But from an app consumer point of view, it would be hard to overemphasize how much the experience of traveling has been improved by having the use of Airbnb, or how much the rider’s taxi experience has been improved by Uber, or what an amazing volume of free music delivered through well-curated playlists and highly intelligent algorithms Spotify represents.įor the billions around the world who regularly use Facebook, I probably don’t need to explain how essential the platform has become, for us to communicate with our friends (of whichever variety), and for us to have a sort of presence in the world. The impact Uber has had on the taxi industry in the US and many other countries is well-known, as is the impact Airbnb is having on the rise in the cost of non-vacation housing for regular people looking for a place to live. I am also a regular user of so many other platforms that are run by other very large corporations with predatory corporate practices, including but not limited to Facebook, Google, Uber, and Airbnb. So I’d just like to put it out there now at the outset that I completely understand why Spotify is so popular, and I use the platform regularly, despite all my complaints about the way the company is run. Another reason is I tend to forget that just because it is by far the most popular music streaming platform on the planet, what this means in practice is that there are hundreds of millions of mostly young people around the world for whom listening to music means opening Spotify, but then there are billions of other people around the world, largely middle-aged or older folks, who have never used a music streaming app of any kind. I think part of the reason why I feel like I’m not communicating well when I write about Spotify is I focus so much on the negative aspects of the operation. I’d like to thank Neil Young for having a little tantrum and putting the corporation back in the news cycle for the past few days - an especially impressive accomplishment, given the prevalence of other big news stories at the moment, such as all those Russian troops massing near Ukraine, and some of the highest numbers of people dying of Covid every day here in the US since the pandemic began. I have written a lot about Spotify over the years, but I never feel like I’m communicating effectively. Photograph Source: Per Ole Hagen – Per Ole Hagen – CC BY-SA 1.0
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