Sep 7
Editorial David
android, copyright, DRM, iphone, mobile, mp3, music, online, piracy, rights, spotify, streaming, subscription, symbian
The Spotify application and its "home page"
You have no doubt heard about Spotify, in fact given the amount of e-mails I get asking for invites, I’d be amazed if you haven’t. In my opinion, Spotify plays a crucial roll in the world of on-line music distrobution. Before you commit your money to buying a whole album, I believe, you have a right to try before you buy. Much to the chagrin of music companies, illegal file sharing perfectly fits the roll. You get the try the album with no hassle and no money changing hands, and then, as long as you’re honest, when you’ve made your decision, you can choose to delete the album, or go and buy it from a DRM free online music store. To me, doing this, while of questionable legality, was the nearest on-line alternative we had to the headphone booth in your local music store.
However, Spotify came along and took away all the grey area of illegally sampling music. With Spotify you can stream music across the internet and listen to it as much as you like. With adverts if you pay nothing, and without if you pay £10 a month, we’ll return to the premium service below.
That is not to say that Spotify is perfect. When it first started it was more perfect that it is now. Since it’s been going, the record companies have been stamping their ignorant size 12 boots all over it, so that we now have region restriction on some albums, while others have been pulled completely, even though Spotify are constantly adding more and more tracks. To the record labels I say this; the more restrictions you put onto a service like Spotify, which you should be thanking your lucky stars for, the more you will push people back towards illegal file sharing. It’s a simple mathematical matter of convenience. Spotify is actually more convenient than getting music via file sharing. If you prevent people listening via Spotify, they will by simple human nature, opt for the next most convenient option. Sorry, but it’s a fact of life and you can either work with it, or be burned by it. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s how things are.
Now, lets look at Spotify premium. For some people who would spend hundreds of pounds a year on music, and hate the adverts, then this £10 a month could represent good value. Speaking for myself, I just don’t get that much new music, so £10 a month is an expensive option for me, just to block adverts, which to be honest, aren’t that intrusive (and if I’m saying that, then that means something). So I will stick with Spotify making advertising revenue from my listening, and I think the majority of Spotify users are the same.
Spotify Mobile running on Android
The next generation of Spotify is a version for your mobile phone. As of today, we know that Spotify Mobile is available on the iPhone and Android phones. So hopefully, we will soon see it available on other platforms like Symbian.
I find the prospect of the mobile Spotify being a premium only feature somewhat self-defeating. However you look at it, paying to effectively rent your music, never has been, and never will be, a good deal for the consumer. I don’t see the added value of a mobile application is going to change this. Let’s prove this by contradiction. If you weren’t prepared to pay for Spotify premium on your desktop, but the addition of a mobile app would change your mind, then you are effectively saying you’d be willing to pay £10 a month to have an application on your phone. I find it hard to believe anyone would fall into this category.
Conversely, if Spotify made their mobile application available to everyone, they would be expanding their prospective advertising audience. Advertising revenue must be valuable to them, given that it’s unlikely many users pay for premium. Speculatively, they must only be surviving on advertising revenue, with the addition of some venture capitol.
To conclude, please Spotify, reconsider the mobile application. We all love you, and want to use your service, but £10 a month for no ads and a mobile app is too much. Just mirror your desktop business to the mobile world, and everyone wins.
P.S.
NO, I don’t have any Spotify invites to give you, but I will make a blog post, if and when I do 
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Feb 18
Reviews David
audio, playlists, social, spotify, streaming
One of the most awesome features of Spotify is that every track, every album, and every playlist has a public URL. This means all you have to do to show something to someone is send them a link, which they then click, and their web browser automatically launches Spotify with the instruction to play whatever you sent to your friend. This is a truly fast way to share music amongst friends, and as far as we can tell, it’s stopping short of infringing anyone’s copyright.
The Spotify Playlists website
Well, I have discovered a website, with such a simple mission, if it didn’t exist, you’d really have to invent it. Spotify Playlists is a public directory of Spotify Playlists. With a simple design, custom built on top of a Wordpress back-end, you can easily browse by recently added, genre, most ratings, and highly rated. The ratings system is something I’m particularly pleased to see, since I recently said myself that ratings should be part of the Spotify application.
It’s also nice to see that the listings have album art included. The album art is something you have to upload yourself as part of making a submission to the site.
On the left you find a sidebar with collapsible lists of the recently added, highly rated and most rated. On the left, above the list of playlists, you’ll find a drop downlist of the genres.
Since selecting a genre can sometimes be less obvious than others, I am hoping that the backend code of the side will develop to either let visitors vote for what genre they think a play list should belong to, or allow playlists to have multiple genres.
Of course at this early stage, you might not find the selection you are looking for, but it is early days and the number of submissions can only increase. You can help yourself by submitting your own playlists, which is also the top widget in the sidebar too.
One thing that concerns me is that it is just as easy to submit a whole album as it is a custom playlist, perhaps this doesn’t matter, though. I think this site definitely fills a gap that even I didn’t think of in my blog post. The Spotify application doesn’t suggest things you might want to hear (that sites like Last.Fm does). While Spotify Playlists doesn’t take into account your listening patterns it does (potentially, subject to sustained user participation) provide a broader way to search than the Spotify application does natively.
Finally, in researching for this post, I have also come across another site that does the same thing, “Spotylists“. Although I have to say, SpotifyPlaylists definitely has the edge on a cleaner design, more genres, and just a generally less intimidating to get started with.
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Feb 3
Editorial David
audio, invites, p2p, spotify, streaming
Given that one person can give ten invites out, and each of those ten invitees can invite a further ten people, and so on. Then furthermore that all concerned seem to be able to do this every day, I don’t know why Spotify is bothering to work on an invite system, although I suppose it does raise their profile in the blogosphere!
Well, to fall further into their traps, yes, yawn, I have another 10 invites. You should know what to do by now
Update: I seem to be getting 10 new invites everyday, so since the demand for invites has hit 10 or less requests a day, I’m leaving comments on this post open and made this post sticky (for now). Check the comments for latest news.
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Feb 1
Personal David
audio, invites, p2p, spotify, streaming
Yes, yawn, I have Spotify invites again, so leave a comment. I have nine to give away today.
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Jan 28
Editorial David
audio, community, music, p2p, piracy, playlist, plugins, spotify, streaming
An example of searching for music on Spotify
Recently I’ve been trying out a music program called Spotify, I actually posted about handing out invites last week and this week. I would describe Spotify as an internet jukebox. It looks much like any other library based media player. I.e. you browse or search for artists or albums and you are presented with a list of results and you choose what to listen to. Except here, that the music isn’t stored on your computer, it’s out there on the internet. Spotify also has a novel feature of shared playlists, which is great for spreading the word about certain music.
While using Spotify for the short time I’ve had it, I’ve had a number of thoughts of changes that I think they need to make. Not that I’m a know it all, although for the moment it’s a one trick pony, it only searches the Spotify system for music that Spotify has, and stream it to you over the internet.
If you either don’t want to pay for your music, or want to try before you buy, in many ways it is still more convenient to visit your favourite file sharing site. Spotify gives you free music with adverts and you can only use it on your computer. Whereas shared/pirated music can be put on any portable device and has no adverts, what’s not to like?
Spotify does have a great community feature of collaborative playlists (E.g. CNET UK is currently running a playlist for its forum members), as well as last.fm inegration. I think this is where they need to build value in their product. I don’t just mean community features within the application, I mean inviting a community to build a whole ecosystem around their service.
So here are my thoughts of what needs to be added to Spotify
- Publish an API so that other media players can connect to the Spotify network. E.g. Songbird and WinAmp support plugins and it would extend Spotify’s potential audience.
- Support Shoutcast radio stations. Spotify already has something called “Radio”, but it isn’t really internet radio. It’s just another way of searching their server library.
- Write a mobile client for Spotify. Support several smartphone platforms, Symbian, Android, iPhone & even Windows Mobile if they’re in a good mood
- Have the Spotify client integrate your existing music library. This would be done by means of supporting iTunes for those users and watching hard drive folders for everyone else. As much music as Spotify has, its library isn’t that comprehensive. Although, if you already have the music you want to hear, you could then still listen within the Spotify application.
- Rate music so you can search for highly rated music.
- Have the option to submit creative commons music. This of course would be subject to moderation, which would cost money. Although Spotify could really help out amateur and upcoming artists by allowing them to upload from their desktop.
- The ability to request copy righted music that you could not legitimately submit yourself.
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