Comment by jgb1984
5 years ago
Myself and every (non-technical) user of Spotify I know complains about the horrible mobile and desktop apps. The android one is an absolute dog, even on mid to high end smartphones.
If you neglect your core features in exchange for pointless trinkets you're setting yourself up for failure.
The first alternative to show up with an equally vast catalog, but a light and fast interface is going to win a lot of customers in no time.
Remember this is streaming: there is no friction for me to switch. I export/import my playlists and it's done.
> The first alternative to show up with an equally vast catalog (...)
This is exactly why Spotify can decay so badly and still succeed. This is why most widely-used apps are so bloated and offer such ridiculously bad UX. It's because the whole point of the business behind them is to ensure there will be no alternative.
Slack, Teams, Discord, et al. live off network effects. You'll go where the community is. At work, you'll use what your employer picks for you, and your employer has a huge list of concerns[0] that are more important to them than user experience. Spotify survives because of the catalog - making a streaming app is relatively trivial; reproducing all the deals with labels and individual artists is an insurmountable barrier. Netflix was untouchable up until their distribution deals expired, at which point the owners of the content all spun up their own streaming services - but a random entrepreneur can't possibly break into that market.
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[0] - Ranging from "does it tick the right cybersecurity questionnaire checkboxes", through "does it integrate with our SSO", "does it work with our SharePoint", to "was the golfing with the salesperson fun".
How many devs do they employ? How big is their cashflow? And still they fail to develop a glorified winamp that's not an exercise in frustration to use? The thing is bloated, slow and riddled with bugs that go years unfixed. Why take the risk of offering such a crap experience, just because you can afford it? Hubris? Incompetence? Both?
> Why take the risk of offering such a crap experience, just because you can afford it? Hubris? Incompetence? Both?
They have an insurmountable barrier to entry built out of their deals with labels and artists. They just don't care - caring cost money that could be used elsewhere in the business.
>This is exactly why Spotify can decay so badly and still succeed.
The thing is, that for many people Spotify wasn't competing with other platforms. Spotify was more convenient than downloading music. And at some point of decay, it no longer is.