• Riskable
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      3011 months ago

      They’re investing heavily in podcasts because podcasts are far, far more profitable than music. If they can get people used to (and hooked) on listening to podcasts (any podcasts) through Spotify then all that money spent on popular podcasters will be worth it (in the end).

      I’m sure Spotify would love it if they could stop streaming music entirely and just focus on podcasts. Streaming music costs them a ton of money and overhead (bureaucracy associated with keeping track of and paying artists globally with bazillions of laws and regulations and fees to navigate) whereas podcasts just cost bandwidth.

      • @slaacaa@lemmy.world
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        1011 months ago

        I hate that you’re right. I listen to 0 podcast, it’s just not my format, yet they constantly push it in my face

    • @villainy@lemmy.world
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      1711 months ago

      And I’m very much not a fan of fucking up podcasts as a simple medium delivered by RSS. I have a futile hope that that decision will burn them.

      This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. When they started locking up shows to their app, I cancelled my subscription and dropped Spotify entirely. I don’t even listen to any of the shows they bought but I do listen to a lot of podcasts through Pocket Casts and take umbrage when anybody fucks with the standards.

    • @EnderMB@lemmy.world
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      411 months ago

      Big tech used to be built on the idea that you could work on a moonshot idea, have it fail, and then be reassigned to something new, or swallowed into new orgs. This way, you could work on the next Zune, Fire Phone, or Circles, and not fear for your job - like you would if you worked for a startup.

      Now, they don’t give a fuck. If the moonshot fails, they move the exec to a new org, and fire the entire team. It means that companies like Spotify can diversify their offering while saving money, and due to the poor hiring market and general apathy of tech workers, they just deal with it.