Disclaimer: As I've said on this blog loads of times, I love Spotify, I think it's the bees knees and the best music app ever. I think Daniel Ek is one of the most creative entrepreneurs we have ever seen and I have tons and tons of respect for the whole Spotify team. They are doing a bloody fantastic job in changing the way we all listen to music. And yes, I run a Spotify community site called ShareMyPlaylists.com - for exactly all the reasons mentioned above. I am unashamedly a Spotify fanboy.
I thought long and hard about whether I should write this post or not. On the one hand, this isn't my fight, I don't work for Spotify and I should just let this article wash over me and put it down to Sarah Lacy having a quiet day with little else to write about. But then again I'm not one to keep my thoughts to myself so felt compelled to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard if you will.
The article I'm referring to is this
article from
Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch that has annoyed me. At best it's an opinion piece that doesn't really have any place on TechCrunch, at worse it's an unprovoked and unnecessary attack on a startup. It starts with Sarah saying possibly the only sensible thing in the whole article "no one likes a blogger who says “I told you so.”". With that Sarah, I agree 100%.
From there Sarah basically tries to say "I told you so" because, and this is the best part, as far as she can guess, according to third parties not involved in Spotify and other rumours, Spotify isn't profitable yet. Sigh. Really? Is this a story worthy of TechCrunch? Sadly, these days yes it is.
Bizarrely, the basis of the whole "Spotify isn't profitable yet" slant to the story seems to be this
article where Rob Wells, the senior vice-president Digital for Universal Music Group International said that Spotify has a
very sustainable financial model. I'm not sure how Sarah managed to interpret this in a negative manner but because Rob Wells (who does NOT work for Spotify btw) claimed that Spotify needed 10% to 12% of it's users to be paying Premium subscribers in order to hit profitability and in the UK it's "lagging behind" then it's hashtag FAIL in Sarah's eyes.
Sarah then goes on to call Spotify out because they haven't launched in the US yet despite saying they "definitely" would by early 2010. It's only January. Sarah makes sweeping statements that "Americans don't like to pay for things online" citing Netflix as "only" having 10 million paying customers.
What really annoys me, apart from all the guesswork is the general negativity of the article. On the one hand Sarah says seems to offer praise:
"Look, I love the service, I love that the founders believe in it enough to invest their own money and I love that the company is ballsy enough to think it can succeed where hundreds of music startups have failed"
She then takes it away by saying that Spotify would be "better in someone else's hands" (linking to this
article about Mark Zuckerberg's love of Spotify) and that a bidding war would be good for Spotify. How very rude. I would argue that Daniel Ek and the Spotify team have made more advances in dragging the music industry into the 21st century than anybody else. Anybody. Yet Sarah thinks that Spotify should be sold off? Now I know that we need tech correspondents like Sarah to report on our industry and to maintain some sort of checks and balances but a little part of me thinks "What the hell gives Sarah the right to put Spotify down like this? Has she ran a startup and come up against the same challenges that Spotify has?" No. Anyone can sit at a desk somewhere and write inaccurate rubbish passing it off as journalism, it's far easier to write about startups that actually run one I guess.
What baffles me is that TechCrunch can publish this
nice fluffly story praising Pandora about reaching 40 million users but give no mention of revenue and profitability. What gives TechCrunch? You're happy to speculate on Spotify's revenues and it hasn't even launched in the USA, yet no mention of Pandora's bottom line in your fluff piece?
One part of the article that did make me raise a smile was Daniel Ek's reasoning as to why he doesn't give Sarah an interview, he “doesn’t like (my) tone.” Good on him for having principles and not being scared to air them.
I'm counting down the days to when Spotify is bigger than iTunes, totally changes the digital music landscape forever, is responsible for "plays" to be recorded and counted in official music charts worldwide and is eventually sold off for many billions of dollars. It will by my turn then to say I told you so.
What I'm listening to right now:
Balearic Beats
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other stuff. I have no idea why I'm blue on this photo though but I like it!
It is a pain that posts like that are written but in the end I don’t think it affects anything. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity! At least she’s building a bit of awareness over in the USA which can’t be a bad thing even if she’s doing it in a negative tone.
The only bit I disgaree with is:
“Now I know that we need tech correspondents like Sarah to report on our industry and to maintain some sort of checks and balances”
Sorry, but with so many bloggers out there nowadays, tech correspondents no longer carry the weight they once did. More often than not, “stories” like this fade away and quickly too. As you, it must have been a quiet day or someone was after a bit of self PR.
I would love to know which startups Sarah knows, that made a profit so early on in their life, with a business model similar in size to that of Spotify.
Have to agree with you on this one Kieron!
I may prefer last.fm because I can let it run for hours without even realising its on, but you’ve got a point about Techcrunch.
Its my belief that these “correspondents” get paid by page impressions, or ad clicks on their posts and so when it comes to the month and they’re running short of their targets have to write anything that’ll bring in the numbers – regardless of how factual it is.
What you may also like to note is that Techcrunch is an old boys’ network. There’s very little openness in that their “journalists” have a tendency, I believe, to support certain projects without declaring their involvement or if inducement was given.
I don’t read techcrunch out there as its full of shit. There’s plenty more fantastic stuff out there to spend my spare time reading. If I want to read made up crap I’ll read the Onion – at least its obvious its nonsensical.
Lee
“I dont read techcrunch out there as its full of shit.”
should read
“I dont read techcrunch anymore as its full of shit.”
Had to chuckle at the bit about Spotify being better off in Zuckerberg’s hands. How profitable is Facebook??
Techcrunch is just another site that tries to create controversy to drive traffic. Safely ignore.
Man don’t get me started on TechCrunch. They provide some insight in to our industry but the number of times see TC journo’s with #fail in their tweets or posts just makes you want to shout “go on then do it your f*****n self”.
But entrepreneurship, survival, growth are nowhere near as news worthy as a good failure. If entrepreneurs carried this much negativity nothing would ever happen. But hey at least we don’t have to live with them
Journo’s view on life #fail
I agree with Lee. Techcrunch IS full of shit. And like Stephen said; They are always trying to create controversy in a sad attempt to self publicize. The Twitter leak was an example of this.
A fair response.
The comment from Rob Wells about Spotify having a sustainable business model should be questioned though, as Universal have one of the largest equity stakes in the company.
I guess nobody likes her very much.
Last.fm reckons TechCrunch are full of shit too.
http://blog.last.fm/2009/02/23/techcrunch-are-full-of-shit
IMO the article is news worthy…simply because most of the other news around has about as much factual content
On the Spotify front, I’ve only recently upgraded my account to premium but its the best investment I’ve made in ages, especially with the iPhone app.
I hadn’t seen this story on TechCrunch, but then again I actively try not to visit it as I agree with many of you guys, I have a fairly low opinion of them that starts from the top downwards.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was involvement in other californian-based startups, who’s to say what’s going on behind the scenes, you just got to look at the recent MacBook Air that got requested by a writer.
Or perhaps there is simply an annoyance that the American market isn’t first in getting the latest cool product/service for once?