No matter which subdivision field is used in the ever-changing Internet world, no matter which subdivision is used, this sentence appears to be so appropriate in the ever-changing Internet world.
In the field of global music streaming, Spotify, which just went public in April this year, is a well-deserved industry leader. According to 2017 statistics, Spotify's market share in this field reached 40% in terms of global subscribers, double that of the second Apple Music, making Spotify the largest direct listed company in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.
But with the growth of old rivals Apple Music and newcomers Amazon Music, the competition in the streaming music service industry is becoming more and more fierce, and the dominant situation of Spotify seems to have changed: although the global market is still dominated by Spotify, according to Digital Music News, Apple Music has quietly surpassed Spotify in the number of subscribers in the United States.
What makes Spotify fight and retreat in the music industry is unexpectedly an inconspicuous function-lyrics.
Absence in the function of lyrics
For people who are used to Tencent Music and NetEYun, it seems difficult to imagine a music APP without lyrics, but in Europe and the United States, copyright has always been an unavoidable problem for music streaming media. The song itself is easy to say, but the lyrics of each song are scattered in the hands of different authors. If the music streaming media does not reach a certain volume, it is unlikely to have all the lyrics copyright.
Ten years ago, Spotify made its debut in Stockholm, Sweden. When it got bigger and bigger, Spotify looked back and found that there was still a "crater" of lyrics copyright behind him, and hastened to invite Musixmatch, the world's largest lyrics catalog, to cooperate. This was the first time Spotify users could see the complete lyrics while listening to songs, but this was the only time.
In 2016, Spotify partnered with Genius to launch a "Behind the lyrics" feature that allows Spotify users to listen to music while seeing the behind-the-scenes stories and notes on the lyrics of the song. Although Spotify has made it clear that the partnership with Genius will not affect its current agreement with Musixmatch, the lyrics provided by Musixmatch on the desktop version of Spotify were cancelled soon after the cooperation expired, while there were no lyrics on Android.
Therefore, the solution now can only be to use a single Musixmatch application to display the lyrics on the desktop and Android. The problem is that the desktop often appears that Bug can not display the lyrics properly, and the advertisements on Android are miserable. If you remove the ads, you need to subscribe, $14.99 a year, and you can imagine the user experience.
Not only is there a problem with the display of the lyrics themselves, Spotify also lacks the lyrics search function and pays little attention to voice. Spotify, which has always focused on personalized playlists, ignores its competitors-Apple Inc and Amazon.Com Inc both have special lyrics teams, and have surpassed Spotify in these functions.
Apple Inc, in the new version of Apple Music released by iOS 12 this fall, users can not only see the lyrics directly in the app as before, but also search by lyrics, not just by singer, album or song name.
Amazon.Com Inc's Amazon Music has quietly grown into the third largest music streaming service provider, allowing users to view lyrics while playing songs, and music users with Amazon.Com Inc's voice assistant Alexa device can also search songs through lyrics.
Even Alphabet Inc-CL C, who lags behind Apple Inc, Spotify and Amazon.Com Inc in music, Alphabet Inc-CL C's assistant can search based on the lyrics and identify songs playing nearby. With the rise of speech recognition technology, these functions of searching or recognizing songs with voice have become standard for music streaming media.
But in this area, Spotify seems to be absent.
So far, Spotify, which is focused on smart playlists, has launched a lyrics search service only in Japan, and declined to say when the service will be given priority in other markets, even in Thai and Vietnamese versions, which means executives are still not focusing on the feature.
The voices of Spotify users prove that their demand for lyrics is still strong, and it's easy to find a large number of users'"strong complaints" about Spotify lyrics by searching Spotify and lyrics on social media:
On Spotify's user feedback forum, a request titled "Bring back Lyrics" was also one of the most popular suggestions, with 9237 likes, ranking second among all suggestions:
Although the proposal has been labeled "Watch this space", it has been more than two years since its release in 2016, Spotify does not seem to have come up with a reasonable solution, and no new agreement has been reached with third-party lyrics providers.
Not just the lyrics.
Lyrics are not the only challenge Spotify faces.
For Spotify, the lack of specialized hardware is also a major pain point, needless to say Apple Inc, who dominates the hardware. Amazon.Com Inc launched the smart speaker Echo as early as November 2014, and Alphabet Inc-CL C launched the voice activation device Google Home with built-in speakers two years later.
Owning your own hardware is an important medium for carrying voice assistants to build an ecosystem, such as Apple Inc's Siri, Amazon.Com Inc's Alexa and Alphabet Inc-CL C's Assistant. Although Google Assistant has just been launched as an "artificial intellectual disability", its performance so far this year is also commendable.
Spotify, which has a dominant position in the field of music streaming, can only put down its posture and cooperate with competitors when it encounters problems related to song recognition.
Of course, competitors will not miss the opportunity to catch up with the leader.
Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook just announced in the last earnings call that Apple Music is ahead of Spotify in the North American market. Although it started late in music streaming, it has plenty of time to catch up with the previous Spotify. After all, it has a strong iPhone platform, which means it has its inherent advantages no matter what it publishes.
And Alphabet Inc-CL C, they are also looking to disintegrate Apple Inc and Spotify in the music distribution industry "duopoly" monopoly, just launched soon YouTube Music has successfully poached Hip-Hop industry heavyweight Lyor Cohen as its global music director, in contrast to Spotify, the latest personnel change is the loss of global songwriter service director-LadyGaga's former broker Troy Carter.
On the other hand, due to the rapid growth of the four major markets in the United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, Amazon Music has recently grown at an impressive rate. Now it has a 12% share of the music streaming market and is definitely a dark horse to be ignored in this field.
Let's go back and look at Spotify.
Since its launch, Spotify has released two quarterly reports, but both transcripts are somewhat unsatisfactory compared to their position as the leader in music streaming. As a young technology company, investors tend to be interested in growth, but Spotify's first earnings report after listing gave a slightly lower-than-market forecast, which is somewhat disappointing.
The second financial report, released in July, exposed Spotify's increasingly worrying financial situation: a net loss of 394 million euros attributable to shareholders in the second quarter of 2018, an increase of nearly 110% from the same period last year.
Of course, despite these concerns, Spotify is not panicked-it still has the world's leading audience and paying users in the streaming music business, as well as a personalized recommended playlist on which it depends for survival. Spotify is still the most accurate in the industry, and the playlist "RapCaviar", which has more than 7 million listeners on the platform, has even been made into a series of tours. And invited hot rappers who appeared on the playlist to drive the show all the way to six North American cities.
However, it is time for Spotify executives to pay attention to these loopholes in order to keep up with the market trend, otherwise Spotify may face the risk of losing customers to other platforms in the coming months.After all, the pursuers behind us are not fuel-efficient lights.。