
Maybe for those like me who still buy physical CD's and rip them, okay-but let's assume you buy all of your music, just digitally, meaning you purchase MP3 albums in full from Amazon/iTunes/Bandcamp, etc. You need subscribers onboard too, to ensure that artists are less tempted by other platforms an options, which means the UX needs to be solid. (Btw, I realise the thinking here is likely that if you have the artists maybe the product doesn't matter so much but, as the Rogan incident shows, having the artists isn't guaranteed. I wish I could reincarnate Steve Jobs so he could go and work at Spotify and fire Daniel Ek and Gustav Söderström in an elevator because I honestly can't think of two individuals more deserving of such a fate. Who spends $100M+ without doing this? I'm guessing all you saw is subscriber numbers. You should have had, and implemented, a business integration plan, in place from day one. You should have known what you bought when you acquired rights to his podcast: it's called due diligence.


I like the fact that he talks to people from a range of viewpoints, many of which I disagree with: I don't like the fact that it took a social media fiasco and a bunch of artists leaving to label and tag his episodes more responsibly. (Tangentially, since I mentioned Joe Rogan already, I'm unpleased that a bunch of songs have disappeared from my playlists because of Spotify's poor and purely reactive handling of his podcast. Screw you, Spotify: I couldn't give a damn about Joe Rogan but if you don't fix your poor quality, dangerous user experience I'll cancel, because it's not worth a horrific car accident just to switch to a different playlist. Every time my Apple Carplay connection fails it's due to Spotify. More substantive example: poor integration, to the point of being dangerous, with Apple Carplay, and a generally crappily optimised, unresponsive and, yes, dangerous experience for driving with or without it. Then we'd all know what to expect when we pressed one of them. Instead have two buttons: one for Home and one for Back.

It's some sort of home/back hybrid where you're never quite sure what it's going to do (this is on iOS). Trivial example: the Home button that doesn't reliably take you home.
