Spotify - anyone heard of it?

If there's enough of a market and money there, they might look into it. The iPhone is just now a no-brainer for developing apps, especially of the streaming media type, because of market share and enthusiasm. As far as Apple's concerned, they're a competitor of sorts and it was questionable whether they were going to get approved when the app store review process is such a black box.

I thought I read about some Spotify/Android thing going?

Yeah - at the end of the BBC story linked to above.

Does anyone know anything more concrete about what the finances of this are like for artists? The only thing I've seen is this Guardian article, which seems to suggest they're pretty bad:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/aug/17/major-labels-spotify

Have any other major (or even minor) artists had their catalogues pulled?

In Sweden, where Spotify has been running the longest, Magnus Uggla – well-established since the late 70s – has withdrawn his music from the service. On his blog he said that, after six months on the site he'd earned "what a mediocre busker could earn in a day". Regarding his record label, Sony Music, he says "after suing the shit out of Pirate Bay, they're acting just like them by not paying the artists". When he found out that Sony had 5.8% equity in Spotify he wrote: "I would rather be raped by Pirate Bay than fucked up the ass by (Sony boss) Hasse Breitholtz and Sony Music and will remove all of my songs from Spotify pending an honest service."

I was told by a guy who considered investing in Spotify to a significant level, and who therefore took a look at the books, that the company makes fourteen pence per user, per year and his prediction was that they'd be dead before the end of this year. That was before the iphone deal but I'm not sure whether he considers them any more viable an entity subsequently.

The problem it seems to me, and this may have been mentioned, is that the adverts aren't intrusively frequent enough to steer the user toward the subscription version. I guess it's a tricky balance but it seems to me if they had more adverts they'd generate more revenue from both versions of the program.

does anyone know offhand how long they've been offering the subscription model?

Yes to the above, and in my month or so of using it I've gotten mostly ads for Spotify itself. That can't be good for their bottom line.

i sometimes get 2 ads every 3 songs so im guessing the longer you use it the more ads you get, but for newbies they dont overdo the ads incase it puts them off.

It probably varies by country, too.

surely the majors would step in and save it from collapse given they're now in on it plus the supposed piracy deterrence (depends how much value they put on that i guess)

Free streaming at 160 seems like a miscalculation on their part, because 160 is fine enough for me to make subscribing unnecessary. If they streamed at YouTube rates, then maybe 10 euros a month would be worth it to me. I can't see how this is sustainable in its present (excellent) form.

Got very few ads to begin with, sometimes whole albums would go by with no ads. But now I get a couple every 2 or 3 tracks so obviously they've got some algorithm that increases them the more you use the service. May well be a good strategy since I'm now contemplating subscribing although I still think £10 is too much, at £5 I would have already done it.

I'm told by someone who knows a Spotify insider that the plan is to make it subscription only next year.

maybe Apple will just buy it

it does seem that a lot of people would pay half the current rate for same bitrate but just no ads - seems a reasonably happy medium

Are they making enough noise about the Premium bitrate? I'm an uber-fussy audiophile, and yet Premium through the hi-fi sounds indistinguishable from CD.

I mean, that's how I'd advertise it: to compete directly with the concept of buying and owning CDs, pointing out the value and convenience aspects.

I was told by a guy who considered investing in Spotify to a significant level, and who therefore took a look at the books, that the company makes fourteen pence per user, per year and his prediction was that they'd be dead before the end of this year.

― N1ck (Upt0eleven), Saturday, 29 August 2009 12:58 (2 hours ago) Bookmark

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/25/spotify_exclusive/

think he got the numbers wrong: 14p per month per user from ads. that's dwarfed by the earnings from premium subscribers, obviously. sounds like they're on course for £2.3m revenue in a year from uk users. averages out at £14 per user per year, but obviously there's a massive disparity between free and premium subscribers. i assume they're going to keep the free option attractive until they've got many more people signed up - 170,000 in the uk is still tiny - and then gradually shift people over to the pay model. (which is a bit like the "?" step that comes before "profit!" admittedly)

One strategy would be to start shifting new songs (say, within 6 months of release date) to subscription-only, and keep back catalog free. I think they do this now with pre-release material? I doubt this would be enough incentive for me, though. Or some albums/acts/labels could become pay-only. That would help the gradual shift of people to the pay model.

Only 17,000 paying users inthe UK? That really is tiny.

The figure I'd love to see is how much the artist gets per play. Did the similar figures for Emusic ever become public?

https://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/08/26/spotify-premium-uk-magical-mercury-prize-competition/

so if i sign up in the uk, will it still work when i head back to the usa?

No...I'm a UK subscriber, and I couldn't get it to work when I visited the US earlier this month.

it should work if you're a premium subscriber:

When I try to login it says that my current country does not match my profile?
When you login Spotify checks the internet protocol (IP) address that you use to connect to the internet and compares it to the country you set in your profile when you registered. If they do not match and you are away from your home country more than 14 days you will not be able to log in. If you have moved we suggest you change the country in your profile, as long as you have moved to one of our other launch countries. If you travel extensively you can purchase a premium subscription for unlimited travel. In some cases this error can occur by mistake if you use Spotify at work as many companies route their traffic through other countries therefore you appear to be abroad. If you’re at work and have this problem you can solve it by logging in to your Spotify account at home once and awhile.

It worked for me in France last month.

oh great, just what we needed, a talk to frank advert with the sound of someone puking.

talk to frank advert every 2 songs now. 6 tracks played 3 bloody adverts.

and again 2 tracks later (a couple of them were 2 adverts btw)

Re "Premium indistinguishable from CD"... having just plugged the laptop into the REALLY GOOD hi-fi, I take it all back. Limitations duly exposed.

I found the ads easily annoying enough to warrant spending £10 a month. £10! That's nothing. Or maybe I'm hopelessly out of touch with Breadline Britain.

If you've got the stereo cranked those ads are very, very off-putting..

these ads are much more regular than they used to be. really annoying. which is exactly how they should be if they're going to persuade me to pony up a tenner a month.

When we introduced the sharing feature, a lot of you requested a simple way of sharing the music you are listening to on Twitter. With Spotify 0.3.19, you can.

http://www.spotify.com/wp-content/uploads/share-to-twitter.png

http://pansentient.com/2009/08/spotify-fm-new-last-fm-mashup/

There are several mashup apps that help you find new releases on Spotify based on your listening habits scrobbled to Last.fm (here’s the complete list). The newest and possibly the best yet is Spotify.fm from developer Frank Quist. Spotify.fm includes several unique features you won’t find elsewhere, such as an RSS feed and the ability to search new releases based on both your Last.fm username or genre.

Spotify.fm lists the most recent releases (going back 6 months) from your favourite artists. Enter your Last.fm username to display a list sorted by date released on Spotify then by artist:

http://www.frankquist.nl/spotifyfm/

spotify is proving kind of a boon in the workplace.

What gives? I see that "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", "Technical Ecstasy" and "Never Say Die" among others have suddenly disappared from the Sabs page. A temporary blip?! The beginning of the end?!

p.s. Technical Ecstacy = Criminally Underrated. Don't let the cover put you off!

They added 45,000 albums in August so I don't think a couple of Sabbath albums disappearing is the beginning of the end, and there are still about 15 Sabbath albums available.

I like the Technical Ecstacy cover!

They're deliberately making those adds worse and worse to get you to pay for the thing aren't they? Might be getting near some sort of tipping point for me here anyhow.

I thoroughly enjoy those brilliant adverts.

C*nt!

Actually by "enjoy" I mean "would like to stab the star in the throat".

Noodle Vague voiced "Whitey" in those adverts.

maybe Apple will just buy it

Stevem OTM. I'm starting the rumour that Apple announces the Spotify app on Wednesday and it'll come bundled on the new iPods. And the small print will say something about Apple taking a stake in the company.

Maybe not (I am dum):

Today we’re really excited to announce that Spotify is available to our premium subscribers for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android platforms. The Spotify app is downloadable in both Apple’s App Store and the Android Market.

We’ve worked hard to bring you the same great Spotify experience you’re already familiar with to your phone. The mobile apps will allow you to take the entire Spotify catalogue and put it in your pocket. You can use our ‘offline mode’ to make playlists available at all times, even when no connection is available, perfect for that ride on the tube or long flight across the Atlantic.

Haven't tried downloading anything to the phone yet, but it takes about five seconds to start playing a song when streaming it over T-Mobile 3G and there's none of that buffering like in the Last.fm mobile player.

Using the Android version, by the way.

Spotify is set to offer offline versions of its playlists to PC users as well as those on mobile phones. Apparently.

not 100 per cent sure that blog is interpreting the t&cs correctly: spotify has always cached songs to speed up the streaming (you're also uploading tracks to other users, peer-to-peer style). so it might just mean you can use spotify on up to three machines as a premium user.

Huge update today with another 189,000 tracks added. Skimmed through the google doc http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tuLYLenoNqBWfhds8qaoXDg&output=html, Jeepster's back catalogue is up with Belle and Sebastian up to full strength, The deluxe editions of Radiohead's last EMI albums are up. What looks moist interesting is a lot of vintage stuff from 'The Orchard' including Brylcreemed Boys & Beehived Birds (Part 1), Bollywood - Before the Slumdog Millionaire Years, Virginia Rocks! The History of Rockabilly In The Commonwealth and African Folk Music of the 1920s.

Signed up last week. Just started getting ads today, but they're not so bad...yet.