Spotify has raised prices for the second time in a year, with no new benefits, after its CEO sparked outrage by claiming the cost of creating 'content' is 'close to zero'

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 1006 points –
Spotify announces price hike, right after CEO enrages music fans by claiming the cost of creating 'content' is 'close to zero'
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Who cares what the "company" does when, as CEO, you rake almost $400 MILLION a year

https://mywage.ca/salary/celebrity-salary/daniel-ek

PS: and this is while receiving "no salary" (which they sell as if they were running a charity and meager $1.4 million in "other" compensation

I mean I understand there are a lot of caveats to that statement. Like I said, just kind of a surprising number. A company as massive as Spotify can have its revenue shift 10 of millions easily within a year, which means with a little nudge they could easily become unprofitable.

It would be like, I don’t know, realizing after you’ve paid all of your bills and groceries everything you have $300 at the end of the month. Not a lot of wiggle room. This isn’t sympathy and the stakes aren’t the same lol, I’m just saying their margins are not as high as I would have suspected.

A cursory search shows me competing figures - 7000+ and 15000+ employees. Both are very, very large numbers. Id have guessed they make hundreds of millions a year, not mid-8 figures. That’s probably what their payroll runs for 3-6mo.

Edit: for perspective, they have over 200mill paying subscribers. If ~800,000 left they’d be break even. That’s like .4% of their MAU’s.

It would be like, I don’t know, realizing after you’ve paid all of your bills and groceries everything you have $300 at the end of the month. Not a lot of wiggle room

Well that depends... if I have only $300 at the end of the month but I have already paid every bill and allocated $1,000,000 for entertainment, another $1,000,000 for personal expenses, another $1,000,000 for pet services, etc etc etc... the $300 left mean nothing... why do I need "wiggle room" when I can not just wiggle but literally run in every direction until I get tired and still not hit any limits?

The relatively small profit margin is a PR strategy... one that is working well on you giving you the false impression the company is "tight" when in reality, they are milking every bit of it before you get to that figure.

It’s not good PR because it makes me think they’re poorly structured and poorly allocating their money lol

if it makes you not buy into their subscription, then it's poor PR... if it makes you think they are not greedy fucks, then it's good PR

None of this impacts whether or not I pay them. It makes me think they are wasteful and greedy. Those are not mutually exclusive

if it makes you change your opinion of them but not enough to either pay them or stop paying them, then it means nothing to them

The only reasons I should pay or not pay for something are 1) quality of service for the cost and 2) ethical considerations.

Poor management does not factor in unless i am dependent on it for work. This is purely entertainment. Their being dumbasses is not a factor.

You’re kind of moving the goalposts here as well. This is a silly debate at this point. All I said was I was surprised at the stated profit.

Ok, my only goal in replying to you was to point out that, your surprise is based on some fake, very easily manipulable information... They do this manipulation in part to portrait themselves as something they are not, which is part of the PR strategy whether it works on you or not... that is all