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But what if I want a faster horse?

(rakhim.exotext.com)
1525 points saeedesmaili | 1 comments | 11 Apr 25 11:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.237s | source
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Taek ◴[11 Apr 25 12:38 UTC] No.43653105[source]▶
The root problem seems to be monopoly and fragmentation.

When Ford was working on a car, people who wanted a faster horse could go to the horse store. There were reasonable alternatives to Ford's new method of transportation.

But here, you can't recreate Spotify from 2015. You'll never get the rights to play the music for users. Same with Netflix, you'll never get the rights to show the movies.

Same thing with Twitter, Facebook, etc. Even if you know exactly what content your user wants, you can't fetch it for them because it was posted in some other walled garden, and that wall stops you from competing.

If you want a faster horse, change the laws so that people can build faster horses and compete.

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ks2048 ◴[11 Apr 25 12:45 UTC] No.43653156[source]▶
Maybe it depends on your listening habits, but for me, Spotify and Netflix are very different experiences.

Spotify has almost anything I look for. Netflix I struggle to find anything of interest.

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1. kmacdough ◴[11 Apr 25 13:54 UTC] No.43653818[source]▶
Sure, spotify has maintained a near-complete catalogue where Netflix hasnt.

But I no longer find Spotify any good at finding new music, beyond manually looking through artist catalogues.

For context, try out Pandora's recommendations. They haven't improved, yet they're orders of magnitude better than Spotify. The songs are hand annotated for style, content, etc. As a result, they recommend truly new songs with regularity that truly match the vibe.

Compare with Spotify, where everything is based on statistical "people also listened to X". Everything converges on some pop form of whatever genre and songs you've listened to a lot. It'll play odd, out-of context songs from the same artist before it'll find you new artists. Sure they have a few manicured playlists, but its nothing compared to the value Pandora has provided for years.