Spotify sees spike in traffic to cancellation page: 196% week-on-week
mixmag.netI like spotify (I pay for the service) but I dont like anything about this.
I don't like that spotify are doing "podcasts". For me, poscasts are the last (popular) vestiges of the old web. I wish they would remain platform-free. The creators own servers and an RSS feed. Total control for the creators, noone to ask for permisson. Tell me I'm dreaming.
I don't like that Joe Rogan is on spotify. Never heard his show, I understand that he is some kind of post-radio chock-jock. However, I know that he is very popular so by bringing him on spotify is kind of cementing that spotify is how you do podcasts now.
I don't like that spotify felt the need to remove some old episodes for him. If they are really doing podcast they should buy the whole hog, including the warts.
I dont like that musicians are leaving spotify. Those that have very publicly left dont affect me much as it's not my style of music, but it's a bad trend.
As a Swede i personally know people that pays the rent with spotify money. I don't like that that might end.
Sorry for the rant
A 200% increase in the weekly baseline? That’s… not actually all that much. Basically 2 extra weeks worth of cancellations. It’ll make the KPI look bad, but 70k cancellations doesn’t seem material when you have almost 200m users.
That seems like a very small increase to a page that presumably sees little traffic. Sounds like they're committing the base rate fallacy[0] where large percentage increases correspond to small absolute numbers.
You said presumably, though the article gives specific numbers. Can you elaborate on what numbers or analysis would be reasonable as to not fall into the fallacy you also call out?
A significant proportion of the userbase would be a good start. If 118,000 users unsubscribed up from 40,000 then that's an increase of 78,000 people, or 0.04% of the subscriber base.
Also, now this is total speculation, I'd hazard that a large number of these "new unsubscribers" have clicked on social media links to the cancellation page without following through with the cancellation.
That seems reasonable, but isn't this data set a sampling, since it appears to only capture the page viewing habits of people who have opted to install various browser extensions? If so, wouldn't that imply that the non-sampled numbers would be larger, and perhaps by a fair bit, assuming that the percentage of users who install these browser telemetry tools is small? I agree that if the numbers did not represent a sampling, but were in fact reflected a complete data set, then yes, they perhaps are a drop in the bucket.
"How to break up with Spotify" https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-break-up-61760779 Walks through removing access to your apps and devices, exporting your playlists to a new service, and configuring it with privacy in mind.
>Last week it was reported that Spotify's market value has plummeted by $2.1 billion in just one week amid controversy around the platform's continued support of podcaster Joe Rogan.
Let's ignore the already downward of the share and the tech market itself.
I'm in the process of exporting my playlists. I've been paying for the service since 2011 hate to see them go but I have more playlists, three of them, with Neil Young than I do with Joe Rogan, none. Maybe I'm just an old foggy that likes classic rock, I don't care, I go where my music is. As much as I hate to do it I'm moving my stuff over to YouTube Music.
I re subscribe every month to help their numbers.
On my social bubble, an impressive amount of people have cancelled their premium accounts.
I had a friend who had always recommended me trying out Youtube Music for their recommendation and I used the opportunity to switch, not looking back.. Somehow, Youtube Premium + Music for family is cheaper than Spotify Premium for family.
Good thing YouTube isn't full of misinformation.
Not with a $200 million check from the platform, indeed.
Did not know there were that many Neil Young and Joni Mitchell fans.
I wonder if there's any studies on the stickiness of cancellations. There were reoccurring pushes to delete Uber since 2017, but not sure how often people went back anyway.
I canceled my premium subscription because of all of the Joe Rogan episodes they deleted.
I cancelled mine in part because of the Joe Rogan kerfuffle but mostly because I made the realization that Spotify is investing more heavily in podcasts than music, but I already have a podcast player that I like and I should subscribe to a music service that cares about the music.
Exactly. I just switched back from Apple Music to Spotify (I used Spotify before Apple Music, when podcasts were unavailable where I live).
I returned for missed recommendations. But now with all these podcasts issues I am really thinking about using mp3s again.
Was there a comment box to tell them why you cancelled? Just wondering if the cancellations are sending mixed signals between the "I'm mad you took down Joe Rogan episodes" camp and the "I'm mad you took down Neil Young or others" camp of users.
I was worried about that too, but yes, there was a comment box asking to explain the reason for the cancellation, and I was careful to make it clear.
Didn't he delete his own episodes because he said something he was ashamed of?
Unrelated to this (bad) story, I wish there was more competition in that field. AFAIK it's either Spotify, Google, Amazon or Apple. Am I missing any others?
Tidal at least (not supporting them and read they also have some 'shady' stuff going on, just adding another possibility, personally I stick with Apple)
Napster is actually a decent legit service now.
The best method though is to buy music direct through something like bandcamp. These streaming services all give tiny amounts of money to artists per play.
I don't... the market is so fragmented that the only way for me to have playlist with all my favourite songs is through piracy.
Pandora, Tidal, Plex if you want to host your own? There's probably more still.
Tidal, Deezer, Pandora... Yandex?
i just signed up. what's wrong with spotify?
ive been using and paying for spotify for over a decade and im not going to renew my subscription when it ends later this month.
nothing major though, just a mix of having podcasts shoved in my face when i don't want anything to do with them, songs disappearing (not completely spotify's problem i suppose), not having certain songs in the first place, and the effort involved in downloading songs so i can have offline access (which is a bit of a pain when you have multiple devices and change them often)
i also used to tell myself i couldn't afford all the music i wanted to listen to, but adding up the money i have given spotify over the last decade im thinking maybe i could have bought a decent chunk of it. so that's what in going to start doing.
you could probably find lots more reasons if you search online. spotify paying people peanuts etc etc
The main news item right now is about Joe Rogan disseminating misinformation about the pandemic, and saying racist things.
Besides that, they're known for paying comparatively little per stream to musicians.
They also engage in rent-seeking behavior. Their strategy around podcasts is to get exclusives, which they can do better than smaller players because of their market position, and it's money they're not spending on improving their platform.
They also refuse allowing users to add podcasts via RSS like pretty much all other podcast services. It's common for podcasters to provide upgraded feeds with extra episodes for people who support them on Patreon. There's no way to connect to those on Spotify. The reason they don't allow that is they're trying to push their own solution for that. Again, abusing market position instead of making a good product.
> Besides that, they're known for paying comparatively little per stream to musicians.
Compared to which service?
Tidal & Qobuz. Maybe others as well. But those are the ones I'm aware of that pay out more per stream.
They all give tiny amounts per play. In the realm of $0.003. Actually buy the music from artists if you want to support them.
From a utils standpoint nothing, I think they’re the best music subscription service on the average. In theory Apple Music (and some others) have better audio quality but most people won’t notice this, I have fancy audio gear and listen to some music on Apple “just in case”.
The DRMs (though that's probably not an explanation to a spike in traffic to cancellation page)
It is keeping the most popular podcast in the world on its platform, despite the host breaking Spotify's TOS on the subject of COVID misinformation.
> host breaking Spotify's TOS
Do you have a reference for this? I've been following this very closely, and this is the first time I've heard he broke the TOS.
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotify-platform-rul...
> Content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health
His ivermectin/vaccine stuff breaks the TOS.
I guess that depends on ones definition of "promotes" and even "false". And, "deceptive" requires intent. I imagine this is up for some interpretation.
> And, "deceptive" requires intent.
Obviously, it doesn't, because adjudicating this would require building a mind-reading device. Unless Spotify possesses one, clearly, the intent behind this rule is that the intent behind the deception is irrelevant. A rule that you can break by having the right or wrong thoughts isn't a rule.
> I guess that depends on ones definition of "promotes" and even "false".
Yes, and it also depends on what their definition of "Content", "Harm", "Health", "Medical", and "Information". What's your point? Words have generally agreed upon meanings, we aren't just shouting Shannon noise into the ether.
In criminal law in most nations intent plays an extremely important role.
Yet these mind reading devices do not exist. Is it because there are other ways to establish intent?
> A rule that you can break by having the right or wrong thoughts isn't a rule.
Yet somehow those kinds of rules are enforced in a courtroom thousands of times a week.
In this context, deception would have been proven by simply proving the person knew the information was untrue. You be surprised how often people publicly admit to that in some other context. And then suddenly "intent" is proven.
>Words have generally agreed upon meanings,
Especially in a legal context. But that doesn't make the classification of "promoting false information" easier.
The idea that Spotify is "platforming" Rogan is laughable. They paid him millions of dollars to come to their platform. Spotify is not bringing an audience to Rogan, Rogan is bringing an audience to Spotify.
Not just keeping, but paid $100 million for exclusivity.
Well, yes, there's all that money, too, that makes dropping him rather expensive.
Unfortunately, it seems that I'm being karmically silenced for speaking an uncomfortable truth - that I've done my research[1] on!
[1] About 2 minutes of googling sources that tell me what I want to hear.
For those who didn't see this story unfold, this is about Joe Rogan (he signed an exclusivity deal with Spotify a while ago) and the alleged misinformation that was aired on his podcast (mostly about Covid).
What is SimilarWeb and how do they know that? Because I have a hunch that they are pulling the numbers out of their asses just so they are mentioned in articles from shitty blogs like this one.
They have a bunch of Chrome extensions that spy on what users are visiting online, and use that data to sell their product to marketers.
Personally think Google should get rid of them as they are a travesty to online privacy.
Is it a travesty to online privacy if you have to opt into their tracking?
At some point I should be allowed to trade my personal information in exchange for goods or services, isn't that the whole point of me "owning" my information?
I'd like to know what these Chrome extensions are to ensure they'll never be installed on any computer I use. Unfortunately I can't find a list anywhere, which seems really scammy.
So google should also ban themselves? At least the Chrome extensions people installed themselves, can't say the same about Google fonts/analytics/whatever else
Apples and oranges,
You install Google Analytics precisely to track where users are going.
You don’t install a Google Chrome extension so a company can track every site you are visiting.
> Personally think Google should get rid of them as they are a travesty to online privacy.
More likely that Google would buy them.
So they’re estimating based on a sample that may not represent the population of Spotify subscribers. The only people who know the real figures are Spotify themselves.
It would be interesting to know the names of these chrome extensions and whether the sign up experience clearly communicates the ways in which the users will be tracked.
fwiw I have seen situations where their numbers were completely detached from reality, in absolute terms as well as relative comparisons over time.
They're especially inaccurate for any product with mobile apps, since they have zero insight into that traffic. Nor do they properly extrapolate between the massively different traffic patterns of users with apps (which tends to be a lot stickier) vs web traffic.
Several times, people citing SimilarWeb numbers have argued with me about things where I had first-hand direct knowledge of the correct numbers (e.g., numbers involving a company I worked for). It's frustrating. These people sided with SimilarWeb because it's some source they can cite, nevermind the fact that it was complete garbage in these cases.
They own a number of popular browser extensions which feed them data and provide them a good "sample" of web traffic
It can be surprisingly close
can we stop with this apple music propaganda already?