From the article: “Once Spotify realized how much attention was going to white noise podcasts, the company considered removing these shows from the talk feed and prohibiting future uploads while redirecting the audience towards comparable programming that was more economical for Spotify — doing so, according to the document, would boost Spotify’s annual gross profit by €35 million, or $38 million.”
That doesn’t sound like it’s costing them $38 million, it sounds like they are speculating they COULD make $38 million. I was confused as to how they would be losing money.
others will become a customer if the price is right.
This is me 100%. I was a huge pirate back in the day. As streaming services grew, I slowly stopped pirating. Netflix and Hulu had enough content to keep me entertained for $20/month. Now there’s too many streamers, commercial free prices are rising close to $20 each, and each service only has a handful of things I want to watch. The open water is looking more tempting every day.
The convenience is the issue for me. There should be minimal friction between me and the movie playing. For a while, around 2010-12, Netflix and also the pirate streaming sites had it right. Things worked like butter, it was beautiful. For a few years, the legit streaming sites got good too but then corporatism ruined it. All the distributors yanked their stuff from Netflix, rolled out half baked apps three years too late, filled them with b movies and a few out of date AAA titles, and basically attempted to make the case that streaming was bad and you should pay for cable and go to the theater.
oh yeah. I stopped pirating during the golden age of Netflix because it was just more convenient to pay and stream. Now piracy has become the easiest way to get new content again.
Personally I get lost in the weeds whenever I look at pirate communities. I was considering a “debrid” service for ease of use but then got hit with “they don’t seed those are super bad” and was told to look into a seedbox, and get invited into trackers, and get stremio, and buy a personal server…
Lol I’m probably overcomplicating things for myself but sheesh my head spins when I get into this stuff.
I just use free streaming sites. In some circumstances pirating is the only way to way to watch the highest quality version of the content. For example, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was AI upscaled to HD by fans after the studio said it was “too expensive” – so pirating is literally the only way to watch it on a modern TV without feeling like you need eyeglasses.
For me it’s not even about price. I only (theoretically!) pirate if I cannot buy the album anywhere. I don’t pay to stream, but I definitely pay to buy so I can listen on my chosen device.
Big production companies don’t want to make their music or movies available for easy use. You have to jump through hoops and stream on some annoying platform rather than pay to download and play wherever you want. Soooo… they don’t get my money. They don’t want my money.
First and foremost the headline is intended to make it sound like Spotify is losing that money. Just look at the comments here and you can see that it’s very commonly misunderstood.
That said, opportunity cost is considered an irrelevant cost.
A relevant cost deals with actual cash flow, and opportunity cost is vapor because it doesn’t actually hit the ledger in any way. It’s nothing more than a way to express potential revenue changes, which are really just educated guesses.
If opportunity costs were meaningful at all then every business would be losing trillions of dollars.
Can’t Spotify make their own in-app white noise (generated locally rather than streamed), and push it to the top of their own search results for “white noise”?
They are using the term “white nose podcast” as an (intentionally oversimplified) term to include all podcasts that people use as a background soundscape.
This includes sounds of nature, cafes, etc.
They could still generate these more economically on the client. Download a set of samples and the algorithm that generates noise out of them. Or just the algorithm, if no samples are required. If someone listens to this for more than a few minutes, it may already pay off, depending on the size of the samples.
So the problem is that white noise doesn’t compress very easily.
Compression algorithms are generally designed to reduce noise; if you have something that’s extremely noisy it’s really hard to compress because that’s not what the algorithms were designed to do.
This means that these podcasts take up more space, which means they use more bandwidth than an equivalent non-white-noise solution.
A middle ground would be banning these “podcasts” and then having a white noise generator built into the app. The white noise generator would run locally on your device (very easy to make white noise) and wouldn’t cost any bandwidth at all.
They should just do it procedurally on the fly.
because after all there was probably some algorithm that generated those all these and saved to a file. Just cut the file…
I’ve wondered for a while now why so few devices seem to generate it on the fly. Even Google Home and Alexa devices seem to play a 1 hour long file that fades out and in. The older, standalone “sound spa” units played a loop a few seconds long, which bothered some listeners who could hear a pattern due to the loop (maybe due to compression artifacts). I imagine it’s probably just computationally more expensive to generate it on the fly, rather than playing a file, but I also suspect that it’s also just companies pushing out the minimum viable product, and looping an audio file is easiest - especially if the device is already designed to play music, or other audio files like “ocean waves” and “babbling brook.”
To this end, one of the pixel phone launches had a website with a really good background idea, which was looping so nicely on the website that I thought I’ll download it and use it myself but it loops so badly on their own bedtime sounds in the clock app and ytm that it’s just a terrible experience, I never tried it in VLC though
I can totally hear a pattern overlaying the white noise sound in my kid’s white noise machine. The sound of the pattern varies based on the level of battery charge, as far as I can tell. I thought it was some kind of unintended noise coming from the circuitry (like maybe bad caps). Given that the underlying white noise sound doesn’t seem to vary based on the state of charge, I am still not sure that the sample length is what causes the pattern, but now you’ve got me super curious to tear the damn thing apart to test the caps.
It’s not just actual “white noise.” It’s many kinds of background noise like nature sounds, etc. Has to be recorded and often edited.
It’s a legit product that makes sp0tify more valuable. They should embrace it but they’re fucking morons who hate both their artists and their audience.
What do you recommend to me so I can easily download and discover music that’s not spotify. You hate them but it seems they’re the top of the game right now
pandora has a really good recommendation algorithm. but for downloading? I recommend Deezer. you can download music with deemix-gui to download to mp3, wav, flac
Youtube music is pretty good on recommendations and its free with youtube premium so i think its a vastly more valuable service. (Or just use music revanced and get it for free)
Allmusic is 100% my favorite place to find new recommendations. I get to actively hunt instead of being fed by an algorithm (though they have too many ads now).
If you absolutely must be a $p0tify zombie who is mentally unable to find recommendations literally everywhere else in our music-obsessed world then you can still buy the albums you like to actually support the artists instead of basically pirating through a big tech app.
Another solution then: automatically download/cache a user’s most frequently played tracks. I know downloading is a premium feature or whatever but they should consider it if it would save them money.
Not just frequently played tracks. Sell me the MP3 or WAV or FLAC file, give most of the money to the artist, and let me transfer the files to any device I want. Anything less is too restrictive.
For streaming services like Spotifiy, whitenoise does not use more bandwidth than any other podcasts, songs etc.
This is because they are usually using lossy compression which will compress the audio with a specified average bitrate, so e.g. 160 kbits. This means the final audio stream is about the same size no matter what content you’re listing to. This would only matter for streaming sites like Tidal that use lossless compression to deliver a identical bit stream. And even then, the best lossless compression algorithms only safe about half the bitrate, so worst case the audio stream would be twice the size.
Also with modern lossy audio compression algorithms like opus, people will struggle to hear any difference with most kind of audio (including white noise), even in A/B tests. With lossless compression you don’t have a identical bit stream to the source material, but with high enough bitrates it is good enough that people won’t hear a difference.
I agree though that a white noise generator in the app would be a nice feature to save some bandwidth.
A side effect of what? I’m really not following sp0tify’s problem with this. If people are listening to it then people are hearing the advertisements. How would they make more money without these popular streams?
I suspect that most people don’t subscribe to Spotify to listen to white noise but other music. So they might not lose a lot of revenue because white noise is not their core value proposition.
But in those times when a user wants white noise, and if sp0tify doesn’t provide it, are we sure they’re going to listen to something else on sp0tify rather than listening to white noise from another provider?
It just seems ridiculous to deny listeners something they seem to really like that you’re already providing.
Streaming and hosting white noise on their servers costs them money, most people who are using these podcasts probably just do it while they’re asleep and happen to have a spotify subscription. These people aren’t going to cancel a subscription because they need another app for white noise.
Spotify could add a generator for white noise soundscapes to their app, but there are countless applications that do this already for free, including open source options. If they aren’t giving money to people uploading soundscapes, they can take more money from monthly subscriptions themselves and give more to artists, increasing their profits and making their platform more desirable than their competitors, which has been an issue for them in the past with criticism from major artists and indies alike.
Overall these noise streams exist to game the system by getting people to play for a long time on content that’s probably just made by hitting the play button on a generator app written by someone other than the uploader, and it’s likely the only reason it happens is people don’t want to download an additional free app for that task
You’re making a lot of assumptions. If people are paying for sp0tify, let them listen to what they choose (within the restrctive enclosure of a streaming app). If advertisers are paying per play, then they’re paying sp0tify when people stream white noise.
Sp0tify is pirating. That’s bad enough. But now they want to dictate what you’re allowed to pirate. Gross.
From the article: “Once Spotify realized how much attention was going to white noise podcasts, the company considered removing these shows from the talk feed and prohibiting future uploads while redirecting the audience towards comparable programming that was more economical for Spotify — doing so, according to the document, would boost Spotify’s annual gross profit by €35 million, or $38 million.” That doesn’t sound like it’s costing them $38 million, it sounds like they are speculating they COULD make $38 million. I was confused as to how they would be losing money.
Yea, I hate when opportunity cost and loss are conflated.
Opportunity cost will be the death of our current system IMO.
Buying up housing, hiking subscription prices because Oooh We Can Make More Money, They Will Pay For It Anyway
And piracy. Most people who pirate had no intention of being customers to begin with… and others will become a customer if the price is right.
This is me 100%. I was a huge pirate back in the day. As streaming services grew, I slowly stopped pirating. Netflix and Hulu had enough content to keep me entertained for $20/month. Now there’s too many streamers, commercial free prices are rising close to $20 each, and each service only has a handful of things I want to watch. The open water is looking more tempting every day.
The convenience is the issue for me. There should be minimal friction between me and the movie playing. For a while, around 2010-12, Netflix and also the pirate streaming sites had it right. Things worked like butter, it was beautiful. For a few years, the legit streaming sites got good too but then corporatism ruined it. All the distributors yanked their stuff from Netflix, rolled out half baked apps three years too late, filled them with b movies and a few out of date AAA titles, and basically attempted to make the case that streaming was bad and you should pay for cable and go to the theater.
So I sail the seas more than ever.
oh yeah. I stopped pirating during the golden age of Netflix because it was just more convenient to pay and stream. Now piracy has become the easiest way to get new content again.
Come join us ye scaleewag. Thar be free booty across the bay in all directions.
Personally I get lost in the weeds whenever I look at pirate communities. I was considering a “debrid” service for ease of use but then got hit with “they don’t seed those are super bad” and was told to look into a seedbox, and get invited into trackers, and get stremio, and buy a personal server…
Lol I’m probably overcomplicating things for myself but sheesh my head spins when I get into this stuff.
Honestly, the old Bay and a vpn is all I use. The top 100 hd movies alone is worth a peek every few weeks to see what pops up.
I just use free streaming sites. In some circumstances pirating is the only way to way to watch the highest quality version of the content. For example, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was AI upscaled to HD by fans after the studio said it was “too expensive” – so pirating is literally the only way to watch it on a modern TV without feeling like you need eyeglasses.
Yarg, I came for the booty and never left!
YARRRRR
Exactly. They had a sweet spot for a tiny slice of time. If they had kept that going it would be all good.
For me it’s not even about price. I only (theoretically!) pirate if I cannot buy the album anywhere. I don’t pay to stream, but I definitely pay to buy so I can listen on my chosen device.
Big production companies don’t want to make their music or movies available for easy use. You have to jump through hoops and stream on some annoying platform rather than pay to download and play wherever you want. Soooo… they don’t get my money. They don’t want my money.
Opportunity cost is still a cost, and this article is about “costs”.
First and foremost the headline is intended to make it sound like Spotify is losing that money. Just look at the comments here and you can see that it’s very commonly misunderstood.
That said, opportunity cost is considered an irrelevant cost.
A relevant cost deals with actual cash flow, and opportunity cost is vapor because it doesn’t actually hit the ledger in any way. It’s nothing more than a way to express potential revenue changes, which are really just educated guesses.
If opportunity costs were meaningful at all then every business would be losing trillions of dollars.
Next: Not Raising Subscriptions to $100/month is Costing Spotify More Than 1 Billion Dollars per Year.
Can’t Spotify make their own in-app white noise (generated locally rather than streamed), and push it to the top of their own search results for “white noise”?
They are using the term “white nose podcast” as an (intentionally oversimplified) term to include all podcasts that people use as a background soundscape. This includes sounds of nature, cafes, etc.
They could still generate these more economically on the client. Download a set of samples and the algorithm that generates noise out of them. Or just the algorithm, if no samples are required. If someone listens to this for more than a few minutes, it may already pay off, depending on the size of the samples.
So the problem is that white noise doesn’t compress very easily.
Compression algorithms are generally designed to reduce noise; if you have something that’s extremely noisy it’s really hard to compress because that’s not what the algorithms were designed to do.
This means that these podcasts take up more space, which means they use more bandwidth than an equivalent non-white-noise solution.
A middle ground would be banning these “podcasts” and then having a white noise generator built into the app. The white noise generator would run locally on your device (very easy to make white noise) and wouldn’t cost any bandwidth at all.
They should just do it procedurally on the fly. because after all there was probably some algorithm that generated those all these and saved to a file. Just cut the file…
I’ve wondered for a while now why so few devices seem to generate it on the fly. Even Google Home and Alexa devices seem to play a 1 hour long file that fades out and in. The older, standalone “sound spa” units played a loop a few seconds long, which bothered some listeners who could hear a pattern due to the loop (maybe due to compression artifacts). I imagine it’s probably just computationally more expensive to generate it on the fly, rather than playing a file, but I also suspect that it’s also just companies pushing out the minimum viable product, and looping an audio file is easiest - especially if the device is already designed to play music, or other audio files like “ocean waves” and “babbling brook.”
Because marketing doesnt want to ask engineering and think they’re brilliant when they come up with their own solution.
And when engineering tries to explain the downsides marketing gets mad like they’re being insulted.
To this end, one of the pixel phone launches had a website with a really good background idea, which was looping so nicely on the website that I thought I’ll download it and use it myself but it loops so badly on their own bedtime sounds in the clock app and ytm that it’s just a terrible experience, I never tried it in VLC though
I can totally hear a pattern overlaying the white noise sound in my kid’s white noise machine. The sound of the pattern varies based on the level of battery charge, as far as I can tell. I thought it was some kind of unintended noise coming from the circuitry (like maybe bad caps). Given that the underlying white noise sound doesn’t seem to vary based on the state of charge, I am still not sure that the sample length is what causes the pattern, but now you’ve got me super curious to tear the damn thing apart to test the caps.
It’s not just actual “white noise.” It’s many kinds of background noise like nature sounds, etc. Has to be recorded and often edited.
It’s a legit product that makes sp0tify more valuable. They should embrace it but they’re fucking morons who hate both their artists and their audience.
Fuck sp0tify a million times. I really hate them.
What do you recommend to me so I can easily download and discover music that’s not spotify. You hate them but it seems they’re the top of the game right now
pandora has a really good recommendation algorithm. but for downloading? I recommend Deezer. you can download music with deemix-gui to download to mp3, wav, flac
Youtube music is pretty good on recommendations and its free with youtube premium so i think its a vastly more valuable service. (Or just use music revanced and get it for free)
Bandcamp has recommendations
Allmusic.com has “similar artists” and browse-by-genre and -style (and mood and theme etc)
Everything you listen to on YouTube sends you down a new rabbithole
Discogs.com has recommendations
Allmusic is 100% my favorite place to find new recommendations. I get to actively hunt instead of being fed by an algorithm (though they have too many ads now).
If you absolutely must be a $p0tify zombie who is mentally unable to find recommendations literally everywhere else in our music-obsessed world then you can still buy the albums you like to actually support the artists instead of basically pirating through a big tech app.
Another solution then: automatically download/cache a user’s most frequently played tracks. I know downloading is a premium feature or whatever but they should consider it if it would save them money.
Not just frequently played tracks. Sell me the MP3 or WAV or FLAC file, give most of the money to the artist, and let me transfer the files to any device I want. Anything less is too restrictive.
For streaming services like Spotifiy, whitenoise does not use more bandwidth than any other podcasts, songs etc.
This is because they are usually using lossy compression which will compress the audio with a specified average bitrate, so e.g. 160 kbits. This means the final audio stream is about the same size no matter what content you’re listing to. This would only matter for streaming sites like Tidal that use lossless compression to deliver a identical bit stream. And even then, the best lossless compression algorithms only safe about half the bitrate, so worst case the audio stream would be twice the size.
Also with modern lossy audio compression algorithms like opus, people will struggle to hear any difference with most kind of audio (including white noise), even in A/B tests. With lossless compression you don’t have a identical bit stream to the source material, but with high enough bitrates it is good enough that people won’t hear a difference.
I agree though that a white noise generator in the app would be a nice feature to save some bandwidth.
In corporate math any money you’re willingly not making is a loss. No it’s not rational, it’s all about justifying the worst things for profit.
Same reason people lie by claiming piracy loses money
If they block the stuff people like, won’t they lose the revenue brought in by those people?
Only of those people subscribed to Spotify to listen to white noise. I suspect it’s a side effect…
A side effect of what? I’m really not following sp0tify’s problem with this. If people are listening to it then people are hearing the advertisements. How would they make more money without these popular streams?
I suspect that most people don’t subscribe to Spotify to listen to white noise but other music. So they might not lose a lot of revenue because white noise is not their core value proposition.
But in those times when a user wants white noise, and if sp0tify doesn’t provide it, are we sure they’re going to listen to something else on sp0tify rather than listening to white noise from another provider?
It just seems ridiculous to deny listeners something they seem to really like that you’re already providing.
Streaming and hosting white noise on their servers costs them money, most people who are using these podcasts probably just do it while they’re asleep and happen to have a spotify subscription. These people aren’t going to cancel a subscription because they need another app for white noise.
Spotify could add a generator for white noise soundscapes to their app, but there are countless applications that do this already for free, including open source options. If they aren’t giving money to people uploading soundscapes, they can take more money from monthly subscriptions themselves and give more to artists, increasing their profits and making their platform more desirable than their competitors, which has been an issue for them in the past with criticism from major artists and indies alike.
Overall these noise streams exist to game the system by getting people to play for a long time on content that’s probably just made by hitting the play button on a generator app written by someone other than the uploader, and it’s likely the only reason it happens is people don’t want to download an additional free app for that task
You’re making a lot of assumptions. If people are paying for sp0tify, let them listen to what they choose (within the restrctive enclosure of a streaming app). If advertisers are paying per play, then they’re paying sp0tify when people stream white noise.
Sp0tify is pirating. That’s bad enough. But now they want to dictate what you’re allowed to pirate. Gross.
Fuck corpo