Thought a post was overdue about the magic that is… Spotify.

What is it then? Well, it’s one of the latest ad supported/subscription/streaming music models about. Still currently in BETA mode and invite only, they have started to roll out invitations. Through this, they’re creating hype and a real buzz on the ethernet.

What makes this one different? I’ve tried myriad of new retail models as it’s basically my job to be an expert on this stuff and from the outset, I was fond of Spotify. It’s a program like iTunes, which is much better than a web store. There are NO previews, the streaming is fast and the quality is good.

What about the ad’s? There are three ways you can use Spotify. You can use it for free and have to listen to an ad every now and again. You can pay £0.99p for 1 day’s usage – ad free, alternatively, you can subscribe for £9.99 a month, ad free of course. At the moment, the ads are MORE than reasonable. They don’t last either. But they are in Beta mode. When I first joined, I didn’t get an advert for 3 days or so. If you compere Spotify to We7, which is newly launched, you have to listen to an ad before every track, which I and other users, wouldn’t consider worthwhile. But it’s the only way they can survive. So what about the future of Spotify? Well, I fear that the ad rate will increase in order to pay the bills. This will damage relationships between users no doubt, but would it encourage them to subscribe? Let’s say Spotify opens it up and anyone can join for free, if they had 3 months of relatively ad free use out of it, then the ads began to increase, it would increase subscription membership, for one, I would subscribe.

How much content is available? You would be surprised at how much there is and how much continues to be added daily. ALL 4 majors have subscribed, meaning most of the repertoire is on there. Distributors such as the Orchard have joined up, meaning a lot of content is available. Even the latest albums such as the Killers is available to listen to at your disposal (perhaps if you have problems falling asleep). I’m a big fan of live music and content that isn’t available in the shops are on the service. Right now I’m listening to a live Door’s album. Funnily enough, you can even listen to ‘exclusive’ iTunes only performances, which does make you giggle. Pretty much whatever you type in you can get hold of.

Any nice features? Apparently you can share playlists, although I haven’t done it yet. You can use deep links meaning I can link you to various tracks and it will open up spotify for you and display the link. There are no social media aspects to it, you can’t make friends or follow people, perhaps a good thing?

What does this mean for music? It can only be a good thing. It will encourage people to use services such as Spotify as an alternative to filesharing, also, get more people interested in subscription models, which I believe will be the favoured model to which we consume music.

What can be improved? It’s only available when your online at the moment as its a streaming service. There are plans however to enable offline streaming & mobile applications are in the pipeline. But it doesn’t help the fact that you can’t add any of it to a portable mp3 device, which is bad. But it’s perhaps the last hurdle the music industry retail model will have to overcome. It’s not far away from being introduced, there are models which are nearly there, but for e.g. don’t have the acceptable amount of content, it will no doubt become the king of industry models, & I for one, am real excited about it.

If you’ve not got a Spotify invite already, drop me an email and I will get one to you. Enjoy.