Evolution of Music in a Decade: Downloading to Streaming
Music had evolved a lot within the past decade. When considering the evolution of music, I decided to focus on the rise of music streaming. Through the Internet Archive, a website which traces the historical evolution of a particular web page, I traced the homepage of Spotify to see how it has evolved within the past ten years.
Spotify is a music and video streaming service which arose after the streaming platforms of Pandora, Grooveshark and SoundCloud. It was officially founded in 2006, however they did not launch until 2008. It offers free and premium services for users. The company has sparked debate within recent years with regards to the royalties it pays to the music industries. Most artists make little to nothing through platforms like Spotify and has led some, such as Taylor Swift, to remove their music from streaming services.
When looking at www.spotify.com between 2006 and 2016, I noticed the company only updated their site yearly. Starting in 2006, the website was just basic HTML of a single image, which was not view-able, and some text which said “Enter your email below to be informed when exciting stuff happens.” This was just the beginning for Spotify. It was a start-up. I definitely think this company was inspired by Grooveshark, a streaming platform which was launched the beginning of 2006. The design of Spotify in 2006 shows the founders most likely had minimal experience with coding and did not have money to hire people with experience. However, the company definitely had more funding by 2007, because the website in 2007 focused on job opportunities.
By 2009, the company had much more revenue coming in. They moved from basic html to a web page featuring a logo, slogan and a video explaining the company’s mission. What changed? Advertisements. They finally started advertising in 2008. Based on the funding they gained, the founders were able to launch the Beta of their streaming platform in 2009. The company was definitely on the rise. Mark Zuckerberg even brought the world’s attention to this streaming platform when he made a status about Spotify in 2009.
By 2011, Spotify released their application for phones. Now, people could stream music from their phone and not buy it. It was going well, and the website showed it through its advertisements. On their main page they advertised for specific artists, Windows phones and Shazam, a music application which can name songs.
From there, Spotify definitely had a steady base of users. It’s main targets were millennials. One could tell by their 2013 and 2014 layouts. In 2013 and 2014, they had their slogan and a video playing in the background. I found it mysterious and it drew me in. The videos were just of young people hanging out and listening to music. As a millennial, I felt drawn in. However, they decided to branch out to a more broader audience by 2014 and 2015. Their new slogan was “Music for everyone” and they began advertising family discounts. I think one reason this occurred was the artist uprising against Spotify, such as Taylor Swift and Jay Z in 2014. Spotify needed to keep its users, so it tried to draw in more people. I think it definitely worked because my parents now use Spotify to stream their music.
As of 2016, not much has changed for Spotify. It is still trying to draw in a broader audience. The only thing which has changed is the layout and color scheme of the website. They have not made any changes within the past two months, so they are most likely looking for bigger and better things for their company. What’s next? Honestly, I do not know. I think it needs to be something big and different because company’s popularity has seemed to plateau.
