfed by it's subscription income and the subscription income is driven by music. Again, the musicians are seeing the profits they generate with little in return comparatively being used to fund podcasts and regardless of the podcasts content, that can't be right

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41 minutes ago, JoshVilla said:

The problem here though is Neil Young trying to deplatform him...

This isn't a free speech issue nor is this a cancel culture issue

If Rogan was no longer tied to Spotify, his platform would still exist, he would still get his listeners elsewhere

In fact there's actually an argument that Neil Young has increased the exposure of who Rogan is to sectors of the market that were previously unaware

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4 minutes ago, bickster said:

That may be their plan and thinking but  Spotify's Advertising revenue is absolutely dwarfed by it's subscription income and the subscription income is driven by music. Again, the musicians are seeing the profits they generate with little in return comparatively being used to fund podcasts and regardless of the podcasts content, that can't be right

Well we don't have access to the internal data, and it's obviously going to be complicated. It may be that music as a whole drives 95% of subscriptions, but an exclusive deal with Joe Rogan secures more subscriptions and ad clicks than any other licensing agreement.

This could be a too-clever-by-half strategy that will blow up in their faces, but it's hard for us to say looking in from the outside.

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1 minute ago, KentVillan said:

but an exclusive deal with Joe Rogan secures more subscriptions and ad clicks than any other licensing agreement.

Not even convinced by that, very few will pay Spotify a subscription just to listen to Rogan. Very few pay a subscription just to listen to podcasts either

They can listen to Rogan without a subscription.

Ads yes, subscription, no. It has to be one or the other the way the platform works. He's generating advertising for sure but nowhere near the $100 million he is paid by Spotify. Spotify's entire advertising income per year is only around $360 million but it has 172 million monthly subscribers. That advertiusing income is actually a big rise on the back of the podcasts (according to the company) and that is because the people listening to podcasts aren't subscribers

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