Spotify - anyone heard of it?

xp Well the songs are properly licensed, if that's something you care about (obv not everyone does). The interface is also pretty slick. I can use it on my work computer. I can share playlists/tracks with my friends. None of these are dealmakers on their own but together they add up to an attractive package imo.

If you pay for Spotify Premium then the stream is supposed to be CD quality (or close to).

i hate file management so i have no desire to download music

and that's what spotify is for

Considering Spotify's royalty rates, I'd say arguing that the songs are properly licensed is just being cruel. I prefer to support artists in a slightly more effective manner. And how much file management is required for itunes?

I'll admit that I'm in Australia where we have download limits, and so wasteful downloading strikes me as doubly unappealing. Still.

it's okay for sampling albums before i buy.

once emusic goes to a streaming service (in addition to the subscription service), i'll likely stop using spotify.

I think the royalty rates MAKE SENSE. A half of a penny or so to play an mp3 one time? How much more should be paid?

A month or so ago, we had an exchange on here about what it would take to make $25,000 off of an album on Spotify. If the royalties are only a quarter of a cent, that's 100,000 listeners hearing a ten-track album a total of ten times each.

I know that Spotify royalty rates are small but they're certainly greater than zero. I still buy a fair amount of music as CDs and downloads but pre-Spotify there was no way I could legally and affordably listen to the wide range of music I now take for granted.

Also, it's going to be up to artists to negotiate good deals for themselves with streaming services. Record companies don't have to manufacture and distribute product and can take less.

You can definitely have your Spotify account connected to Facebook without it updating your status/feed, it just means navigating the FB app settings, which are far from intuitive and I imagine most are unlikely to do.

OK, that's good to know.

Royalties are not 1/4 of a cent:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/

Yeah Spotify doesn't post anything to my Facebook as far as I can see, even though it is connected to my FB account.

so for 100K plays, the artist receives ... $29.00 (0.00029 per stream). the label receives ... $160.00 (0.0016 per stream). no artists or labels are getting rich from spotify, regardless of how shrewd or tough they are in negotiating deals with the service.

OTOH this guy claims €0.004 per stream: http://www.spotidj.com/blog/?p=264

Though I thought that Spotify royalty rates weren't fixed, and that artists on major labels got more than those on indies?

it's a gold mine. all you need to do is get your song streamed 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times.

there are a LOT of ways artists/labels collect royalties besides sales (radio, TV, performance at live venues). there's no reason streaming should be any different or should produce a huge income to justify its existence as a legal source of revenue.

i use spotify all the time

you, personally, are providing a living wage to indie artists across america.

lol :)

Big discrepancies with the numbers here! This Billboard article claims that the typical interactive royalty rate is between a half cent and one cent per stream:

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news/e3iecb83415cefdd2b0a43399437dff3e5f

I think I've got exactly one FB friend with that setting turned on. I was wondering why he saw fit to recommend all that stuff.

half of the links about royalty rates people have been posting are from like 2009 and 2010, well before Spotify launched in the U.S. -- i'm sure the rate has and will continue to change

and that it's not the same in the U.S. as it is in the U.K. even taking into account exchange rates

will soon be 0.000029 per stream.

otoh if you stream music you've already purchased before (i'm on a netbook without local music files ~75% of the time), it's a tiny stream of bonus money going to artists you like.

Yeah, I do that as well.

The Stevie Wonder poll, all by itself, will buy him a pack of gum.

i remember reading that spotify had ~750,000 users at some point recently. im guessing they're hoping they can make this 750 million within the next few years. 750 million people paying a £10 monthly subsription to stream music and share it with their friends, if managed properly, would do a lot of good for the industry imo.

i hate file management so i have no desire to download music
My thoughts, exactly. I sit in front of a company computer for ten hours every day. They wouldn't be thrilled about me downloading and saving albums on their machine.
Spotify boosts my listening library at work exponentially. And it's fun to make and share playlists.
I just tried to edit the post settings in my fb apps, I hope it works.

If you have your Spotify account connected to your Facebook, it now posts updates of every song you listen to on your news feed. It seems like there's no way to only turn this feature off.

http://lifehacker.com/5843847/how-to-keep-spotify-from-broadcasting-your-music-taste-to-all-of-facebook

I actually quite like this feature and enjoy being able to lol at my friends trying to listen to the Kooks in private.

I sit in front of a company computer for ten hours every day. They wouldn't be thrilled about me downloading and saving albums on their machine.

That is exactly what Spotify does. It also uploads them to other users in your area requesting the same tracks.

http://lifehacker.com/5843847/how-to-keep-spotify-from-broadcasting-your-music-taste-to-all-of-facebook

I actually quite like this feature and enjoy being able to lol at my friends trying to listen to the Kooks in private.

― Upt0eleven, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 9:24 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh thanks i am definitely doing this!

yeah, I listen to music for a significant portion of my work day and spotify has been a very convenient way to keep an influx of new stuff going while I'm away from my personal music stash.

facebook news is supremely irritating tho.

Editing it from the apps worked for me fwiw

Spotify Needs U.S. Success After Losses Deepened In 2010

http://www.themusicvoid.com/2011/10/the-awkward-unanswered-questions-that-led-to-coldplay%E2%80%99s-spotify-embargo/

So if more big acts do this spotify is fucked.

it links to http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-awkward-unanswered-questions-that-led-to-coldplays-spotify-embargo/ (dont worry the article is all there)

loads of stuff has been removed since it went live in the US, all tzadik seems to have gone for example :'(

Yeah, really disappointing with the way things continue to trend.

in the not too distant future... no dance music, no new releases, no big hits, only major label stuff that's stopped selling on itunes

still worth it for the classical and jazz if you're into that, but ehhhh. my spotify evangelising is over

And yet loads of new stuff is added every day afaict. It's hard to keep a count, but there's probably been about 150 new albums from this year alone that I've been interested in enough to check out at least once.

i'm still finding more stuff on grooveshark these days
:-/

Well, yeah, I won't argue that more and more new stuff is being added, but I'm finding that a lot of it doesn't really align with my tastes.

yeah -- "more" in my case means "more of what i want to hear"

My biggest problem with both grooveshark and spotify is that, as of right now, I can't wirelessly connect either to my Airport.

what you need is airfoil? have you tried that? works for me.

sounds move magically from outer space to the speakers of my 1993 college stereo in the other room
it is amazing

Oh yeah, I do need that, I'd just been hoping to find a free option before I ponied up the $25 - but it seems like my best option at this point.

The spotify app has been bad recently. It will hang and crash every time I start it and make me login again. Reconsidering my subscription. Which is a shame because I've listened to it a lot.

iPhone app eventually creates huge data footprint even if I have hardly anything set to offline access so I have to delete it every once in a while and redownload it.