Spotify wants to be TikTok now? | The Vergecast
发布时间 2023-03-10 19:49:36 来源
Let's talk about the other biggest design story and technology, which is Spotify and the general tick-tockification of everything. David, you wrote up the design. There was an event this week. Alex Heath was there. We're going to have some more coverage. We've got an interview with our head of design Andy Coder coming out next week. But tell us what's going on with Spotify.
让我们谈谈最大的设计故事和技术之一，那就是Spotify和一切都在Tick-tock化。David，你写了设计方面的报道。本周有一个活动，Alex Heath也在那里。我们将有更多的报道。下周我们还将发布采访我们的设计主管Andy Coder。但请告诉我们Spotify正在发生什么。
Yeah, so this was Spotify's stream-on event, which it does occasionally. The last one I think was two years ago. It's their big state of the union. Here's what's going on at Spotify, I think. Mostly they talk to creators. It was like 90 minutes of them being like, are you a creator? We love you. All creators. We love you. We are Spotify. Come to Spotify. We love you, creators. Hello. They brought out the Jonas Brothers just to introduce a video, which was the coolest flex I've ever seen in my entire life. They just came out and they were like, look, Jennifer Lopez also likes Spotify. Then they left. It was amazing.
嗯，这是 Spotify 的流媒体活动，他们会偶尔举办。我想上一次是两年前。这是他们重要的总结大会。以下是 Spotify 的最新动态。主要是他们与创作者交流。他们谈了整整90分钟，不停地说：“你是创作者吗？我们爱你。所有的创作者，我们都喜欢你。我们是 Spotify。来加入 Spotify 吧。我们爱你，创作者们，你好。”他们甚至邀请乔纳斯兄弟介绍一个视频，这是我人生中见过的最酷的炫耀。他们只是出现了一下，说：“瞧瞧，詹妮弗·洛佩兹也喜欢 Spotify。”然后他们就离开了。太神奇了。
The big announcement was that they're redesigning the Spotify homepage. Anyone who has used Spotify knows that basically Spotify is just a lot of album covers. That's the only sort of design in there. It's just rows and rows of tiles of album covers. Now it looks a lot more like some mix of Instagram stories and TikTok and a little bit of YouTube. The idea is basically if you go to the podcast thing, instead of getting a bunch of album covers of podcasts, you're going to get actual feeds of auto-playing podcasts.
大的宣告是他们正在重新设计Spotify的首页。任何使用过Spotify的人都知道基本上Spotify只是许多专辑封面。那是里面唯一的设计。只有一排排专辑封面。现在它看起来更像是Instagram Stories、TikTok和一点YouTube的混合。基本思想是如果你去到播客这个板块，而不是得到一堆播客的专辑封面，你将得到自动播放的实际内容。
They're big into video for as a thing. They're big into big imagery. Now the idea is to be much more immersive and also discoverable instead of just fighting to have better album covers. It's going to actually start to play you the most interesting bit of a podcast or a song or an audiobook and actually connect to you that way. That's the sort of tick tockification of it all. Everything is much more full screen. It's auto-playing. It's much louder. It's much more visual.
他们非常注重视频作为一种事物。他们非常注重大画面效果。现在的想法是要更具沉浸感，也更易于发现，而不仅仅是为了获得更好的专辑封面而斗争。它实际上会开始播放您最感兴趣的播客、歌曲或有声读物的最有趣部分，从而以这种方式与您建立联系。这就是所有这些的滴答声化。一切都更加全屏，自动播放，声音更大，视觉效果更好。
As far as I can tell, Spotify users hate this in the same way that they've hated every other non-music listening thing that Spotify has done, which is now the impossible track that Spotify has on. Spotify is like, okay, as we've talked about many times in the show, it turns out being a streaming music company is an awful, awful, awful, awful business. Don't do it if you ever want to make any money.
据我所知，Spotify的用户就像他们讨厌Spotify的其他非音乐听觉方面一样，也讨厌这一切，这就是Spotify现在面临的无解之难。 正如我们在节目中多次谈到的那样，Spotify公司发现成为一家流媒体音乐公司是一项非常糟糕，非常糟糕，非常糟糕且赚不到钱的生意。如果你想赚钱的话，不要做这个生意。
Spotify is now this big company that can't stop losing money on music and is trying desperately to find other ways to make money. They've made this big bet on podcasts. They bought an audio but company they're trying to make live audio happen. Then you have Spotify users who just keep raising their hand being like, I just would like to listen to my music, please, can you leave me alone? This is Spotify trying to sort of satisfy everybody and at least based on the reaction to what we've seen.
Spotify现在是一家庞大的公司，但在音乐方面一直在亏损，正在拼命寻找其他赚钱方式。他们打赌未来在播客上。购买了一家音频公司，试图让现场音频成为可能。但Spotify用户一直举手示意，只想听音乐，不要打扰他们。Spotify试图满足所有人的需求，但从我们所看到的反应来看，他们的努力并没有得到很好的回应。
The app is not out yet for most people, but people do not like the idea of what Spotify is going for here as far as I can tell. I'm very sympathetic to the notion that people hate redesigns. I've let you know. Yes. Absolutely. That's fine. But I will say that we read it, did a mild redesign this week too. We had the cheap product person. From Reddit on the cutter, they're splitting that into a text feed and a video feed.
这个应用程序对大多数人来说还没有发布，但据我所知，人们不喜欢Spotify在这里所推崇的想法。我非常理解人们对重新设计的厌恶感。我已经告诉了你们。是的。完全可以。没问题。但是我要说的是，我们也看到了这个情况，本周进行了轻微的重新设计。我们从Reddit网站上找来了便宜的产品专家，他们将把产品分为文本和视频两个源。
All the feedback is, get this video feed out of my face. We don't want it. Even though all of the numbers inside of Reddit are, oh boy, people are spending a lot of time on video. People hate the video player. If we're going to do video, we should just put it over there and make a video feed and a text feed. And even then, people are like, get this video out of my face.
所有的反馈都是把这个视频从我的脸上移开。我们不想要它。尽管在 Reddit 内部的所有数字都表明，哦，人们在视频上花费了很多时间。人们讨厌这个视频播放器。如果我们要做视频，我们应该把它放在那里，制作一个视频流和一个文本流。即使这样，人们还是会说，把这个视频从我的脸上移开。
So I think there's a revealed preference that's when you're alone, in your private time, you're watching the videos. And when someone asks you about it, like, I never watch videos, I only read novels. And I think every one of these companies is dealing with that. But the challenge there is the metrics don't track reality, right? Because it's like, if I'm on Spotify is a perfectly good example, right? If I open up Spotify, press play on a playlist, turn my phone off, put it in my pocket and never touch it again.
我认为有一个“显性偏好”的概念，当你独自一人，享受你的私人时间时，你会选择看视频。但是当有人问及时，你会说：“我从来不看视频，只看小说。” 我认为每一个公司都面临这个问题。但是这里的挑战是指标不能真实跟踪，对吗？就像 Spotify 是一个完美的例子。如果我打开 Spotify，播放一个播放列表，把手机关上，放进口袋里，再也不碰它。
In a certain sense, that's a huge victory, right? Like that is the intended use of Spotify. I can listen to music all day without needing to interact with the app. Like from user experience, that's a gigantic win. For Spotify, trying to make money and sell lots of really great, powerful visual ads, that's a disaster. And so what this is now is Spotify saying, and they even said this during the stream on event. They're like, we're not worried about engagement metrics.
从某种意义上来说，这是一个巨大的胜利，对吧？这就是Spotify的预期使用方式。我可以整天听音乐而不需要与应用程序进行交互。从用户体验来看，这是一个巨大的胜利。对于Spotify来说，试图赚钱并销售大量非常棒、强大的视觉广告，这是一场灾难。因此，现在的情况是Spotify说，他们甚至在流事件期间说了这一点。他们说，我们不担心参与指标。
We're not here to just try to keep you inside of our app as much as you can, while very clearly building things that auto play, that auto play with sound, and that are designed to be endlessly scrolling so that you look at them for much longer. It's like, at some point you can't have it both ways. And they're going to be like, oh, well engagement went way up. And that's like, well, of course it did. But that's, are we sure that's good? Like, is that what we want out of Spotify?
我们不仅仅是为了尽可能让你留在我们的应用程序里，而明显地构建自动播放、带有声音的内容，并设计为无限滚动，以使你看得更久。这就像，在某些时候，你不能两全其美。他们会说，哦，参与度大大提高了。那就是说，当然了。但我们确定这是好的吗？比如，这符合我们想要的 Spotify 吗？
Yeah. So one thing that the music industry in particular is fighting against straight up, is TikTok. TikTok is where every song breaks. It's where, I don't know, like Fleetwood Mac rises like a zombie to continue haunting me for the rest of my days. Just shut up. It's so tiresome. Sorry. Sorry. I understand the music is beautifully made and I understand they were all dating each other. And it is on a technical level, some of the finest music ever made. It is so boring.
是的。音乐行业现在最大的挑战之一就是 TikTok。每一首歌的爆红都离不开这个平台。比如 Fleetwood Mac，好像是复活了的僵尸，总是跟我纠缠不清，一直困扰着我。但请闭上嘴。这真是让人烦死了。对不起。我知道这些音乐制作得非常精美，他们之间也有过恋爱，从技术层面来说是最优秀的音乐之一。但是真的好无聊。
I'm sorry. I've been writing about Fleetwood Mac since I was 16 years old. This is like the sanded off edges of me talking about me. But like, that's a thing that happened, right? The guy riding the longboard in California, getting the free cranberries for life or whatever, is entirely a TikTok phenomenon. I realize that if you don't know what I'm talking about, that sounded completely bonkers. But if you just put those words into Google, you will understand. It's a whole thing that happened. That's TikTok. TikTok just made that song relevant again and made Fleetwood, it's doing it over and over again.
对不起。我从16岁开始就一直在写关于弗利伍麦克乐队的文章。这就像是我在谈论关于我自己的磨损边缘。但是，那不是一个真正发生的事情吗？在加州骑滑板的男孩，永远能够获得免费蔓越莓等，这是完全由TikTok引起的现象。我知道，如果你不知道我在说什么，那听起来完全疯狂。但是如果你把这些话放到Google里面搜索，你就会明白。这是一个正在发生的事情。这就是TikTok。TikTok再次让这首歌变得有意义并且持续不断地推动弗利伍麦克乐队的火红人气。
It's where new artists break. It's changing the complexion of the music industry. It's making songs shorter, which is very funny. It's like sampling it. Everything is in the music industry is happening on TikTok, and then underneath it all, TikTok is not a music service, really. And so they're kind of like, yeah, music industry, you want to break a song? Just pay us a bunch of money and we'll make sure those tracks get promoted in a way that Spotify does it and people claim Spotify does it.
这是新艺术家崛起的地方。它正在改变音乐行业的面貌。它让歌曲变得更短，非常有趣。就像是对它进行取样。音乐行业中一切都在TikTok上发生，但在所有这些背后，TikTok其实并不是一个音乐服务。因此他们有点像是在告诉音乐行业，“你想要推广一首歌，只需支付大量的费用，我们会确保这些音轨以类似Spotify的方式得到宣传，而人们可以指责Spotify实行这种方式”。
But if they actually do that, everyone will get really mad at Spotify. Yeah. Spotify has just got a major problem on its hands that all discovery happens on TikTok. And then people go to Spotify to listen to the song. But they're spending all of their time in a platform that has video advertising built into it, which is much more lucrative than Spotify free. But the important second piece of that though is it's not audio-led discovery. People are watching videos through which they discover audio.
如果Spotify真的这样做了，每个人都会对他们非常生气。是的，Spotify现在面临重大问题，因为所有的音乐发现都发生在TikTok上。然后人们会去Spotify上听这首歌。但是他们花费所有时间在一个内置视频广告的平台上，这比Spotify免费版要赚钱多得多。但重要的第二点是，这不是基于音频的发现。人们是通过观看视频来发现音频的。
And that's like Spotify has everybody, lots of different publications, or not publications. Lots of different companies have tried to figure out how to do audio-first discovery. And it turns out it's essentially impossible. Because the idea of like, I'm going to sit here and just listen to something I've never heard of for a while is super boring and people get tired of it. And that's why everybody puts the hook to their song at the beginning of the song now. And so what you have with video is it's just more interesting.
这就像Spotify拥有各种不同的出版物，或者说不是出版物，很多不同的公司都试图找出如何进行音频优先的发现。结果发现基本上是不可能的。因为只听那些自己从未听过的东西是非常无聊的，人们会感到疲倦。这就是为什么每个人现在都会在歌曲开始的时候添加一些引人入胜的东西。而视频则更有趣。
It's just going to hold your attention a little longer, which gives the song a chance to catch you a little longer, and then you can sort of trip through TikTok that way. And so Spotify has been trying to play this like how do we do more visual things game forever to keep you looking at the app and has just never solved it anything like the way TikTok has solved it. Yeah. And now they just made TikTok again.
这只是会让你更注意它，因此歌曲有更长的时间来吸引你的注意，然后你可以通过TikTok慢慢沉浸其中。因此，Spotify一直在尝试通过做一些更具视觉效果的事情来保持用户对应用程序的关注，但并没有像TikTok一样解决它。是的，现在他们又创造了一个TikTok。
And I think the big question is whether people are going to open Spotify first to be like, I want to find some new things. This is Spotify's claim, right? But the business they're in is actually discovery and not playback. And if you listen to the interview with Gustav that Alex is going to do on decoder next week, or if you listen to their event, they're very clear that the whole thing they're doing is trying to get people to try new things. Yeah.
我认为最大的问题是人们是否会先打开 Spotify，说我想发现一些新东西。这是 Spotify 的宣称，对吧？但是他们所从事的业务实际上是发现而不是播放。如果你听到 Gustav 下周在 decoder 的采访，或者听他们的活动，他们非常清楚地表示他们的目标是让人们尝试新事物。是的。
And that is fundamentally Spotify's value to the world is discovery across the list. I'll just read this quote not to give away the whole interview, but he says in regards to cover art, he said to Alex, you have to click through one of the titles and you have to wait for one and a half on minutes on average to get to the hook. That can't be the best way to discover music. The best way to discover audio must be through audio, which makes intuitive sense.
这就是Spotify对于世界的基本价值所在——在列表中进行发现。我只会引用这个引语以避免泄露整个采访内容，但他谈到封面艺术时对Alex说，你得点击其中一个标题，平均要等待一分半钟才能到达“钩子”。这不可能是发现音乐的最佳方式。最好的发现音频的方式必须是通过音频本身，这是很有直觉的。
But I know that when people open Spotify and it just starts blasting them with hooks, they're going to lose their minds. Yeah. I think that's right.
我知道当人们打开Spotify时，只是开始插入钩子，他们会失去理智。是的，我认为这很正确。
And I think by the way, the discovery thing is something you'll hear from every single music platform. They all think that the main thing that they can do for the music industry and for listeners is expose you to new stuff, right?
顺便说一句，我认为发现音乐的功能是每个音乐平台都会提及的。他们都认为他们可以为音乐行业和听众做的最重要的事情就是让你接触到新的音乐。
Because it's like if I want to listen to rumors by Fleetwood Mac, I have infinity options. Many of them free one of them type it into YouTube. The last one being don't. Rude. Rumors is wonderful, a perfect album.
这就像我想听 Fleetwood Mac 的传闻一样，我有无限的选择，其中许多是免费的，只需要在YouTube上输入即可。最后一个选择是不听，很无礼。《传闻》是一张非常好的专辑，完美无缺。
I wonder, look, I'm not even disputing that argument. I know that many people feel this way. Nila has flew it back. When I spent a much time with Lee Orko and who runs YouTube music a while back and he said very much the same things and like Apple will say the same thing.
我想知道，看看，我甚至不争辩那个观点。我知道很多人有这种感觉。Nila已经把它反了回来。当我与Lee Orko以及运营YouTube音乐的人共处一段时间后，他说了非常相似的话，就像苹果公司会说的一样。
That's why they gave Zane Low all that money, right? It's like discovery is the thing. They want to help break artists so they can be friends with the music industry. They want to help break artists so that listeners will keep coming back to discover new things. Like that is the product in a really real way. It's just that TikTok showed up and is so much better at it than anybody else.
这就是为什么他们给了Zane Low那么多钱，对吧？就像发掘新人一样，他们想帮助打破新人，这样他们可以与音乐业建立友谊。他们想帮助打破新人，这样听众就会继续回来发现新东西。在真正的产品方面，这就是。只是TikTok出现了，并且它比任何其他人做得更好。
Underneath that is the real problem for Spotify. Is it you listening to hits from the 90s over and over again? Does not actually make those artists any money. The game that they're all playing is like pennies forever. Right? So Spotify has a lot of incentive to make their catalog artists or like the catalog artists from major labels happy because no one is getting the big dollars up front. They're all just getting pennies over time. But they stuff to break new artists.
Spotify面临的真正问题是什么？是你反复听90年代的热门曲目吗？实际上并没有让那些艺术家赚到钱。他们现在玩的游戏就像是永远只有几分钱那样。因此，Spotify非常有动力让他们的目录艺术家，或者说来自大型唱片公司的目录艺术家感到满意，因为没有人在一开始就能赚到大量钞票，他们只是随着时间而获得一些微薄的报酬。但他们仍需要发掘新的艺术家。
They're breaking artists, you got to shove them people's faces all the time. You got to break new songs. And I think all of this stuff is in a real tension with the other piece of what they announced, which is an emphasis on video podcasts and showing you little clips of video podcasts in the feed as you scroll.
他们正在推广艺术家，你必须一直将这些人的面孔塞到人们的脸上。你必须推出新的歌曲。我认为所有这些东西都与他们宣布的另一部分形成了真正的紧张关系，即强调视频播客，以及在滚动时向您显示视频播客的小剪辑。
Because that is just a jarring transition from like, here's the hook of a song. Here's the hook of a song. Do you like this playlist over here? Here's three people talking about whatever. Which is admittedly what we do here. Hi guys. And we'll probably figure out how to get involved in that on Spotify.
因为那只是一个突兀的转换，从一首歌的钩子到这里，这是一首歌的钩子。你喜欢这个播放列表吗？这里有三个人谈论任何事情。这确实是我们在这里做的事情。嗨，伙计们。我们可能会弄清楚如何参与Spotify的运营。
But it's just there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of business models. They're trying to cram into one experience. But this is the magic of TikTok. Like that, that thing you just described is the thing that has made TikTok so powerful, which is that it can be wrong about what you're going to be interested in nine out of ten times.
但问题在于，有很多内容和商业模式要塞进一个体验中。但这就是TikTok的魔力。就像你刚才描述的那样，这也正是TikTok如此强大的原因，它有可能在十次中有九次猜错你会感兴趣的内容。
And everyone is copying that for exactly that same reason, right? Like that's what Facebook is trying to do. Are you interested in this? And you say no. And they're like, what about this? And you say no. And they're like, what about this? And they'll just do that forever.
每个人都在因为同样的原因来抄袭那个，对吧？就像脸书正在试图做的一样。你对此感兴趣吗？你说不。然后他们问这个呢？你还是说不。然后他们问这个呢？他们会一直这样问下去。
And Facebook can't figure it out. It's like, is it girls? There's just like one bikini girl, no matter what at all times. But no, but that's the thing. And that's why you do that extra visual thing because it's just constant. There's just so much going on in a way that like if you show me eight seconds of silence at the beginning of a song on a playlist or like a slow building guitar, people are out. But if you just like play loud noise over and over again as I scroll, like that's going to keep me engaged.
Facebook无法解决这个问题。就像是针对女孩的吗？无论何时都只有一个比基尼女孩。但事实不是这样的。这就是为什么你需要额外的视觉元素，因为信息持续不断地呈现。如果播放歌曲列表开头的沉默八秒钟或者一个缓慢建立的吉他，人们会离开。但如果你在滚动时不断播放大声的噪音，那么这会让我感到投入。
So there there is a lot of garbage, but then like things will hit that no one ever thought of. Right. And that's like the magic. Spotify does have anchor that are like user generated podcast tool, but they've really diminished its stature. I think they've even renamed it. Yeah, it's part of Spotify for podcasters now.
所以说，有很多垃圾，但同时会有一些之前没有想到的惊喜。这就是那种魔力。Spotify确实有一些用户生成的播客工具，但它们的地位已大不如前。我认为他们甚至已经更改了它的名称。是的，现在它是Spotify for podcasters的一部分。
Can I read you this quote that I've just been thinking about? So Spotify is really in the video podcasts. Everyone's in the video podcasts. The reason is not complicated, right? It's that for the platforms, not for necessarily for the podcasters, but for the platforms, being able to insert video advertising is more lucrative than audio advertising. There's a real dynamic between the money you make an audio and the money making video and the dollars in video are generally higher.
我可以念给你听我最近在想的这句话吗？Spotify 对于视频播客真的很感兴趣，其他平台也都是。原因并不复杂，就是对于平台来说，能够插入视频广告比音频广告更有利可图，这并不一定对播客者有利，但对于平台来说，音频广告和视频广告所赚取的钱有着明显的差别，视频广告的收入通常更高。
They're not higher on YouTube, which is weird, but YouTube is like the gold standard video platform. So a lot of the platforms want to go capture those video dollars. So that's why I read it does it. That's why Spotify is doing it. But here's this quote.
他们在YouTube上的表现并不出色，这很奇怪，但YouTube像黄金标准般的视频平台。因此，许多平台想要获取那些视频的美元。所以这就是为什么我认为它会这样做。这也是为什么Spotify会这样做。但是，这里有这样一句话引用。
And it just video podcasting is one of the fastest growing areas of podcasting. And we expect that growth to continue. That's from Julie McNamara head of global podcast.
视频博客广播是博客广播中增长最快的领域之一，我们预计这种增长将持续下去。这是全球博客广播负责人朱莉·麦克纳马拉的话。
Do you guys it's Spotify at this event? What's a video podcast? Is it just videos of people talking? I mean, this is a video podcast, right? Yes. I think we get that. Is the view of a video podcast? Yes. Okay.
你们认为这次的活动中有Spotify吗？什么是视频播客？它只是人们说话的视频吗？我的意思是，这是一个视频播客，对吧？是的，我认为我们弄明白了。播客的观看方式是视频吗？是的。好的。
I want to say a video podcast. I actually, I think Alex is right. Like I think this stuff is all just sort of collapsed where it's like, okay, people talking is interesting. Watching people talk is interesting. These things don't all have to be different. We can just shove them together and just let them be shows.
我想说，视频播客真的不错。其实，我觉得亚历克斯是对的。就像这些东西都有些混淆了，人们谈论的有趣，看人们谈论也有趣，这些并不都是不同的东西。我们可以将它们混在一起，让它们变成节目。
Like the word podcast is like a relic of iPods, right? Like it hasn't described what this industry is in a really long time.
“Podcast”这个词就像iPod的遗物，对吧？好久以前就不再能准确描述这个行业了。
No, I'm telling you, this isn't existing. You were describing very confidently in existential crisis for the podcast industry. Oh, absolutely. It's happening. It's like we're here.
不，我告诉你，这并不存在。你曾经非常自信地描述了播客行业所面临的存在危机。哦，绝对存在。就好像我们正在这里一样。
I just think Spotify in particular thinks it's competing with TikTok and it's and it's actually competing with YouTube. Yeah. And YouTube is out there. Like the YouTube was at Hot Pod Summit or hot podcasting conference a couple weeks ago. They announced YouTube podcast features. They announced video podcast features back around play. Like YouTube knows they see it coming. They see that opportunity. But Spotify I think is headed in a different way.
我认为Spotify特别认为它正在与TikTok竞争，但实际上它正在与YouTube竞争。是的，而且YouTube也在那里。像YouTube在几周前的Hot Pod峰会或热门播客会议上。他们宣布了YouTube播客功能。他们在播放时宣布了视频播客功能。像YouTube这样的公司知道这一趋势即将到来。但我认为Spotify正在走另一条路线。
And somewhere lost in all of this is boy, I'd like to just see a bunch of songs in my catalog and pick from it. Which appears to be fully out of favor. It's done. Yeah.
在这一切的混乱中，有一件事被遗忘了，那就是我想在我的歌曲目录中找到一堆歌曲并从中选择。但这似乎已经不受欢迎了。 它已经完成了。 是的。
No one will ever own any music ever. Yeah.
没有人会永远拥有任何音乐。是的。
这句话意思是指，人们永远无法真正拥有音乐。虽然一些人可能会购买唱片或流媒体服务，但这并不意味着他们拥有了这些音乐。相反，他们只是获得了使用它们的权利。这是因为音乐是一种艺术形式，具有普遍性和共享性，没有人能独占它。