Today, the music industry finally woke up to the 21st Century. Because today Spotify opened its doors to the public, and provided the first music streaming service that’s easier than illegal downloading, but just as free.
The launch wasn’t without its schisms – as Bobbie Johnson and Charles Arthur point out in this excellent piece over on The Guardian ,Spotify was forced to remove thousands of tracks from its service due to archaic licensing restrictions and – more understandably – because some artists simply don’t want their music to be available for free streams.
But the fact is that the service offers pretty much everything you could want, from Aardvark to ZZ Top (there’s no Beatles, but there’s plenty of Rolling Stones). As a user, you get to search for any track or artists, listen to it as many tims as you want, and share it with your friends.
The Swedish duo who created Spotify are already talking about a mobile phone version of the service. So what’s the point in trawling through Limewire for illegal downloads now?
Of course, Spotify is only legal because it pays the labels just like radio. And it pays by selling audio advert, which appears between songs (not every song, thankfully). But as we media types are finding out, relying on advertising in a recession is hardly a comfortable way to survive. At present, the only advertisers on Spotify seem to be the UK government agencies. Let’s hope this isn’t some sort of pre-emptive state bail-out.
Fortunately there’s been a massive buzz around Spotify. The audience will be staggeringly huge. YouTube huge. Hopefully advertisers will wake up to the possibilities quickly enough to keep Spotify alive – and if not, there’s always the hope that Google will buy them.
In the meantime, it’s time to say farewell to Napster and other paid-for subscription services. It’s time to bid adieu to Limewire. And, if Spotify sorts out selling music too, it could even be a proper challenger for iTunes.
