> There's no concrete criticisms in the blog post other than vaugarities around "big Spotify".
Simply not true. He describes and discusses several concrete problems, all of which are related: Spotify is trying to control his experience in favor of their goals and counter to his. You may not agree with his goals, but they’re plainly stated.
> “… the consumer has a perception of control, but almost everything is controlled by the app-masters and faceless algorithms.”
> “I got tired of the dealing with an app (and a platform) that shoved podcasts and audio books in my face, despite having no interest in them.”
> “… dowdy app that exists not to delight its customers but instead meet the growth objectives of its stock market masters.“
Although I also don't like the podcasts available in Spotify, I agree podcasts do make strategic sense for Spotify from a business perspective compared to recorded music. Spotify competes with internet content creators that make hundreds of hours of content per month. Music production is very labor intensive and musicians usually make 1-2 hours of recorded content per year. To match the output one streamer/YouTuber, you might have to have a team of 100-200 musicians, but I'm not sure most people can name even 50 artists they regularly listen to.
Podcasts, on the other hand, are also capable of cheaply producing hundreds of hours of content per month, and therefore for Spotify, are a logical solution to this problem, and theoretically allow them to compete more effectively with YouTube and streaming.
Whether they can actually produce enough good-quality podcasts is another story though. In some sense The Joe Rogan Experience was supposed to be their Halo, but I'm not sure how much traction it has given to Spotify's platform.
That's not my argument. My argument is this: a reason Spotify might have decided to move into podcasts is that podcasts are more efficient at generating content (measured in hours) than musicians are. It doesn't go the other way though; there's little incentive to generate content less efficiently. (Ignoring the fact that Amazon/Audible do in fact distribute music through Prime Music.)
Simply not true. He describes and discusses several concrete problems, all of which are related: Spotify is trying to control his experience in favor of their goals and counter to his. You may not agree with his goals, but they’re plainly stated.
> “… the consumer has a perception of control, but almost everything is controlled by the app-masters and faceless algorithms.”
> “I got tired of the dealing with an app (and a platform) that shoved podcasts and audio books in my face, despite having no interest in them.”
> “… dowdy app that exists not to delight its customers but instead meet the growth objectives of its stock market masters.“