Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Spotify wants to be TikTok now? | The Vergecast”.
Foreign: let’s talk about the other biggest Design Story in technology which is Spotify in the general tick tockification of everything David. You wrote up the design. There was an event this week Alex Heath. Was there we’re going to have some more coverage? We got an interview with her head of design and decoder coming out next week, but tell us what’s going on Spotify, yes, so this was spotify’s stream on event, which it does occasionally the last one I think was two years ago.
It’S their big kind of State of the Union. Here’S what’s going on at Spotify thing, and mostly they talk to creators. It was like 90 minutes of them being like. Are you a Creator? We love you all creators, we love you. We are Spotify come to Spotify. We love you, creators, hello, they brought out the Jonas Brothers just to introduce a video which was the coolest Flex. I’Ve ever seen in my entire life. They just came out and they were like look, Jennifer Lopez also likes Spotify, and then they left it was amazing, but anyway uh. The big announcement was that they’re redesigning the Spotify homepage and anyone who has used Spotify knows that. Basically, Spotify is just like a lot of album covers: that’s the only sort of design in there. It’S just rows and rows of tiles of album covers, and now it looks a lot more like some mix of like Instagram stories and Tick Tock and like a little bit of YouTube. But the idea is basically, if you go to like the podcasts thing. Instead of getting a bunch of album covers of podcasts you’re gon na get actual like feeds of Auto playing podcasts um they’re they’re big into video for as a thing they’re big into big imagery.
Now the idea is to be much more sort of immersive and also like discoverable uh. Instead of just fighting to have better album covers, it’s gon na actually start to try to play you the most interesting bit of a podcast or a song or an audiobook, and actually connect to you that way. So that’s the sort of tick tockification of it all everything is much more full screen. It’S Auto playing it’s much louder, it’s much more Visual and, as far as I can tell, Spotify users hate this in the same way that they’ve hated every other non-music listening thing that Spotify has done, which is now the impossible track.
That Spotify is on where Spotify is like. Okay, as we’ve talked about many times in the show, it turns out being a streaming. Music company is an awful awful awful awful discuss. Don’T do it if you ever want to make any money.
So Spotify is now this big company that, like can’t stop losing money on music and is trying desperately to find other ways to make money. They’Ve they’ve made this big bet on podcasts they’ve bought an audiobook company they’re trying to make live audio happen, and then you have uh Spotify users who just keep raising their hand being like. I just would like to listen to my music.
Please can you leave me alone, and this is Spotify trying to sort of satisfy everybody and uh, at least based on the reaction to what we’ve seen the app is not out yet for most people, but uh people do not like the idea of what Spotify is Going for here, as far as I can tell I’m very sympathetic to the notion that people hate redesigns I’ve, I’ve lived here. Yes, absolutely that’s fine, but I will say that we uh read. It did a mild redesign. This week too, we had the chief product person from Reddit on decoder they’re splitting that into a text feed and a video feed, and all the feedback is get this video feed out of my face. Yep, like we don’t want it, even though all of the numbers inside of Reddit are oh boy, people are spending a lot of time on video people hate the video player. If we’re going to do video, we should we should just put it over there and make a video feed and a text feed and even then people. I get this video out of my face right. So I think, there’s like a revealed preference, that’s when you’re alone in your private time, you’re watching the videos and when someone asks you about it. You’Re, like I never watch videos, I only read novels and I think every one of these companies is like dealing with that, but the challenge there is the metrics don’t track reality right because it’s like, if I’m on Spotify, is a perfectly good example right. If I open up Spotify press play on a playlist turn, my phone off put it in my pocket and never touch it again in a certain sense. That’S a huge Victory right like that is the intended use of Spotify. I can listen to music all day without needing to interact with the app like from user experience. That’S a gigantic win uh for Spotify trying to like make money and sell lots of really great powerful visual ads.
That’S a disaster, and so what this is now is Spotify saying, and they even said this during the stream on event. They’Re, like we’re not worried about engagement, metrics we’re not here to just try to keep you inside of our app as much as you can, while very clearly building things that auto play that autoplay with sound and that are designed to be endlessly scrolling. So that you look at them for much longer, it’s like at some point. You can’t have it both ways and they’re going to be like. Oh well, engagement went way up and it’s like well.
Of course it did. But that’s are we sure that’s good like? Is that what we want out of Spotify yeah? I so one thing that the music industry in particular is fighting against straight up is tick tock Tick, Tock is where every song breaks. It’S where I don’t know like Fleetwood.
Mac Rises like a zombie to continue haunting me for the rest of my days. It’S a tiresome it’s beautifully made and I understand they were all dating each other and it is on a technical level, some of the finest music ever made. It is so boring.
I’M sorry, I can’t I’ve been ranting on Fleetwood Mac, since I was 16 years old. This is like the sanded off edges of me talking about, but like that’s a thing that happened right, the guy riding the longboard in California, getting the free Cranberries for life or whatever is entirely a tick tock phenomenon. I realize that if you don’t know what I’m talking about that sounded completely Bonkers, but if you just put those words into Google, you will you will understand it’s a whole thing that happened: yep uh, that’s Tick! Tock, like Tick Tock, just like made that song relevant again and made Fleetwood Mac relevant again, it’s doing it over and over and over again it’s where new artists break.
It’S changing the complexion of the music industry, it’s making songs shorter, which is very funny uh. It’S like sampling, it like everything is in the music industry is happening on Tick, Tock and then, Underneath It All Tick. Tock is not a music service really and so they’re kind of like yeah music industry. You want to break a song. Just pay us a bunch of money and we’ll make sure those tracks get promoted in a way that, if Spotify does it and people claim Spotify does it, but if they actually do that, everyone will get really mad at Spotify yeah. So, like spotify’s just got a major problem on its hands that all discovery happens on Tick, Tock and then people go to Spotify to listen to the song, but they’re spending all of their time.
In a platform that has video advertising built into it, which is much more lucrative than Spotify free right, but the the important second piece of that, though, is like it’s not audio, LED Discovery right, like people are watching videos through which they discover audio and that’s like Spotify has everybody lots of different Publications or not Publications? Lots of different companies have tried to figure out how to do audio first discovery, and it turns out it’s essentially impossible, because the idea of like I’m gon na sit here and just listen to something. I’Ve never heard of for a while is super boring and people get tired of it and that’s why everybody puts the hook to their song at the beginning of the song now and so. But what you have with video is it’s just more interesting. It’S just going to hold your attention a little longer which gives the song a chance to catch you a little longer, and then you can sort of trip through Tick Tock.
That way, and so Spotify has been trying to play this like. How do we do more? Visual things game forever to keep you looking at the app and has just never solved it. Anything like the way Tick. Tock has solved it yeah and now they’ve just made tick tock again, and I think that the big question is whether people are going to open Spotify first to be like, I want to find some new things. This is spotify’s claim right that the business they’re in is actually discovery and not playback. And if you you, listen to the interview with Gustav, that Alex is going to do on decoder next week or, if you listen to their event, they’re very clear that the the whole thing they’re doing is trying to get people to try new things. Yeah, and that is fundamentally spotify’s value to the world is Discovery across all this I’ll. Just read this quote not to give away the whole interview, but he says uh in regards to cover art.
He said Alex. You have to click through one of the titles. You have to wait for one and a half on minutes on average to get to the hook. That can’t be the best way to discover music.
The best way to discover audio must be through audio, which makes intuitive sense, but I know that when people open Spotify and it just starts blasting them with hooks they’re gon na lose their minds yeah. I think that’s right and I think, by the way, the discovery thing is something you’ll hear from every single music platform. They all think that the main thing that they can do for the music industry and for listeners is expose you to new stuff right because it’s like. If I want to listen to Rumors by Fleetwood Mac, I have Infinity options, many of them free one of them type it into YouTube, the last one being don’t [ Laughter, ], remember, says I under yeah. Look, I’m not even disputing that argument. I know that many people feel this way. Mila has Fleetwood back when I spend a bunch of time with leor Cohen, who runs YouTube music, a while back, and he said very much the same things and like apple will say the same thing: that’s why they gave Zane Lowe all that money right. It’S like Discovery is the thing they want to help break artists, so they can be friends with the music industry.
They want to help break artists so that listeners will keep coming back to discover new things like that is the product in a really real way. It’S just that Tick Tock showed up and is so much better at it than anybody else underneath that is the real problem for Spotify. Is it you listening to hits from the 90s over and over again does not actually make those artists any money. The game that they’re all playing is like pennies forever right. So Spotify has a lot of incentive to make their catalog artists or, like the catalog artists from major labels. Happy because no one is getting the big dollars up front, they’re all just getting pennies over time.
But they still have to break new artists into breaking artist. You got to shove them people’s faces all the time you got to break new songs and I think all of this stuff isn’t a real tension with the other piece of what they announced, which is an emphasis on video podcasts and showing you little clips of video Podcasts in the feed as you scroll, because that is just a jarring transition from like here’s, the hook of a song, Here’s the hook of a song. Do you like this playlist go over here? Here’S three people talking about whatever, which is, admittedly, what we do here. Hi guys and we’ll probably figure out how to get involved in that on Spotify, but it’s just there’s a lot of stuff there’s a lot of business models, they’re trying to cram into one experience, but this is the magic of tick tock like that.
That thing you just described is the thing that has made tick tock so powerful, which is that it can be wrong about what you’re going to be interested in nine out of ten times, and everyone is copying that for exactly that same reason. Right. Like that’s what Facebook is trying to do, they’re like? Are you interested in this and you say no and they’re like what about this and you say no and they’re like what about this and they’ll? Just you know Facebook can’t figure it out. It’S like. Is it girls there’s just like one bikini girl, no matter what at all times, but no, but that’s the thing and that’s why you do that extra visual thing, because it’s just constant there’s just so much going on in a way that like, if you show me, Eight seconds of Silence at the beginning of a song in a playlist or like a slow building, guitar people are out, but if you just like play loud noise over and over again as I scroll like, that’s Gon na Keep Me engaged so there. There is a lot of garbage, but then, like things, will hit that no one ever thought of right and that’s like the magic Spotify does have anchor they’re like user generated podcast tool, but they’ve really diminished its stature. I think they’ve even renamed it yeah. It’S part of Spotify for podcasters.
Now, can I read you this quote that I’ve just been thinking about so Spotify is really into video podcast everyone’s in the video podcast. The reason is not complicated right. It’S that for the platforms not for necessary for the podcasters, but for the platforms being able to insert video advertising is more lucrative than audio advertising. There’S a real dynamic between the money you make in audio and the money making, video and the dollars and video are generally higher. They’Re not higher on YouTube, which is weird but YouTube, is like the gold standard, video platform so that a lot of the platforms want to go capture those video dollars. So that’s.
Why Reddit does it? That’S why spotify’s doing it, but here’s this quote and it just video podcasting, is one of the fastest growing areas of podcasting, and we expect that growth to continue that’s from Julie, McNamara, ahead of global podcast Studios at Spotify. At this event, what’s a video podcast? Is it just videos of people talking? I mean this is a video podcast right? That’S! Yes, I think we get. That is the view. A video podcast.
Yes, okay, this isn’t a video podcast. I actually, I think Alex is right, like I think this stuff has all just sort of collapsed where it’s like. Okay, people talking is interesting. Watching people talk is interesting. These things, don’t all have to be different.
We can just shove them together and just let them be shows like the word. Podcast is like a relic of iPods right, like it hasn’t described what this industry is in a really long time. No, I’m telling you this is an exit.
You were describing very confidently in existential crisis for the podcast industry. Oh absolutely, it’s happening. It’S like we’re here.
I just think Spotify in particular thinks it’s competing with tick. Tock, yeah and YouTube is out there like YouTube, was at hotpod Summit, art or podcasting conference. A couple weeks ago, they announced YouTube.
Podcast features the announced video podcast features background play like YouTube knows they see it coming. They see that opportunity uh, but Spotify, I think, is they’re headed in a different way in somewhere lost in. All of this is boy I’d like to just see a bunch of songs in my catalog and pick from this, which appears to be fully out of favor at this point done yeah no one will ever own any music ever again, foreign .