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I agree with Jacques's analysis. What will be interesting to watch is the uptake rate of the paid version in countries where they have extremely widespread usa

I agree with Jacques's analysis. What will be interesting to watch is the uptake rate of the paid version in countries where they have extremely widespread usage (like here in Norway.) I'm already a paid subscriber, and gladly pay 100NOK/month for the premium service. I'd be disappointed (but not completely surprised) to find that people don't think the service is worth that.

swombat 16y ago
I don't find that a service for simply listening to the radio is worth paying for on a monthly basis. If I can't download it and listen to it whenever I want and wherever I want, it's not mine, and it's worth paying for. I would happily pay a significant amount of money every month (say about £30-40) for an all-you-can-eat buffet of DRM-free downloads covering all the released music (since the beginning of recorded music) by all the major labels. This would translate into some £480 of income from me for the recording industry, versus £0 at the moment. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. I wonder how much money they're leaving on the table by offering inadequate products like Spotify.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- arctangent 16y ago
  I'm a paid subscriber and I'd like to correct what I think may be a faulty assumption (which may be due to poor wording in the original article). Spotify does more than let you listen to the radio - they have a large catalogue of music that you can search through and play at whim. You can also save music to your mobile device and listen to it later. If you want, you can go to a friend's house, login to Spotify on your account and then listen to your music there. http://www.spotify.com/uk/about/features/ http://www.spotify.com/uk/about/features/ All this for just £10 a month! For all intents and purposes, Spotify is "all-you-can-eat" for the needs of most people. I wish they'd improve the range of tracks they have but that's somewhat beyond their control - this will always happen until the market tips enough to get certain old-world businesses on board. Before this comment runs the risk of sounding like a hagiography, I should point out that the features for creating and sharing playlists are fairly limited and the client software is fairly basic (at least on OSX, which is the only version I've used). Edit: Beaten to the punch by ladon86 by a couple of minutes. I should learn to type faster, or perhaps just use fewer words :-)
- urbanjunkie 16y ago
  So, for £40 you want the ability to download every piece of music ever released and own it for ever? Once you've spent your first month downloading everything you've ever wanted, what's the incentive to re-up your subscription the following month? Are you really going to pay that subsequent fee to download a few new releases? Not sure your model works.
  - fwdbureau 16y ago
    well, the model works for others: millions (or hundreds of thousands) gladly pay a monthly fee of £40 on usenet + rapidshare accounts, and i'm pretty sure most of them renew month after month
    - urbanjunkie 16y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean here - are you talking about access to pirated music? Also, I'm uncertain that millions or hundreds of thousands of people really do pay £40per month for rapidshare/usenet accounts. I'd like to see some evidence for that claim.
    - EwanToo 16y ago
      I'm pretty sure most of them aren't using rapidshare for the music alone, but the movies, tv shows, games, and porn they carry.
  - robryan 16y ago
    For new music. Sure the recording industry will feel they are getting ripped off but as the comment above says, they are getting nothing currently.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    >Once you've spent your first month downloading everything you've ever wanted This only makes sense if you're talking about someone with tragically limited tastes in music. There is no way you could ever listen to "all the music you want" in a lifetime, let alone one measly month. There is more good new music produced and released in a month than you could listen to in that month, before you even consider the entire history of recorded music that already exists.
- EwanToo 16y ago
  Why would you pay for the 2nd month? Spotify isn't a radio service, it does have a (fairly iffy) recommendation service, but it's a fundamentally a "I want to hear this track or album by this artist, there it is, click play" service.
  - swombat 16y ago
    Why would you pay for the 2nd month? Because my tastes change, I discover new genres and artists, artists release new music, and new artists come out.
    - EwanToo 16y ago
      And you'd really pay £40 a month for the ability to follow your changing tastes? I think you are in a very small subset of users if that's the case.
      - swombat 16y ago
        Absolutely. Think about it as the equivalent of buying a measly 3 or 4 CDs a month back in pre-internet days. I don't think that's an excessive amount of music if you're a music-lover. I would easily download much more than that each month, and would be happy to pay for an omnivore plan to match.
        EwanToo 16y ago
        If you're happy buying 3 or 4 CDs a month for £30, well nothing stops you now does it? Emusic even offer that kind of subscription package, or at least they used to. Do you not see a risk to the company offering an unlimited download package that some (many?) would subscribe, download everything they've ever heard of, and can think of, then cancel? Or after 2 years of subscribing if they announced they were changing their model that people would do the same?
        swombat 16y ago
        When I was paying for CDs, I was paying for something tangible and worth money: the concrete delivery of a piece of plastic from the other side of the world into my hand. Now that this is not the distribution model anymore, I am certainly not happy to pay £30 a month to get the equivalent of 3-4 CDs. Times have moved on. £30 a months should buy access to everything, not just to 3-4 CDs' worth of music. 90% of the price of CDs is distribution and packaging. Those costs are nil on the internet, and therefore the price should be adjusted accordingly (and the record labels go bankrupt). If they can evolve and start providing a better value-add service (like, maybe, a very good interface for finding and downloading music) then they might be worth something. Atm the labels are just a leech on the back of artists and the public. Anyway, if you must sell music trac-by-track, I would consider a per-track model that costs 10% of the price currently being used - i.e. 10 cents per track. But I probably wouldn't spend as much as if I was offered an all-you-can-eat subscription.
- Confusion 16y ago
  I happily pay Spotify €10 a month for an all-I-can-eat buffet of DRM'ed downloads, covering much of all the released music of many of the major labels. I'm certain I'm not alone. I don't care that I'm left with nothing when they fail or change their policy so it doesn't suit me and I decide to take my money elsewhere. They offer me a convenient service. I'm not even interested in buying CD's.

swombat 16y ago

I don't find that a service for simply listening to the radio is worth paying for on a monthly basis. If I can't download it and listen to it whenever I want and wherever I want, it's not mine, and it's worth paying for. I would happily pay a significant amount of money every month (say about £30-40) for an all-you-can-eat buffet of DRM-free downloads covering all the released music (since the beginning of recorded music) by all the major labels. This would translate into some £480 of income from me for the recording industry, versus £0 at the moment. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. I wonder how much money they're leaving on the table by offering inadequate products like Spotify.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
arctangent 16y ago
I'm a paid subscriber and I'd like to correct what I think may be a faulty assumption (which may be due to poor wording in the original article). Spotify does more than let you listen to the radio - they have a large catalogue of music that you can search through and play at whim. You can also save music to your mobile device and listen to it later. If you want, you can go to a friend's house, login to Spotify on your account and then listen to your music there. http://www.spotify.com/uk/about/features/ http://www.spotify.com/uk/about/features/ All this for just £10 a month! For all intents and purposes, Spotify is "all-you-can-eat" for the needs of most people. I wish they'd improve the range of tracks they have but that's somewhat beyond their control - this will always happen until the market tips enough to get certain old-world businesses on board. Before this comment runs the risk of sounding like a hagiography, I should point out that the features for creating and sharing playlists are fairly limited and the client software is fairly basic (at least on OSX, which is the only version I've used). Edit: Beaten to the punch by ladon86 by a couple of minutes. I should learn to type faster, or perhaps just use fewer words :-)
urbanjunkie 16y ago
So, for £40 you want the ability to download every piece of music ever released and own it for ever? Once you've spent your first month downloading everything you've ever wanted, what's the incentive to re-up your subscription the following month? Are you really going to pay that subsequent fee to download a few new releases? Not sure your model works.
- fwdbureau 16y ago
  well, the model works for others: millions (or hundreds of thousands) gladly pay a monthly fee of £40 on usenet + rapidshare accounts, and i'm pretty sure most of them renew month after month
  - urbanjunkie 16y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean here - are you talking about access to pirated music? Also, I'm uncertain that millions or hundreds of thousands of people really do pay £40per month for rapidshare/usenet accounts. I'd like to see some evidence for that claim.
  - EwanToo 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure most of them aren't using rapidshare for the music alone, but the movies, tv shows, games, and porn they carry.
- robryan 16y ago
  For new music. Sure the recording industry will feel they are getting ripped off but as the comment above says, they are getting nothing currently.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  >Once you've spent your first month downloading everything you've ever wanted This only makes sense if you're talking about someone with tragically limited tastes in music. There is no way you could ever listen to "all the music you want" in a lifetime, let alone one measly month. There is more good new music produced and released in a month than you could listen to in that month, before you even consider the entire history of recorded music that already exists.
EwanToo 16y ago
Why would you pay for the 2nd month? Spotify isn't a radio service, it does have a (fairly iffy) recommendation service, but it's a fundamentally a "I want to hear this track or album by this artist, there it is, click play" service.
- swombat 16y ago
  Why would you pay for the 2nd month? Because my tastes change, I discover new genres and artists, artists release new music, and new artists come out.
  - EwanToo 16y ago
    And you'd really pay £40 a month for the ability to follow your changing tastes? I think you are in a very small subset of users if that's the case.
    - swombat 16y ago
      Absolutely. Think about it as the equivalent of buying a measly 3 or 4 CDs a month back in pre-internet days. I don't think that's an excessive amount of music if you're a music-lover. I would easily download much more than that each month, and would be happy to pay for an omnivore plan to match.
      - EwanToo 16y ago
        If you're happy buying 3 or 4 CDs a month for £30, well nothing stops you now does it? Emusic even offer that kind of subscription package, or at least they used to. Do you not see a risk to the company offering an unlimited download package that some (many?) would subscribe, download everything they've ever heard of, and can think of, then cancel? Or after 2 years of subscribing if they announced they were changing their model that people would do the same?
        swombat 16y ago
        When I was paying for CDs, I was paying for something tangible and worth money: the concrete delivery of a piece of plastic from the other side of the world into my hand. Now that this is not the distribution model anymore, I am certainly not happy to pay £30 a month to get the equivalent of 3-4 CDs. Times have moved on. £30 a months should buy access to everything, not just to 3-4 CDs' worth of music. 90% of the price of CDs is distribution and packaging. Those costs are nil on the internet, and therefore the price should be adjusted accordingly (and the record labels go bankrupt). If they can evolve and start providing a better value-add service (like, maybe, a very good interface for finding and downloading music) then they might be worth something. Atm the labels are just a leech on the back of artists and the public. Anyway, if you must sell music trac-by-track, I would consider a per-track model that costs 10% of the price currently being used - i.e. 10 cents per track. But I probably wouldn't spend as much as if I was offered an all-you-can-eat subscription.
Confusion 16y ago
I happily pay Spotify €10 a month for an all-I-can-eat buffet of DRM'ed downloads, covering much of all the released music of many of the major labels. I'm certain I'm not alone. I don't care that I'm left with nothing when they fail or change their policy so it doesn't suit me and I decide to take my money elsewhere. They offer me a convenient service. I'm not even interested in buying CD's.