How much of the market do they have? Something like bigger than everyone else combined. If they are not monopoly, they are pretty close
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Spotify Seeking to Bar Apps That Transfer to Other Music Services From Using SDK
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Every company wants rules that protect them. And they complain when they don't have an advantage. They will sy they want a 'level playing field' but that is nearly never true. They want the advantage. I don't think any company has ever sued to create a truly level playing field. They want a playing field that is graded in their direction.
exactly the same as you. I’m also going to be cancelling my Spotify family subscription.
That's not the case though. You're not transferring content. It's the playlists you created and data you saved that is unique to you. To that you have all the rights as per GDPR. That's all people want and they are right to do so. Trust me, if Spotify would put up a banner stating at sign-up that you can never transfer the playlist you created to another service, they'd be dead in an instance. No one would ever subscribe to their service any more. They want to allow for competition? Great. They need to stay competitive. Currently they're not.
bingo!
User generated playlists are, by their very definition, a users own content.
None of these services should be restricting any access to that…
In fact if they were operating in good faith they would be openly enabling you to take it with you anywhere you wanted.
Think of all the hours of listening that go into liking and disliking tracks to have a more curated experience on all the services. That is highly valuable and the lock in effect is large… And it’s all done with data that is your own.
It's official... I actually hate Spotify now. I always thought I would transfer back to their service once they develop a real standalone Watch app... one that enables both cellular streaming and offline playback. They were so slow to develop one that I was forced to move to Apple Music quite some time ago and I actually used Song Shift to make to make that transition easier. I used to think that Spotify was a cool brand and pro-consumer but now I think they're a bunch of babies and I will not be going back ever now. Spotify, you're focusing your efforts on the wrong projects!!! Keep customers by making them happy... not through imprisonment, you bullies!
There is nothing in the GPDR that requires a company to "let you leave with your data" whatever that means. Even if there was, Spotify could satisfy that by providing you with a list of songs in your playlist. It would not be required to create an API so rival companies could access such data.
what is a good alternative to SongShift? looks like SongShift already can't be used to transfer from Spotify to Apple Music - kicking myself for getting my data out earlier...
Spotify is reportedly seeking to admonish developers who use its API for apps that allow users to transfer to a rival music streaming service, such as Apple Music, by revoking access to the Spotify SDK.
Developers who facilitate users with the ability to copy their Spotify library and playlists to other services are being informed that their access to the Spotify SDK is to be revoked.
Music streaming service transfer app SongShift has issued a post saying that it has been told to stop offering transfers away from Spotify or it will lose access to the Spotify SDK.
Spotify has allowed SongShift to continue offering transfers into its service, however. Only transfers out to other streaming services have been blocked.
The move is backed by Spotify's developer agreement, which states that developers should not "transfer Spotify Content... to another music service that competes with Spotify or the Spotify Service."
In recent months, Spotify has heavily criticized Apple for anti-competitive behavior. The company has joined the "Coalition for App Fairness" to "fight back" against Apple, sided with Epic Games over its ongoing dispute with Apple, and formally complained to the European Comission about Apple allegedly stifling competition, resulting in an EU antitrust investigation.
The move to actively prevent users from transferring away from Spotify, thereby constraining competition, seems peculiar as the company has railed against Apple for supposedly doing the same. Interestingly, Apple has not instituted any equivalent bar on transferring away from Apple Music to other streaming services.
Article Link: Spotify Seeking to Bar Apps That Transfer to Other Music Services From Using SDK
Phew! Got out just in time (used such a service last week). RIP Spotify.
It appears to be too late. I just downloaded SongShift and for Spotify the choice is Destination only.
That is what Spotify is going to disallow, those apps won't work anymore if they close the APIs.
Then you need to read the GDPR law, which I have and had to pour through long documents compiled by expensive law-firms to grasp just how huge the requirements were. It very clearly states that a service must give you a method that allows you to download and delete all your personal data. That can be as simple as having a contact email with a human downloading your data for you from the database directly or highly automated like Facebook does, but the feature absolutely has to be there! Spotify went for the automated version of generating that data, so now they should legally be bound to satisfy the requirement. The API is already there, has been for ages, but Spotify now claims the transfer apps are not using it the way it was intended.
Use FreeYourMusic. Still works. I am doing a transfer of 8000 titles as we speak. https://freeyourmusic.com/en
This is the only reason I still keep Spotify around. I’m not going to leave Apple Music but I sometimes listen to Spotify’s playlists and end up transferring them to my Apple Music library. If I can’t do that, then I’ll simply delete Spotify and they’ll lose whatever remaining engagement I had with the company.
Same exact situation here, cancelled Spotify premium today over this hostile move. I have several playlists well over 1,000 songs, and no longer trust Spotify as the preferred service going forward. The long term business model clearly favors Apple Music, despite some shortcomings such as lack of sorting songs in individual playlists within the iOS app, and lack of cross fading in iOS—for now.
That’s a bummer.
A long time ago I made a web app that allowed users to transfer their library from rdio, which was closing at the time, to Apple Music or Spotify. Spotify’s api was pretty decent as they just added the ability to add an entire album to your library instead of an individual song.
I ended up not switching to Spotify because of their low 10k song library cap and went with Apple Music. I understand they’ve dropped this limitation now but I strongly dislike Spotify’s UI.
A long time ago I made a web app that allowed users to transfer their library from rdio, which was closing at the time, to Apple Music or Spotify. Spotify’s api was pretty decent as they just added the ability to add an entire album to your library instead of an individual song.
I ended up not switching to Spotify because of their low 10k song library cap and went with Apple Music. I understand they’ve dropped this limitation now but I strongly dislike Spotify’s UI.
While I'm heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, Apple Music is still missing one critical feature that Spotify has had for years. Spotify Connect. That feature alone is invaluable as I tend to use my all of my devices for consuming audio. I can seamlessly pass the audio through a different device. I can start a playlist on my phone, continue it on my watch, continue it on my computer while working, back to my phone when leaving, etc.. After 5 years, they still don't have a feature like that. AirPlay is near useless in most situations, unless you happen to have a bunch of AirPlay enabled devices.
Spotify even introduced a cool feature earlier this year or sometime last year that builds on Connect by allowing two local users to share a playlist and play the same song from each of their devices. Not something I've used much, but the times I have, it was pretty cool.