My real question here is perhaps not well implied by the wording. What does going drm-free tell us about Apple's future strategic direction for iTunes? I don't think it's out of the question that the future iTunes a little way down the road will look a lot like Spotify. If that was the case, where would it leave Spotify? iTunes killed Odeo with by becoming a podcasting platform. I hate to sound ominous especially given how much I love Spotify. In fact it's precisely because I have a lot of affection for the service and the team that I'm wondering.
Thanks for caring Jyri. I just think there's a fundamental difference right now between us. iTunes is still about ownership and will still only work out of the box with iPod. It's not like they've enabled support for a bunch of new devices. We on the other hand is more about an access model and the future will tell if we will go the Apple way and have a closed system, or actually open up to a variety of use cases ;-)
Spotify needs to quickly fix a hole that is costing some serious money to them. Too many people I know find their music via Spotify and then go buy those songs from iTunes. In this respect it's the Spotify that needs to come closer to iTunes.
What happens in the long is run is anyone's guess. Will Spotify link to iTunes and make it effortless to buy songs from iTunes to go for the mobile life style or Will they find another partner to fight the iTyranny and are they fast enough doing that. And if they do partner up with Apple will Apple do what Google did to Firefox ie. coast along enjoying the partnership until they are ready to release their own version of Spotify, when they see that it is becoming too important piece to the puzzle? Or will Spotify just try grow fast enough before iTunes makes it move when it realizes that it's worth cannibalizing it's sales before Spotify is hands down a better music service with a serious user base. I believe Spotify is very fast becoming that better music service and I also believe that Apple is soon (next year?) making its move after they also realize how good a service it is. I do hope the stellar team in Stockholm have already a plan ready for this scenario and are well on their way executing it.
@jyri: You know, a wise man talked about social objects cough ;-). We think music data is social objects, and we focus on building tools around them. We don't necessarily want to be a social network ourselves. That's also a hint on the future :)
Maybe Spotify will survive if we look at @jyri's thought, because they were the first and hopefully has a big userbase. For example, as far as I know, Facebook has not taken over all the activity of lifestreaming/microblogging even if they are technically capable of doing that. It is of course not the same in aspect of user activity, because Spotify is not depending on the users collaboration. But I also see a dilemma, if Apple intends to look like Spotify, will we ever see an Spotify-app in the store? Because the best service with the best portability wins in the end (that's why I'm more here than Twitter, because Jaiku has not killed the sms-service, I'm always in the cloud.) I guess it is not impossible that Apple will buy Spotify to get their hands on a good software that could stream music in their hardware.
Let's look at the financial aspects. Spotify's premium account is £9.99 * 12 months. Apple won't go after Spotify's market unless they're making less than £120 per average user per year from Itunes.
The other big question is regarding Apple's long term aspirations:
Option 1: they want lots of people (on the order of 100s of millions) buying lots of very cheap items from Apple. This has the advantage of being the same as their iPhone application strategy and lets them exploit economies of scale which would make it hard for anyone to compete with them. The bigger the market place the more customers you attract and the more customers the more likely people are to want to sell their products in your market place.
Option 2: they want lots of people (on the order of 10s of millions) to move to a subscription model for their music. This number is smaller than the first number as subscription requires a bigger commitment and that kind of commitment is likely to lose them some of the market. This has the benefit of a nice stable stream of revenue but fewer barriers to entry. Anyone can set up an equivalent subscription service (once they've got the record companies on board) and the only lock-in is the minimal length of the subscription contract.
I think the record industry would like option 2 as they'd still have the power to take away their music from the users of any subscription service that didn't play by their rules.
I think Apple are ambitious enough to seek option 1 as it potentially gives them control over a huge market in very cheap digital content: games, apps, music, ringtones, photos, micropayments for online services, etc. The systems they would need to make this work for music and iphone apps+games can be adapted fairly easily to lots of other small transactions once they've got their users comfortable with paying for things with their phone. The Japanese mobile phone market is a clear example of how this scenario can play out.
@eldsjal I think I understand your approach fairly well although it's been a while since we discussed it -- which goes to show you're not visiting us often enough :)
As I recall pointing out before, Spotify's success against iTunes is affected to a significant degree by how well it can exploit the fact that Apple (awkwardly) wears two hats.
To be more precise, the interests of Apple the device manufacturer and Apple the online distributor are fundamentally misaligned. It's in the device manufacturer's interest to keep iTunes proprietary to the iPod; whereas it's in the online distributor's interest to sell music through as many channels as possible.
In the end this is a business equation. As long as Apple makes more money from devices, iTunes is likely to stay proprietary. But if the iTunes store grows into the de facto cash cow, or the iPod starts to lose market share, friction is bound to arise between the two units.
It's in Spotify's interest, therefore, that the iPod does well but not too well. Apple has to be compelled to keep iTunes proprietary, but worldwide sales of music players has to include a significant percentage of players that do not have iTunes. Spotify then has a shot at becoming the de facto music distribution platform 'for the rest of us'. Of course it'll face tough competition from other proprietary and open initiatives.
I don't think DRM-free iTunes will make a whole lot of difference. However, I think that if Apple is smart, they'll make iTunes behave more like Spotify (i.e. Spotify, as it is, but requiring users to "buy" particular songs for use on iPods). Current iTunes customers might see it as a bait-and-switch (to first have them buy music, only to later let everyone listen to it for free) but Apple (or, Jobs, rather) has historically been bold enough to make these kinds of decisions. On the other hand, maybe it's too foreign a business model (advertising/subscription based) for Apple to pull off properly (or even try).
@adewale I believe you're correct in that there are two business models, freemium subscription & per-item sales; however, they are not mutually exclusive. Of course Apple's not going to abandon sales of music tracks for ad-supported subscriptions. But it could easily add a free streaming/subscription mode to support its per-item sales (bait-and-switch like @oscar mentioned).
@jyri: It's quite interesting also to look at how miserably Nokia and Sony Ericsson have failed given a) the number of devices they have (Nokia) b) the legacy they have (Walkman). Needless to say but the music market share for those two should be a lot higher than it is . I also think the Internet needs a platform for just delivering and managing music.
@eldsjal the miserable state of affairs with regard to the mentioned manufacturers is largely due to their incapacity to operate service-sw-hw verticals. The walkman was quite like the Nokia phones in that it was just a device without a service component. Sony the record label has always been a separately managed company, and doesn't have a triumphant track record innovating in sync with its HW manufacturer sibling.
@eldsjal I believe the simple and most obvious reason is that they want to have their music with them when they are out and about listening their music from their phone and/or laptop.
Secondly many people value the fact that you're ability to listen music does not depend whether you have Internet connection. These are naturally linked together and the reliability and ubiquity of 3G is not where it needs to be for people to start streaming music when out and about (or rather more importantly people don't perceive it to be so regardless of the technical possibilities).
Thirdly, a natural cause for them to go to iTunes is that Spotify, quite naturally, at this point does not have all of the music they like (I might be biased here since I know people with off-the-mainstream music tastes).
Add to this the fact that most people (I know) listen their music via their iPod or iPhone when out and about and it becomes problematic when we are talking about a Spotify vs. Apple scenario. And I didn't even start with roaming costs even though not that many people travel at a given time most people do travel at some point and many times want to have their music with them (this being a naturally a minor concern in the larger skeam of thing, but since you asked about the reason why some people I know want to buy their music from iTunes).
I did not find any real proof to my claim from that's documented online (heard most of the concern IRL), except here @setok talking about it briefly http://viilee.jaiku.com/presence/48703699
@setok continues here with a valid point: Some people just want to own their music. Partly because of the above mentioned reason, but partly because one just want to own his music. To some extent I see similar behavior with say magazines. People thought they would've died already (and looking through the technical eye classes, that's a very valid reasoning) but they did not just because many people like the feel and the idea that they have a magazine. Or I guess you could think the 'still-buying-vinyl-people' here. Yes, music less visual experience and Spotify is every bit as visual as iTunes, but you see what I mean. Some people just want to own their music.
I will loosely translate from Finnish (http://heleneauramo.jaiku.com/presence/50032092):
"Spotify is just isn't "my thing". Music is important for myself and it means that I own music, and that it goes wherever I might need it, and I won't be depended on an external service, which can stop working or which servers I can't access. Spotify is still great way to get introduced to music.
(Same in Finnish: Spotify ei vaan edelleenkään ole "mun juttu". Musiikki on aika tärkeä itselleni ja se tarkoittaa sitä, että omistan sitä ja se kulkee kaikkialla missä voisin tarvita sitä, enkä ole riippuvainen ulkopuolisesta palvelusta, joka voi mennä nurin tai jonka servereihin ei ole accessia.
Mutta Spotify on silti erinomainen tapa tutustua uuteen musiikkiin.)
@viilee freedom. You can copy and use as you wish, wherever you wish, without external depencies. I still listen music what I bought 20 years ago. And I can listen to it in car. iPod. Computer. Home. Summer Cabin. Airplane. etc. Spotify does not offer that.
(Again, same in Finnish: @viilee vapaus. Voi kopsata ja käyttää miten lystää, missä lystää, ilman ulkopuolisia riippuvuuksia. Kuuntelen edelleenkin musaa, mitä ostin 20 vuotta sitten. Ja voin kuunnella autossa, iPodissa, koneella, kotona, mökillä, lentokoneessa jne. Spotify ei tarjoa samaa. Piratointia en silleen harrasta paitsi tutustumismielessä -- jossa Spotify toimii hyvänä korvikkeena.)
None of this does not mean Spofify will not fly (And I not only hope, but fully believe that it will!) and that most people won't switch to a music as service model just as Spotify. I just believe that you guys are loosing some serious money to iTunes quite explicitly here. Whether you are working something that has much bigger pay back I don't know and if that's the case my point should be treated with that in mind. Hope I answered your question. Keep up the good work!
@eldsjal reading the tealeaves from your "+1": the complementary nature of subscriptions and track sales means Spotify could just as well become iTunes ;)
@villevesterinen: thank you for your feedback. I hope and think that we're working on something that will address the underlying problem. As regarding the ownership of content I guess that's always going to be the case for some. However, I still think that portability aside, the large majority of people just want access - which is what Spotify is all about. Actually more access than streaming.
The one trend I see in Apple's activities is they seem to be lowering what Shirky calls the Coasian floor for buying stuff from them. Despite Shirky's argument here: http://www.shirky.com/writings/famevsfortune.html that the transaction costs are too high for micropayments to take off Apple seem to have found a niche where people really will buy stuff without thinking about it much.
By driving down the lowest possible price for a single app or a single song they're widening the size of their potential market by orders of magnitude every time. I doubt Spotify would say no if Apple offered them the chance to be the official provider of subscription music services to the Apple marketplace and I think such a partnership would benefit both companies and their users. Apple's negotiating power could help Spotify and Spotify could focus on innovating in this relatively small business until such a time as Apple decides they've grown too big and must be acquired or else.
@jyri you're right Apple could pursue both markets at the same time and exploit the potentially complementary markets. There was an interesting thread recently about Apple's ability to make money from both it's hardware and software businesses: http://viilee.jaiku.com/presence/50727071
I think both access and owning is a bit overrated in the discussions above. Too much I and myself and "my music". What is forgotten is sharing.
One of the best things about spotify is the ability to share and collaborate on building playlists. This is the real social object! And this of course presupposes access to the same content.
A recent survey about media habits among swedish teenagers showed them abandoning ipods and blackboxed containers of music for the open communication of mobile phones that let them share music amongst friends (bluetooth or just through the poor speakers). So sharing, communication and social objects seem to win over storage, access and interface.
@eldsjal I'm not yet convinced. I think Spotify is great for what it is, but I'm not 100% convinced on the access argument. For now it will be both. Spotify, by its very nature, is not everywhere. It's not on my iPhone, in my car, at a summer cottage, in a plane or even necessarily on the Metro / underground. Plus there's the dependency on Spotify continuing to exist. Additionally it lacks a vast portion of the music I have under iTunes. You might consider this a minority audience, but I actually am not sure that is so.
Spotify naturally works great for listening through the latest hits at your office or home, if that's how you consume music, and also for finding new stuff or listening to music you're not so set on owning. However, until music can actually be offloaded from Spotify it is not an iTunes killer (and does it even have to be?).
I don't quite get the argument that "if Spotify goes under, all my music is gone!" If that eventuality were to pass, one could always switch to another music as a service provider. If at that point no comparable service would exist, then I'd just take that as indication that music as a service simply isn't a viable model.
As for the "sense of ownership": for me the critical factor was having last.fm support in Spotify. In the old days I could look at the CD collection and that would be my music. These days what I do is look at last.fm: this is what I've listened to, this is "my music".
And with one's music encoded at a decent bit rate the collection usually ends up way beyond an iPod's or laptop's storage capacity. So not all music everywhere, but rather all music at fileserver back home.
25 comments so far
I don't think so. Reason being that value in exploring the extensive music library in Spotify isn't affected.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by henrikt
+1 on @henrikt
10 months, 2 weeks ago by morris
My real question here is perhaps not well implied by the wording. What does going drm-free tell us about Apple's future strategic direction for iTunes? I don't think it's out of the question that the future iTunes a little way down the road will look a lot like Spotify. If that was the case, where would it leave Spotify? iTunes killed Odeo with by becoming a podcasting platform. I hate to sound ominous especially given how much I love Spotify. In fact it's precisely because I have a lot of affection for the service and the team that I'm wondering.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by jyri
Thanks for caring Jyri. I just think there's a fundamental difference right now between us. iTunes is still about ownership and will still only work out of the box with iPod. It's not like they've enabled support for a bunch of new devices. We on the other hand is more about an access model and the future will tell if we will go the Apple way and have a closed system, or actually open up to a variety of use cases ;-)
10 months, 2 weeks ago by eldsjal
Spotify needs to quickly fix a hole that is costing some serious money to them. Too many people I know find their music via Spotify and then go buy those songs from iTunes. In this respect it's the Spotify that needs to come closer to iTunes.
What happens in the long is run is anyone's guess. Will Spotify link to iTunes and make it effortless to buy songs from iTunes to go for the mobile life style or Will they find another partner to fight the iTyranny and are they fast enough doing that. And if they do partner up with Apple will Apple do what Google did to Firefox ie. coast along enjoying the partnership until they are ready to release their own version of Spotify, when they see that it is becoming too important piece to the puzzle? Or will Spotify just try grow fast enough before iTunes makes it move when it realizes that it's worth cannibalizing it's sales before Spotify is hands down a better music service with a serious user base. I believe Spotify is very fast becoming that better music service and I also believe that Apple is soon (next year?) making its move after they also realize how good a service it is. I do hope the stellar team in Stockholm have already a plan ready for this scenario and are well on their way executing it.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by villevesterinen
@jyri: You know, a wise man talked about social objects cough ;-). We think music data is social objects, and we focus on building tools around them. We don't necessarily want to be a social network ourselves. That's also a hint on the future :)
10 months, 2 weeks ago by eldsjal
@villevesterinen: it would be interesting to hear why you think your friends buy the music from iTunes.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by eldsjal
Maybe Spotify will survive if we look at @jyri's thought, because they were the first and hopefully has a big userbase. For example, as far as I know, Facebook has not taken over all the activity of lifestreaming/microblogging even if they are technically capable of doing that. It is of course not the same in aspect of user activity, because Spotify is not depending on the users collaboration. But I also see a dilemma, if Apple intends to look like Spotify, will we ever see an Spotify-app in the store? Because the best service with the best portability wins in the end (that's why I'm more here than Twitter, because Jaiku has not killed the sms-service, I'm always in the cloud.) I guess it is not impossible that Apple will buy Spotify to get their hands on a good software that could stream music in their hardware.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by alexz
Let's look at the financial aspects. Spotify's premium account is £9.99 * 12 months. Apple won't go after Spotify's market unless they're making less than £120 per average user per year from Itunes.
The other big question is regarding Apple's long term aspirations:
Option 1: they want lots of people (on the order of 100s of millions) buying lots of very cheap items from Apple. This has the advantage of being the same as their iPhone application strategy and lets them exploit economies of scale which would make it hard for anyone to compete with them. The bigger the market place the more customers you attract and the more customers the more likely people are to want to sell their products in your market place.
Option 2: they want lots of people (on the order of 10s of millions) to move to a subscription model for their music. This number is smaller than the first number as subscription requires a bigger commitment and that kind of commitment is likely to lose them some of the market. This has the benefit of a nice stable stream of revenue but fewer barriers to entry. Anyone can set up an equivalent subscription service (once they've got the record companies on board) and the only lock-in is the minimal length of the subscription contract.
I think the record industry would like option 2 as they'd still have the power to take away their music from the users of any subscription service that didn't play by their rules.
I think Apple are ambitious enough to seek option 1 as it potentially gives them control over a huge market in very cheap digital content: games, apps, music, ringtones, photos, micropayments for online services, etc. The systems they would need to make this work for music and iphone apps+games can be adapted fairly easily to lots of other small transactions once they've got their users comfortable with paying for things with their phone. The Japanese mobile phone market is a clear example of how this scenario can play out.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by adewale
@eldsjal I think I understand your approach fairly well although it's been a while since we discussed it -- which goes to show you're not visiting us often enough :)
As I recall pointing out before, Spotify's success against iTunes is affected to a significant degree by how well it can exploit the fact that Apple (awkwardly) wears two hats.
To be more precise, the interests of Apple the device manufacturer and Apple the online distributor are fundamentally misaligned. It's in the device manufacturer's interest to keep iTunes proprietary to the iPod; whereas it's in the online distributor's interest to sell music through as many channels as possible.
In the end this is a business equation. As long as Apple makes more money from devices, iTunes is likely to stay proprietary. But if the iTunes store grows into the de facto cash cow, or the iPod starts to lose market share, friction is bound to arise between the two units.
It's in Spotify's interest, therefore, that the iPod does well but not too well. Apple has to be compelled to keep iTunes proprietary, but worldwide sales of music players has to include a significant percentage of players that do not have iTunes. Spotify then has a shot at becoming the de facto music distribution platform 'for the rest of us'. Of course it'll face tough competition from other proprietary and open initiatives.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by jyri
I don't think DRM-free iTunes will make a whole lot of difference. However, I think that if Apple is smart, they'll make iTunes behave more like Spotify (i.e. Spotify, as it is, but requiring users to "buy" particular songs for use on iPods). Current iTunes customers might see it as a bait-and-switch (to first have them buy music, only to later let everyone listen to it for free) but Apple (or, Jobs, rather) has historically been bold enough to make these kinds of decisions. On the other hand, maybe it's too foreign a business model (advertising/subscription based) for Apple to pull off properly (or even try).
10 months, 2 weeks ago by oscar
@adewale I believe you're correct in that there are two business models, freemium subscription & per-item sales; however, they are not mutually exclusive. Of course Apple's not going to abandon sales of music tracks for ad-supported subscriptions. But it could easily add a free streaming/subscription mode to support its per-item sales (bait-and-switch like @oscar mentioned).
10 months, 2 weeks ago by jyri
@jyri: It's quite interesting also to look at how miserably Nokia and Sony Ericsson have failed given a) the number of devices they have (Nokia) b) the legacy they have (Walkman). Needless to say but the music market share for those two should be a lot higher than it is . I also think the Internet needs a platform for just delivering and managing music.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by eldsjal
@eldsjal the miserable state of affairs with regard to the mentioned manufacturers is largely due to their incapacity to operate service-sw-hw verticals. The walkman was quite like the Nokia phones in that it was just a device without a service component. Sony the record label has always been a separately managed company, and doesn't have a triumphant track record innovating in sync with its HW manufacturer sibling.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by jyri
+1 on @jyri :)
10 months, 2 weeks ago by eldsjal
@eldsjal I believe the simple and most obvious reason is that they want to have their music with them when they are out and about listening their music from their phone and/or laptop.
Secondly many people value the fact that you're ability to listen music does not depend whether you have Internet connection. These are naturally linked together and the reliability and ubiquity of 3G is not where it needs to be for people to start streaming music when out and about (or rather more importantly people don't perceive it to be so regardless of the technical possibilities).
Thirdly, a natural cause for them to go to iTunes is that Spotify, quite naturally, at this point does not have all of the music they like (I might be biased here since I know people with off-the-mainstream music tastes).
Add to this the fact that most people (I know) listen their music via their iPod or iPhone when out and about and it becomes problematic when we are talking about a Spotify vs. Apple scenario. And I didn't even start with roaming costs even though not that many people travel at a given time most people do travel at some point and many times want to have their music with them (this being a naturally a minor concern in the larger skeam of thing, but since you asked about the reason why some people I know want to buy their music from iTunes).
I did not find any real proof to my claim from that's documented online (heard most of the concern IRL), except here @setok talking about it briefly http://viilee.jaiku.com/presence/48703699
@setok continues here with a valid point: Some people just want to own their music. Partly because of the above mentioned reason, but partly because one just want to own his music. To some extent I see similar behavior with say magazines. People thought they would've died already (and looking through the technical eye classes, that's a very valid reasoning) but they did not just because many people like the feel and the idea that they have a magazine. Or I guess you could think the 'still-buying-vinyl-people' here. Yes, music less visual experience and Spotify is every bit as visual as iTunes, but you see what I mean. Some people just want to own their music.
I will loosely translate from Finnish (http://heleneauramo.jaiku.com/presence/50032092):
"Spotify is just isn't "my thing". Music is important for myself and it means that I own music, and that it goes wherever I might need it, and I won't be depended on an external service, which can stop working or which servers I can't access. Spotify is still great way to get introduced to music.
(Same in Finnish: Spotify ei vaan edelleenkään ole "mun juttu". Musiikki on aika tärkeä itselleni ja se tarkoittaa sitä, että omistan sitä ja se kulkee kaikkialla missä voisin tarvita sitä, enkä ole riippuvainen ulkopuolisesta palvelusta, joka voi mennä nurin tai jonka servereihin ei ole accessia.
Mutta Spotify on silti erinomainen tapa tutustua uuteen musiikkiin.)
... @setok continues
@viilee freedom. You can copy and use as you wish, wherever you wish, without external depencies. I still listen music what I bought 20 years ago. And I can listen to it in car. iPod. Computer. Home. Summer Cabin. Airplane. etc. Spotify does not offer that.
(Again, same in Finnish: @viilee vapaus. Voi kopsata ja käyttää miten lystää, missä lystää, ilman ulkopuolisia riippuvuuksia. Kuuntelen edelleenkin musaa, mitä ostin 20 vuotta sitten. Ja voin kuunnella autossa, iPodissa, koneella, kotona, mökillä, lentokoneessa jne. Spotify ei tarjoa samaa. Piratointia en silleen harrasta paitsi tutustumismielessä -- jossa Spotify toimii hyvänä korvikkeena.)
None of this does not mean Spofify will not fly (And I not only hope, but fully believe that it will!) and that most people won't switch to a music as service model just as Spotify. I just believe that you guys are loosing some serious money to iTunes quite explicitly here. Whether you are working something that has much bigger pay back I don't know and if that's the case my point should be treated with that in mind. Hope I answered your question. Keep up the good work!
10 months, 2 weeks ago by villevesterinen
@eldsjal reading the tealeaves from your "+1": the complementary nature of subscriptions and track sales means Spotify could just as well become iTunes ;)
10 months, 2 weeks ago by jyri
@villevesterinen: thank you for your feedback. I hope and think that we're working on something that will address the underlying problem. As regarding the ownership of content I guess that's always going to be the case for some. However, I still think that portability aside, the large majority of people just want access - which is what Spotify is all about. Actually more access than streaming.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by eldsjal
@eldsjal so when are you going to start selling tracks? :)
10 months, 2 weeks ago by jyri
The one trend I see in Apple's activities is they seem to be lowering what Shirky calls the Coasian floor for buying stuff from them. Despite Shirky's argument here: http://www.shirky.com/writings/famevsfortune.html that the transaction costs are too high for micropayments to take off Apple seem to have found a niche where people really will buy stuff without thinking about it much.
By driving down the lowest possible price for a single app or a single song they're widening the size of their potential market by orders of magnitude every time. I doubt Spotify would say no if Apple offered them the chance to be the official provider of subscription music services to the Apple marketplace and I think such a partnership would benefit both companies and their users. Apple's negotiating power could help Spotify and Spotify could focus on innovating in this relatively small business until such a time as Apple decides they've grown too big and must be acquired or else.
@jyri you're right Apple could pursue both markets at the same time and exploit the potentially complementary markets. There was an interesting thread recently about Apple's ability to make money from both it's hardware and software businesses: http://viilee.jaiku.com/presence/50727071
10 months, 2 weeks ago by adewale
I think both access and owning is a bit overrated in the discussions above. Too much I and myself and "my music". What is forgotten is sharing.
One of the best things about spotify is the ability to share and collaborate on building playlists. This is the real social object! And this of course presupposes access to the same content.
A recent survey about media habits among swedish teenagers showed them abandoning ipods and blackboxed containers of music for the open communication of mobile phones that let them share music amongst friends (bluetooth or just through the poor speakers). So sharing, communication and social objects seem to win over storage, access and interface.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by monki
@eldsjal I'm not yet convinced. I think Spotify is great for what it is, but I'm not 100% convinced on the access argument. For now it will be both. Spotify, by its very nature, is not everywhere. It's not on my iPhone, in my car, at a summer cottage, in a plane or even necessarily on the Metro / underground. Plus there's the dependency on Spotify continuing to exist. Additionally it lacks a vast portion of the music I have under iTunes. You might consider this a minority audience, but I actually am not sure that is so.
Spotify naturally works great for listening through the latest hits at your office or home, if that's how you consume music, and also for finding new stuff or listening to music you're not so set on owning. However, until music can actually be offloaded from Spotify it is not an iTunes killer (and does it even have to be?).
10 months, 2 weeks ago by Setok
I don't quite get the argument that "if Spotify goes under, all my music is gone!" If that eventuality were to pass, one could always switch to another music as a service provider. If at that point no comparable service would exist, then I'd just take that as indication that music as a service simply isn't a viable model.
As for the "sense of ownership": for me the critical factor was having last.fm support in Spotify. In the old days I could look at the CD collection and that would be my music. These days what I do is look at last.fm: this is what I've listened to, this is "my music".
And with one's music encoded at a decent bit rate the collection usually ends up way beyond an iPod's or laptop's storage capacity. So not all music everywhere, but rather all music at fileserver back home.
10 months, 2 weeks ago by toivotuo
Blogged a post inspired by this thread: http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2009/01/itunes-and-spotify.html
10 months, 2 weeks ago by jyri
wow how did i miss this thread until just now?
10 months, 2 weeks ago by constantine