Can Spotify Become the Next Google?

fool.com

8 points·redbell··4 comments

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Provocative headline.

> Opens article

"Spotify's advertising strategy could take the audio industry to the next level."

Of course it's just about ads

The more I age, the more I deliberately avoid and ignore advertising.

At least Spotify allows me to pay for the service.

I just wish that in return for that payment, they were a little more innovative with music discovery. They must be sitting on an absolute gold mine of data that could be used to create an incredible interactive discovery experience, but the best we get is enhanced playlists and Discover Weekly, unless I’m missing something.

Would I pay more money to them if they actually worked on this stuff? Yes, yes I would.

I agree that it's nice to pay. Spotify Premium has been a staple for years. Discover Weekly is really nice at least. Although once the week rolls over .. it's all gone unless I manually saved it! I've missed out on many songs due to that.

Sadly the article implies an internal shift towards ads. Hopefully it's just speculation or not a huge shift.

It’s hard for me to see this happening. Spotify has not improved their core offering at all. The interface is terrible in many ways, and inflexible. Their ability to innovate seems nonexistent to me, a paying customer of many years who would give them the benefit of the doubt. Then there’s the whole fiasco with them getting the rights to Joe Rogan’s show but then censoring large amounts of it, caving to the demands of activist employees. Now per this article, they want to become the invasive ads network every other tech giant wants to be. I used to root for them as the underdog but now they’re indistinguishable from the tech giants I would’ve liked to see them challenge.

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