8 tweets · January 2021 · 16 likes · 1 retweets · read on Twitter
Fuck this.
From the outside, I can say "well, it's partially an incentive thing". And that's true. But from the inside, "the incentives" are no excuse, as this article (aimed at academics) makes clear many times over: talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/0…
What are the actual leverage points? Is it the case that $10/mo for [ALL THE MUSIC] is just too low to pay the artists enough and the company enough? Can't spend it twice. Some numbers would definitely be too low. How do we know $10 is enough?
While writing this thread I rewatched this brilliant hilarious deadpan interview. While playing almost clueless, Jack unambiguously cautions would-be IPO investors against the $10/mo streaming business. youtube.com/watch?v=LB1sTH…
Seems like (if you read the original thread I QT'd) Spotify is maybe making it work for the investors by screwing over the actual artists. What enables this to happen? It's not as simple as "capitalism". Who gave Spotify the capital to be unsustainably competitive? VCs? Saudis?
@paulg has a classic essay Do Things That Don't Scale This Spotify thing, and the way Uber has undercut taxis, are sort of the opposite. It's like "claw your way to scale by any means necessary because you can't afford not to". paulgraham.com/ds.html
I have a lot of respect for companies relentlessly seeking the smoothest possible user experience & not settling for existing low expectations. Amazon does amazing work here too! What's confusing: in all these cases, half of the better UX is design, half is externalities.
Re Spotify, if you haven't read my design rant about audio-streaming services, that's definitely a great place to surf to from here:
