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More: Spotify playlist highlights best, worst time periods of Billboard era
Every so often, a revolutionary idea transforms the music industry. Mass-produced records in the 1930s brought music to living rooms. Blank cassette tapes in the 1980s turned music fans into producers.
Napster, and its illegal brothers and sisters like Kazaa, gave us a glimpse in the 2000s at how the Internet would change music forever. But it nearly derailed the industry. Why buy an album for $15 a pop when you can steal it with minimal to no risk?
Apple, Amazon and others have attempted to legitimize the Internet music industry, allowing consumers to buy songs for under a dollar and full albums for less than $10. But in a recession with no end in sight, paying for music isn’t a priority for many fans when they can still illegally download a full album for free in less than five minutes.
Enter Spotify, the first company to understand that the future of music isn’t in buying songs or albums. Spotify, a downloadable program, puts music past and present at your fingertips. A vast majority of the record companies’ catalogs are available by doing a simple search, and it could save the music industry.
Spotify, based in Sweden, has been available in many European countries for three years. The American music industry had no choice but to give in this summer, realizing this is the only way to combat illegal downloads.
At first glance, Spotify looks like iTunes. But unlike iTunes, you don’t have to buy the 15+ million songs to hear them. All you need is an Internet connection, and you stream the songs for free. Other companies, like Rhapsody, have offered streaming music, but never for free. Pandora offers free streaming music, but you can’t select specific artists or songs.
In addition to its free service, Spotify has two pricing levels. With a $5 per month unlimited subscription, you eliminate the 30-second ads that pop up every few songs. With a $10 per month premium subscription, you can listen on a mobile device and sync the songs to your hardware, eliminating the need to listen over an Internet connection. You lose the synced songs if you cancel your subscription.
A paid subscription is still a tough sale for music fans who feel the need to own music. But as more and more people use smartphones and 4G becomes the standard connection, there won’t be much of a difference between owning a song and streaming it.
Spotify has tapped into the social network, partnering with Facebook. Think back to when you made your best friend a mix tape – now you can create mixes for all your friends, and they just have to click on your name. A few people were freaked out when Spotify began listing the songs they were listening to on Facebook’s feed. You can turn off that option in your preferences while still connecting through Facebook. You also can eliminate the Facebook connection altogether.
Spotify has its flaws. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan are among the most noticeably absent artists because of licensing restrictions imposed by the record labels. Perhaps that will change as Spotify explodes in popularity.
You’re limited to syncing 3,333 songs offline, although you can stream any song from your mobile device if you have an Internet or 3G/4G connection. You can import an unlimited number of songs from your own personal collection, including iTunes, to Spotify.
If Spotify catches on, and considering the growing number of Facebook friends I see popping up on Spotify every day there’s no doubt that it will, you have to wonder if iTunes will be forced to follow suit and allow users to stream music for free.
It’s the best model for an otherwise crumbling industry. A guy like me is now paying $120 a year for the premium membership. While I frequent concerts, I probably haven’t spent $120 on albums in years.
The casual music fan will stream for free, but Spotify – and the record companies – will make money with lucrative ad sales.
Independent bands have complained that they are barely compensated by Spotify, and some bands have pulled their music. That’s a problem Spotify will have to address, but hopefully it can figure it out without increasing fees. In today’s economy, $10 a month for unlimited ad-free music anywhere you roam is reasonable. Anymore is a stretch.
Related articles
- Media Decoder Blog: Spotify Loss Widens Despite Higher Revenue (mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio: When Will Subscription Music Pay Off For Artists? (fastcompany.com)
Like all things commercial, it’s all in how you get behind and push whatever the product is. People are creatures of habit, and more so than that, the majority are followers, keep it out there long enough and like hungry fish, they will bite. If it’s the only thing or the best thing around, consumers will have no other choice now will they? :-)
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The “Silver Conductor”
Spotify went from promising new service to garbage in a hurry:
1) Requiring Facebook to log in – yuck. I don’t want to pay use a service that sells me out like that much less pay for one
2) Not having all of their music at 320 kb/s for Premium subscribers, though reading their pages you would get that impression, very misleading
3) Lots of bugs, like vanished music you added to your library, to new Terms & Conditions boxes that are unreadable due to display errors (but you must accept to keep using their service)
4) A lot of good music unavailable – this isn’t unique to them, but not having any Tool, Rammstein, Metallica, Led Zep, AC/DC and tons of other artists I like is still a big drawback
5) Lack of customizing options, short on features (no EQ??)
6) No way to delete a song from Library directly
4, 5 & 6 I could tolerate. But the first three were the dealbreaker. I understand Facebook’s numbers are attractive to companies like this, but I don’t want any part of it. I’d even pay a little more if those problems didn’t exist. I still have a good mp3 library I’ve ripped from my CDs or bought from ITunes/Amazon, I could just keep doing that until a better service comes along.
Everybody’s missing the great thing about Spotify in their articles, and that’s the fact that you can mix all your own purchased music and the online music together into your own collection.
After I copied all my purchased CDs onto the computer a few years ago, I have listened to music in iTunes in random order. This is how I now listen to music: as a great radio station that mixes all my favorites.
With Spotify, I have the same music I listened to in iTunes, but I add to the mix every album I can think of that I never wanted to purchase, or that I never got a chance to hear, or I can add all the new releases, or all the old Patsy Cline albums. It has enriched my music experience immensely.
Im subscribed to Sonys Music Unlimited Service. It works on the Playstation 3 and on my PC and on my phone. I use Playstation 3 for parties so for that reason alone, I use that and it prevents me from having to sync multiple playlists and such.
Tech Guy Chris