Spotify in ‘da House
by Leighanne Saltsman
July 29th, 2011
Oh, Spotify. First you press your silly mug up against our window and make us wonder, “why the heck is there a lime green bouncing ball out there that won’t go away?” Then we hear you whining to Warner; “but I WANT the music catalogue, daddy!! Daaaddy! I waaaaaaant it!” Before we know it, you’ve sealed the deal and done the dirty…. yes, we know darling — Spotify is here!
Swedish subscription-based music-streaming service Spotify invaded the US on July 14th after inking a deal with major label Warner, and with its launch we’ve been forced to confront the good, the bad and the ugly of listening to music directly from “the cloud.” Spotify offers three levels of service: a free, but limited service, and two paid-for services priced at $4.99 or $9.99 a month, each offering different levels of access. The highest tier offers the ability to cache tracks on handheld devices for offline playback. It’s worth noting that Spotify is currently the only subscription service to offer a free option, although said option is almost as bad as Pandora, littered with ads and snippets of songs not chosen by the user.
The Good:
- Lots of music, all the time, anywhere you want it.
The Bad:
- Spotify offers very limited access to indie music and live tracks, despite its hefty 13 million track library of major-label content. Indie must releases are something Napster did a brisk trade when it dominated the unregulated P2P market back in the early 2000’s, but since then we’re seeing less and less incorporation of this market into major cloud-based players. Of course we now have YouTube, thank goodness, and even utilities such as LiveStream which integrates a curated Twitter feed into its real-time live feeds… yet it still concerns us that Spotify has forged deals with only seven of the 17 mostly US-based digital music aggregators included by the the Industry Insider’s Music Summit 2011.
- Too much music? First iTunes and how Spotify, Rdio and Mog have taken us from the days of single-album listening to a smorgasboard of all-you-can-eat aural pleasures, and I fear that the super-saturation continue to devalue the art of music (more on that in our next newsletter).
The Ugly:
- While we are glad to see more choices for music fans – and hopefully more ways for artists to be paid – we still have some major concerns. Chief among them: users’ rights to port their data. Because streaming customers do not own their music, they cannot take it with them. Should they decide to try another service (or if a service goes under), users should be able to easily export titles of songs in playlists they created or a list of favorite music, etc. (Julie Samuels in the Electronic Frontier Foundation)
So Spotify, take heed – you will win over the good graces (and hard-earned cash) of US consumers because you’ve arrived at a time when we’re most susceptible to your lurid charms, and because you’ve spent the necessary time slurping the kool-aid with the major labels. Yet, will we love you for more than your five minutes of fame?
CEO Daniel Ek announced Spotify’s expansion into the US back in 2009, but negotiations took significantly longer than anticipated. In the meantime, US demand for access to the “celestial jukebox” has just kept on growing. When your launch eventually did take place, you were able to collect 70,000 paid U.S. subscribers in your first week on this continent (Billboard). Is this figure an accurate representation of normal demand? Or is it just a result of protracted desire? If a critical mass of consumers hadn’t fallen for the subscription-based streaming music market just before your arrival, would you be so successful? Cloud computing is only very recently the norm, I think you just happened to be in the right bed, at the right time, with the right people!
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and in fact we’re very proud of you for having paved a bit more of the way to an integrated music distribution system for the future. At least labels are no longer suing their fans! At the very least you’ve taught the labels that compromise is the only way to move forward. However, we remind you that your corner on the market isn’t all of your making. Several services were raising awareness of the benefits of streaming from the cloud prior to your arrival. Rdio, the straight-up subscription service from the tech whizzes behind Kazaa and Skype already offers a catalogue of 10 million songs, and MOG, Rhapsody, etc have been neck and neck. Without these groundbreakers to provide competition, you would have had a much more difficult time capturing market imagination.
So, we’re shrugging our shoulders on your arrival into the US market. Although I still subscribed to the free version of your service, I’m still skeptical.
Why I Can’t Hate You For Your Success:
- On the plus side, you’re FAST. You’re also nearly as social at Rdio, and do allow integration with the playlists of other users. Anything other users share with me shows up in my “inbox,” and if I sign into Facebook, any other Spotify-using friends will show up in my “People” list.
- Your interface is simple and intuitive, although I think it’s weird that you automatically import my iTunes collection from 2001 and display the triphop mix I made for my college sweetheart next to “Rollin’ in the Deep”.
- Your 13 million song catalogue, wireless syncing for handheld devices and intuitive interface means that you’re cloud music done right. I pay less per month than I would for a CD and get millions of songs on demand. With playlists able to be synced across all my devices…. that’s good enough for me.
Why I Can’t Trust You:
- How long will it be before you raise your subscription fee sky-high and track-jack my library?
Conclusion:
- I’m’a’ gonna keep buying CDs at indie shows
