On Spotify

Here in sweden, we have this new service for streaming music called Spotify. The basic idea is quite genial: Instead of slowly building a music collection, you simply pay a monthly fee, alternatively listen to occasional ads, and get access to a large collection from which to stream music on demand.

First of all, this is something that should have been created when Napster first showed up. It's easier to use from the consumer perspective, and it is a way to monetize music that actually seems to work.

Unfortunately, after using it for a few months, I don't like it.

Now, I still think the basic idea is a good one from the record companies' perspective and I am somewhat surprised that they are not all over it. The fact that they aren't underscores how dead the industry of manufacturing music really is. There's just no way they will be able to find a business model now, since they are so wedded to their current one, and that one has been dead for years.

Buying CDs is inconvenient. No one listens to music directly from a CD now, everything has to be moved to MP3 or something equivalent to be played back from pocket devices or media centers. The only reason to buy a CD is the lack of a viable alternative. Buying overpriced singles online a la iTunes clearly isn't that alternative: So now, we have cheap, unlimited reproduction of music enabling someone to actually have a music collection containing all music, yet the asking price for music keeps going up. Sorry, but the value of copies of music has gone down, drastically, and will never go up again.

Back to Spotify. So, this software solves the problem of charging for single songs: you don't. What you charge for is access to the service, and through the service, any music you are interested in is available. In theory. And this is the first area where Spotify breaks down. See, since the record companies don't understand that the world has changed, they don't understand Spotify. They are horrified at the idea of single songs losing their value. They don't want monthly subscriptions. They don't want their songs on Spotify. Right now, since they are desperate, they are allowing some songs to appear on the service. Not understanding that the whole point is to have everything available. Thus, the value is lost: Sure, there is some music on there, but most of the time when searching for an artist, all you find is one or two songs off some compilation album, and the rest of the time you either don't find them at all or just a few of their albums.

The second problem with Spotify is that it's still part of the old model. These days, since distribution is simple, music is abundant. You can find a new artist every day, online. And none of them need to be connected to a label. But on Spotify, all you can find is label artists. Most often only the most trite and commercialised of them, as well. What Spotify ought to do (in a perfect world) is let anyone upload their music to them. That way, everyone has instant access to a perfect index of all the world's music, as it is being created. This is what the technology dictates should happen, and I am sure we will see it happen eventually.

A third problem with it is that the software simply isn't very good. It's a lot worse than last.fm at dealing with the metadata and its category system is laughable. Hopefully these are problems that will be fixed eventually, but the best solution would be for them to open up their API to third parties, so that there will be several clients with different interfaces and features to choose from.

Spotify is good for showing what is possible, that the only value of music is in one gigantic collection of all music, and that there still are viable business models in connection to music. It fails because of the old industry which refuses to die.

After having access to Spotify for a few months, I barely use it anymore. I'll turn it on occasionally to look for some piece of music I've heard about, but most of the time it turns out to not be available. The software is useless for discovering music in its current form, and all the toplists and recommendations are terrible. Plus, it really detracts from the experience when music you've listened to and put into playlists disappears for no apparent reason beyond the compulsive need of the record companies to assert their power.

I'm looking forward to the inevitable Bittorrent client which downloads music on demand, connected to the last.fm service for recommendations and metadata.