I am not a product manager or something but I have been thinking about case of Spotify for a while now. The free tier used to be generous for average users to use. People can listen to songs (with ads) while using features like shuffles, play in order for albums (after Adele requested spotify to have "listen in order" as default listening mode) and lyrics (I will come back to this again).
But recently spotify shifted (or should I say fucked up?) on free tier a lot, taking away features from the free tier to the paid tier. Well this is not totally the first time a product did this. Whenever a product is so good that people don't need a reason to buy their paid tier and company desperately needs to earn profits, they take out some of the good features and place it on the paid tier. Obviously, they would make sure that users would not be affected drastically and some might move to paid tier to enjoy the benefits they once had.
But what spotify did was totally fuck it up. I mean they prolly know they might. They took out lyrics and placed on paid tier, then the default listening mode to shuffle randomly (they call it "smart shuffle") which randomly adds new songs to the shuffle that are not even album before the album fully ends. I don't know whether this would affect artists but this totally defeats the purpose of trying to find and listening to a specific album. So whenever you want to listen to a new album of Kanye West, or your favorite K Pop band, you can't.
As for lyrics, I think one of the key reasons spotify spread across India when they came out is because of the lyrics sharing feature. People shared the lyrics that hit the most in a good looking manner in instagram stories. Lyrics that hit hard, made you cry or made you think or made you think the artist just "✍️🔥". My 9/11.
I mean, even before spotify went hard to dry out the free tier they had two things on the paid tier that did the justice for their paid tier. Listen together and "very high" audio quality. While most of us don't give a shit about the latter one (like I did for the most of the part), the former one was a game changer. It was not something totally new. I mean there were websites where people shared youtube links and listened to the music with friends (even way before discord). But to do that in the app with spotify was convinient. It was the only reason I bought a paid tier so I could listen to my playlist with my (ex) girfriend and friends back then. Spotify were also planning to introduce FLAC which might have been posed a serious competition to Deezer and Qobuz but they decided to not to (I wonder why).
Why will it back fire for them one day?
These days the only reason people keep using spotify is not because of the "now generous" free tier but because there are no solid competitiors out there. Gaana and other music providers were either cleared out or merged to one other. Apple does not have free tier and Deezer and Qobuz is not on countries like India. All the ground work spotify did until now to become the go-to music listening app is working now but at the cost of us making them monopoly and them trying to make us either buy their paid tier or tolerate their shitty free tier.
Perhaps, if one day apple releases free tier or a new competition emerges, spotify will not only crumble but will be a text book chapter for "How not to force people to make them buy your free tier". Well, again the chances are kinda on the wall because spotify still has listen together. But who knows, it's not hard to implement if you got a bunch of good devs and a good time. Do that Apple and others, c'mon.
Besides me yapping, this has another major effect. They don't even innovate anymore. Video previews? Who asked that? Concerts information? Okay that's decent. But I can't think of something that made "Spotify" the go-to since listen together. Their current state of plans doesn't seem like they are out of ideas but they don't want to.
What my concern here really is, if this actually works out long time for spotify then soon it will spread to other products. Netflix has already cracked down on password sharing. Well I never used them to begin but think about other products you use everyday with generous free tiers? Paid tiers, in my opinion should only have features that might take out extra bandwidth, resources or developers time on the products. Listen together, or watch party in streaming apps or better quality or character limits in twitter. Features that are not necessary in a product but only "enhances the experience" further. But if the current playbook wins, the basic "what should this app do" features will be also locked down in the apps you use everyday. Spotify is not the only service you might have to pay.
If spotify wants new ideas, ohh I have one. Bring back FLAC quality you promised please. or some connect with artists for paid tier fans in any way. or let the listeners have a way to pay to the artists directly and take a small commision out of it. or sell the concert tickets of artists and again, take a small commision out of it. Ideas are easy to find. Stop trying to be apple of the music industry.
I think they’re already very corrupted in terms of high disparity in employee pay, stealing and not crediting ideas of interns, firing good devs that brought heart to the company (like the wrapped guys who got fired - which led to the shitty wrapped for 2024) and just the overarching theme of capitalist greed recalling the likes of apple and amazon. However, they don’t have the amazon monopoly. And that, is exactly why competition will potentially eliminate them.
@Sai Remember Gaana back then with their "Gaana exclusives"? And where they are now? Nowhere. Hope Spotify takes that for a lesson. I always thought Spotify was a cool company to work at but it doesn't seem like that.
But you are right. They do not have monopoly as I thought of while I was writing this blog (https://www.businessofapps.com/data/music-streaming-market/). YT music is still a good competitor if I recall now.