SPOTIFY (first impressions on this product: HUGE potential)

After testing many sites out there for music: from searching songs in  youtube to Pandora, musicstrands, deezer, last.fm, and some more niche music sites for jazz or classical music like radio swiss or sintoniza.net ( ) spotify seems the best project for legal music in the market. In my opinion, this product has the potential to become a winner of the upcoming revolution to music markets.

I have worked in the music industry myself (music publishing) and I am a music lover (I was going to be a musician myself). New technologies are not a threat but a huge opportunity for musicians and record companies, they just need the right tool to get to final customers. Spotify converts music in what it is: a service. It is not a product where you end up purchasing a record or a concert ticket, it is a continuous service relationship: and this is it, no more, no less than that. Then, you will get customers intersted in having a higher or lower level of relationship around music, but, anyone should find quickly good music. Spotify does it very well, just a simple and really good search engine and easily get to the music you are looking for. Really fast and to the point.

Deezer was so far the best solution I had seen together with naxosradio (only classical music and restricted to a relatively limited catalogue without capacity to go on demmand to what you want to go). The truth is that some options are difficult to compare with each other because some are trying to be more social, some other more commercial tools, or maybe they try to focus in different attributes to be different.

Spotify is a kind of deezer with superior sound quality and a quicker response. My opinion is similar to some others I have found like the one of Erik Turnquist. I have to say that deezer is also a great music solution. These are some of the reasons that made me think that way:

- quality, quality, quality. Get good raw material (good information, good data, many data) and a good or reasonable good sound equipment, and you will enjoy music. I know many people that demmands a minimum quality in order to listen to music. Spotify quality is the best I found so far, close to perfect.

- deep catalogue in many categories. I have found their music catalogue is wide and it covers quality music in jazz, modern, classic and tratidional music. It does not have everything, but I have found most of my relevant musicians there. Maybe I am too lucky

- really easy to install and to use. Well, I don’t like to install applications to my computers constanly, and in my office. I had a very bad experience with musicstrands a few years ago. I found it quite aggresive software getting into conflict with many applications in my computer. It was even difficult to uninstall. Personally, I don’t trust aggresive software solutions. In the other hand, I don’t like companies that get your information without telling you (even on music taste). It seems to me that policies applied by spotify in those terms are user-respectful.

- it is legal. I know this is of little importance for many people. I insist, I don’t like aggresive software and I am not going to be out there fighting in p2p to get good music. I am convinced that one of the key reasons for p2p to succed was availability. p2p was simply the only way to reach certain contents on the net. it was not p2p competing with a good alternative, it was p2p or nothing.  A solution that costs 10€ a month is really cheap for music lovers: a complete bargain.

With a product like spotify working properly, in future, it would just be nonsense to store music at home. And this is the trend in Internet, we go to services in everything and I believe our information storage at home will be minimum in just a few years.

In the negative side I have to say that not having good solutions to carry the music wherever I go in my mp3 player (not ipod ) as well as the necessity for Internet connection limit this product but we know wireless radio are already a reality (I have tested them) and there will be a growing number of devices making it possible to carry your music even when it is hosted in your service providers.

Other aspect I don’t love (maybe I am not using their product properly) is that my streaming stop after a number of songs. (saving bandwith ¿?) I understand it to some point becauseit could be just a waste of resources if I forget it on the whole day, but maybe it cuts too quickly for me.

This small post on spotify is not a very academic analysis on the product but only a first sight opinion. Ok, why to talk about this in a blog on media sustainabilty?

- Products like spotify make it possible for contents to be fairly monetized. We are definitely travelling to a more secure internet and it is just a matter of time that one company in this sector will become a winner on this sector. With this product spotify may (must) well be this one. They are a kind of b2c mochila (see mochila.com to know more on this company). In other words, they could allocate revenues on artists depending on their audience in a fair and transparent way.

- They show a typical freemium strategy. Simple, either you use it for free (with limited functions) or you pay. I do not know whether they will monetize their free version on advertising, or it will just be a platform to acquire subscribers.

- But they are not (as far as I know) a producer or a media, they are a platform, a marketplace. So, they are just an information company, that means: a money making machine (potentialy, at least).

In other words, great product and a sustainable business model from the begining, as simple like that. I think this product, if managed properly, will succeed.

From what I have seen, and I believe what I have seen so far is nothing at all, spotify looks like probably the most powerful project around music. I am really happy to see it and I really wish them all the best for the sake of music.

Wellcome spotify, and show must go on!

Update. Just seen their mission statement. I am surprised to see how their mission statement and product are aligned. I really like this statement:

We want to connect millions of people with their favorite songs and create a service that people love to use. We believe music should be easily accessible and that listening to music will make people live richer lives. We want to create a win win situation for people who love listening to music and people who love creating music.