Spotify Stock Craters To All Time Low

[Sal1950]

Spotify Stock Craters to All-Time Low on Weak Paid Subscriber Growth ​

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
I was a long time subscriber to Spotify and on-line supporter of them until they lied and snake-oiled the public on the eminent release of lossless streaming that never occurred.
In my personal inner-relations with people I keep nothing in higher regard than keeping my word to people, and they to me. I'm not sure how much the lossless BS influenced this result but being an audiophile myself I travel in that social circle and know there's an aweful lot of very unhappy people over this, I've read a LOT of "goodbye and go to h-lll" posts on the net over the last year because of this.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Sort of a combination of other services getting on the band wagon of lossless (Apple and Amazon), and these guys promising, but never delivering.

 

[Sal1950]

Sort of a combination of other services getting on the band wagon of lossless (Apple and Amazon),

Not only have they delivered lossless, but have really shaken up the status quo of audio with their offerings of very large numbers of Multichannel, Dolby Surround, and Atmos files. I find it an incredibly great turnabout in a way I never would have imagined less than 2 years ago.
The futures so bright I gotta wear shades.

At the same time Tidal seems to be feeling a bit of negative blowback over their lone position-support as an MQA streamer.
Very interesting times we live in with streaming trends becoming a good barometer of public opinion on HiFi.

 

[bluefuzz]

I wouldn't read all that much into Spotify stock tanking. Tech stock in general is struggling at the moment due to all sorts of reasons - not least supply chain issues, COVID lockdowns in China, war in Ukraine etc. I don't have any particular love for Spotify's business model or Daniel Ek in person but their competitors are little better and often worse in other respects. As for lossless, I think Spotify are eminently sensible not to waste money and bandwidth on box-ticking features that no-one can hear. Multichannel/Atmos audio is another non-feature that is only interesting for a tiny fraction of a niche audience akin to the 3D-tv craze a few years ago that is now happily forgotten. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple quietly drops it again in a couple of years due to lack of interest ...

 

[Sal1950]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple quietly drops it again in a couple of years due to lack of interest ...

Anythings possible but things are looking much stronger now than ever before.
It would be a real shame to see music fall back to the dark ages of stereo or mono only.

 

[Somafunk]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple quietly drops it again in a couple of years due to lack of interest ...

Never going to happen, the level of interest in atmos enabled mixes is increasing.

Good podcast interview with Nick Rives from Capitol Studios regarding his atmos mix of Billie Eilish : Happier Than Ever

 

[abdo123]

Sort of a combination of other services getting on the band wagon of lossless (Apple and Amazon), and these guys promising, but never delivering.

Hardly the case. I think it's the home integration of the other three services (Google, Apple, and Amazon).

 

[Katji]

until they lied and snake-oiled the public on the eminent release of lossless streaming that never occurred.

ime, it goes back some 5 years before that, that Spotify are corporate gangsters. (There was an expose' story that he[/they] managed to get removed from Google.)

 

[Astoneroad]

 

[ryanosaur]

Spotify lost me very early on when they offered special access through Playstation. I signed up to experiment with them but when I tried to access that content off my playstation through Phone or Computer, they locked it behind a paywall.
I know there are no free lunches and had lived with Pandora's ad content for a couple years, but at least there I could listen to music that I wanted to hear without feeling yanked around.
Spotify never did that for me.
Frankly, they and Netflix almost belong where they are right now. There is much more potential in them that isn't being realized. There may well be reasons they cannot live up to the potential I would hope for. However it seems like they made those choices rather than solving for the tougher parts of the equation. *shrugs

Much like Netflix, now, they each will learn and grow, or continue to fall flat, a victim of their own unique bubbles.

 

[Sal1950]

Never going to happen, the level of interest in atmos enabled mixes is increasing.

From your lips to God's ear.
I can only pray that immersive audio continues to grow in the manner it has.
The one big deal we have that didn't exist in the past is Atmos ability to scale itself to many different formats.
One Atmos file will scale up or down to the speaker layout the listener has.
I'm not 100% sure how well a 7.2.4 Atmos file can downsample to an excellent imaging 2ch playback but much is still very new and the ability to improve with time is still on the table.
Time Will Tell.

 

[ryanosaur]

I can only pray that immersive audio continues to grow in the manner it has.

If this thing about Car Audio adopting Atmos holds any water, object based audio will go nowhere.
(Personally, I can't quite get on board with Atmos in-car... it's bad enough listening to some old Wu-Tang and hearing a recorded Police Siren and thinking "it's all over!")
(Of course, it was one thing to be doing pinch hits while chauffering pizza in the Midwest ca. '95 and experiencing that than driving around today. *blushes slightly)

 

[ryanosaur]

With the edit, you earn my approval.

 

[mkt]

Some interesting points

Spotify Shares Now Selling at Less Than the IPO Price 4 Years Ago

I revisit my past predictions about this company, and make some new ones

tedgioia.substack.com

 

[bluefuzz]

Never going to happen, the level of interest in atmos enabled mixes is increasing.

Never say never.

Yes, there is industry interest in spatial audio at the moment since it's (relatively) new and there are some big actors getting interested in it. But I see it as just another example of the music industry throwing shit at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. The question is for how long will it stick? The only place I see spatial audio gaining serious traction is in the gaming market and that is mostly headphones.

Who is is going to listen to these multichannel/spatial mixes and how are are they going to listen to them? As I've said before, I have never met anyone or know of anyone in my circle of aquaintance that has any multichannel playback equipment aside from a cheap soundbar under the tv. The middle aged may have a stereo setup (with the two speakers most likely sitting on the floor in the corner), the younger folks a couple of mono smart speakers and the teenagers a pair of Beats headphones. Very few people in Europe or Asia have the room (or the money) for multiple speakers in their living-room let alone a dedicated 'home theater' room.

The proprietary nature of Atmos in particular is also a big obstacle to any grassroots adoption.

 

[Sal1950]

Who is is going to listen to these multichannel/spatial mixes and how are are they going to listen to them? As I've said before, I have never met anyone or know of anyone in my circle of aquaintance that has any multichannel playback equipment aside from a cheap soundbar under the tv.

We are, the same guys who have been listening to proper stereo or multich rigs since the 50-60-70s.
Plus those other "soundbar" guys you mentioned. They're being blown away by the sound of those crapbars with the phasy weird effects that are bouncing sound locations all over the room. No matter the recordings sound nothing like the mixing engineers intended, it's Kool. Just like the guy with his stereo system that has one speaker in the corner and the other next to him for a table.