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Comment by kitsunesoba | Hacker News Reader

That's the move that would've been better for users, but it doesn't allow Spotify to use their already-popular product to bolster their nascent one, which is probably why they didn't do that.

It's far from new behavior for Spotify, though. They've been constantly twiddling with UI, algorithms, etc trying to optimize for profit margins over user happiness for years at this point. Last I knew their entire engineering structure is optimized for that, with the desktop client for example being carved up into wholly separate iframe "islands" (complete with dependencies in duplicate, triplicate, etc) managed by different teams to allow A/B testing of each pane without communicating with the teams responsible for other panes.

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> but it doesn't allow Spotify to use their already-popular product to bolster their nascent one, which is probably why they didn't do that.

I think a good counter-example is Uber, with a separate app for ordering rides (Uber) and for ordering food (Uber Eats). Both apps are still bolstering each other by the brand recognition.

Additionally, the apps could still cross-reference each other in a subtle way. E.g. maybe when you type a podcast name in the regular Spotify it could redirect you to the Spotify Podcast app. Just like the Uber app sometimes nudges you to also order food.

EDIT: as one of the comments points out, you can actually order food from the Uber app, my bad, that's not how I remembered it!

You can order food in the Uber app - there's a big tab at the top in iOS.

I think there's huge pressure to "everything app" very disparate services. I've also noticed that Amazon now lets you pull up your Whole Foods code or pull up the Whole Foods storefront from the Amazon app.

Except it's not quite the same as Spotify - when you try to order a ride, Uber doesn't dilute and replace found rides with food offerings which you don't need or want at that time. That's what Spotify did - they actually undermined their main feature to push podcasts and hurt/cannibalized their main value proposition to try to push another product that we didn't want when we opened the app.

Honestly, I think this could go much better if they just organized their damn software better and not damage their music offering with forced podcasts. Many of us would probably stay loyal and use it for podcasts as well if they made the experience great instead of forced.

You're right. I must have remembered wrong.. or maybe it has changed for worse recently?

My initial claim only works for Uber Eats. It can only be used for ordering food. There's a button to order a ride but it redirects to the Uber app.

Uber Eats seemed to be it's own thing, but now they seem to be tying them a bit more together. I've even seen the Uber app offering me the option to have food delivery setup while on my ride. Basically trying to give you the option to have food delivery arranged to show up to your destination around the same time you arrive.

But I believe you're right that initially they were more separate entities, but now it's kinda merged.

In the case of Uber, I think it's more likely that someone who's used their ride service may be interested in ordering food than it would be for someone who's used Spotify for music to be interested in podcasts.

I do think you're right that more subtle nudges are probably fine. Some might begrudge them but such promotions are a lot more tolerable than directly pulling an entirely separate app into your existing app and then placing the newly imported bits in the spotlight.

Uber also is famous for having a GIANT app binary for "what should be a simple app", which they've gone on record as defending as necessary for international use. Maybe they didn't want to or couldn't continue to bloat the app.

Yeah this tracks with my experience in tech. All packaged and hyped under the brand of "Data Science".

Can't tell you how many times I was able to directly prove a change lead to a bad user experience only to be met with "Yeah but the data shows..." by some corpo cock sleeve of a manager or team lead.

All these shithead corps are actively monitoring AND MODIFYING USER BEHAVIOR without understanding human psychology or behavior science, because "The data shows"

IMO nothing short of a complete revolt in whatever fucking form that looks like.

To be fair they only became profitable last year, so for a long time there was no profit margin to "optimize"

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