They had to call it "Spotify Unwrapped". Bad move. Too close to a trademark.<p>If they'd called it "Crappy Streaming Service Royalty Calculator", Spotify would not have had any legal grounds to complain. Even if they used a Spotify logo to identify the Spotify calculation option.
On this topic, I'm sick and tired of Spotify's recommendation algorithm and ready to jump to a superior service, would love to hear HN's recommendations. Happy to pay for a good service.<p>My listening style basically comes down to vibe, e.g. "I want to imagine myself as a jaded ex-con planning my next heist" and "I'm duking it out with an aggressively hegemonizing von Neumann swarm in the asteroid belt"
So how do the other streaming services compare, this isn’t sustainable.<p>So pretty much there all the same, SoundCloud though is different<p><a href="https://blog.groover.co/en/tips/how-much-do-streaming-services-pay-musicians-en/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.groover.co/en/tips/how-much-do-streaming-servic...</a><p>To pu it another way, what level of Royalties should be paid? It just seems to be market to the bottom. Gigs and merch.
The website appears to still be up, I literally used it minutes before posting this comment. Is this the correct URL <a href="https://www.spotify-unwrapped.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.spotify-unwrapped.com/</a> ?
in a serious society, Spotify (and related business models) would never exist. the profession of music producer is almost a voluntary job with negative ROI
Lots of words about a legal threat, but I didn't actually see what those words were that were so threatening. On what grounds does Spotify have the ability to shut down a satire site? How spineless are Unwrapped to immediately cave?<p>The entire discussion here is people's opinion on the Spotify service compared to its competitors, yet no actual discussion of TFA.
Hot take: Maybe music consumption and production has changed enough that it's basically a commodity now, and maybe not worth paying "full" price for anymore most of the time?<p>There's a tiny handful of artists for whom I'd go out of my way to buy an album directly from them (or a t shirt, or concert or whatever, just to support them).<p>But for most of my day, music is more just a background thing, like having the radio on, and I don't really pay attention to what's playing or know or care who makes it. Most of it could be (or maybe already is) AI generated and I wouldn't know the difference. I would not pay $20 for an album of that stuff.<p>I think it's interesting to compare the music industry with the video games one. Both have a glut of suppliers with many invisible titles and producers trailing behind a few famous ones. Both had physical media and big publishers in the 90s and 2000s before transitioning to downloads and streaming. The PC games market moved to pretty effective market segmentation divided between full price new release titles, Steam sales for older games, and first or third party subscriptions like EA Play or Ubisoft Plus or Microsoft Gamepass. Each reaches a different part of the market and can accommodate both players who rent and those who buy. There's also room for smaller indie games, between Steam and Humble Bundle and GOG.<p>The music market seems archaic, oligopolistic, and predatory by comparison. Where's the Valve of music, offering a great service for both consumers and producers? We do have Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc., but why can't they make the finances there work when the also expensive video games market seemed to be doing OK (at least until the post covid bubble burst these last two years)?
Reminder: A frontend-only web app can be anonymously deployed for free on Github pages, Gitlab pages, Netlify, Zeronet (with a proxy?).<p>No reason to tip your opponents about your real identity, even if you break no laws, we have the developers of Tornado Cash in prison for crimes they didn't commit, OpenAI's and Boeing's whistleblowers where found dead in mysterious circumstances.
The language of the article implies that Spotify rips artists off while their executives earn millions.<p>The problem is the millions the executives make do not come directly from Spotify's revenue, they come from stocks which are only loosely related.<p>Don't get me wrong, Spotify has many issues. And should be rightfully criticized. but if you are going to parody them makes sure it is a humoristic pretence that most people would understand. Juxtaposing CEO stock selling revenue with how much artists actually make, is more misleading than it is humoristic - as stocks prices are merely loosely linked to company income, and by extension loosely linked to the artist's cut.<p>So I would assume that if a case to be made for taking down the website - it is because it did not convey it is a parody and was edging defamation.
Serious question - is there no "lite" version of bulletproof hosting where they're not as willing to host e.g. silk road but happy to throw cease and desists by the likes of Spotify for this sort of nonsense in the bin? Surely this is a good opportunity for some enterprising Russians? With how relations are nowadays, it's hard to imagine Putin would give a toss.