I Love Spotify. I Hate Spotify
Why such a good service is like ruled by demons?
Yes. Stranger as it sounds, it’s real. Spotify is a very nice and good way to hear streaming music, but also is a nasty and bad business for all users who aren’t in the grace zone where this service operates. We’ll get to the root of that dual feeling in a moment, but first let’s take a look at the origin of this service.
Music everywhere. Sort of…
Spotify started officialy its commercial music streaming service P2P on October 7th., 2008 from its sweedish origins in the persons of Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. In the beginning it had two promotional models: a paid suscrption available for eveyone with no commercials and a free account only available by invitation in order to cope with the growth rate of the service. And yes, with an array of publicity. On February 10th., 2009, Spotify opened the “flood gates” for a free registration only in the UK, and because of the surge in registrations following the release of the Spotify mobile service, closed its open registrations and returned to the invitation-only-free-account. In the meantime they were making deals with some of the major record companies.
By February 2010, Spotify recruited who in the past was the biggest enemy of the record industry: Sean Parker, founder of Napster, and by then in Founders Fund, who was the contact to join Warner and Universal with the swedish music service (not ABBA, by the way). In May of that year, they announced two more formats of suscription: Unlimited, similar to Spotify Premium but with no mobile and other features, and Open, a reduced version of Spotify Free, which allowed users to listen 20 hours of music per month.
But such benefits of the Free model were ready to end.
Starting May 1st., 2011, Labour Day in some european countries, all Spotify Open and Spotify Free members were transferred to a new product limiting their audio streaming to ten hours per month. Alas, a user could listen a single track only a maximum of five times (that restriction lasted until recently in 2012 and 2013). Spotify Unlimited and Spotify Premium members were not affected, along with new users who were exempt from these changes for six months. And in July, 2011, the big break: Spotify is available in the US after years of negotiation with the big names in the music industry, along with a Facebook integration. So far now, the service is present in Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, New Zeland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweeden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States.
And how it works? May I play any song I like? Can I download it to my computer?
The magic (or the curse) behind Spotify
As we spoke earlier, Spotify is a peer-to-peer music file exchange service that is also based on streaming based server. An internet connection with 256 Kbps is quite enough for a 160 Kbps bitrate of the tracks. The audio files can be played on demand and the songs are saved on the computer cache to avoid consuming bandwidth with every reproduction of a song. The audio streams are in Vorbis format at q5 (ca. 160 kbit/s) for Open users, or in q9 (ca. 320 kbit/s) for Premium suscribers, and it has a median playback latency of 265 ms. It is suggested to allow 1GB of disk space in the cache.An account can be used in several computers, but only one at a time can play music.
The Spotify software is proprietary and uses digital rights management (DRM) to prevent unauthorized use of content. Users who agree to Spotify’s Terms and Conditions agree to not reverse engineer the application. In short, you can’t download the song you like unless you agree to pay, just like you do on iTunes Store, but in some countries.
Not every artist is available on Spotify, from Led Zeppelin to AC/DC or even so, doesn’t want to be added to the platform. The Beatles are not available because of a digital distribution agreement that is exclusive to iTunes, not extensive to streaming audio. And in order to enjoy the benefits of a enviroment free of advertising, you must be ready to pay monthly $ 4.99 Unlimited or $ 9.99 Premium.
After all this foreword, let’s see why I love Spotify.
Spotify is smart. Really!
When I first used Spotify, the thing that amazed me the most was the ability to match my musical tastes, kind of like the old days when some of our friends brought us a CD of an artist who didn’t know, but our buddies knew that it would like us (Nine Inch Nails comes to my mind). I remember particularly uploading to my account songs from Franz Ferdinand and after hear them, the software lauched me to songs from The Hives, Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes and many other neo punk bands; not to mention the unique selection of electronica and dance music that inhabits on Spotify, which is priceless.
There’s no need to mention that I uploaded every record available on my collection to create my playlists which I refreshed everytime I found a new artist on the platform and enriched my musical knowledge. Of course I was on an Open account, not on a Premium or Unlimited and certainly not on a Free only for invitation account; I was never lucky to get invited. Sadly, most of my friends didn’t want me to have it *snif*
But tears aside and the good in Spotify, there’s the bad and the ugly, both in the same sentence.
You’re not valuable for Spotify. Period!
The main argument for the non massive and worldwide approach of Spotify lies in the caution of the music business related to piracy, which is not to be discarded, but it cannot be the prinicpal reason for the unavailabilty of the service in every corner of the world. Let’s face it: will GrooveShark or SoundCloud, two of the most direct competitors of Spotify, allow such restrictions for music playing? And if they had done it, they would risk to create animosity and rejection from the people for such limitations.
It looks curious to analize that Spotify is available in Hong Kong, Singapore, Lithuania, Latvia and Malaysia in Eurasia, a continent known for being a big source of piracy practices, music included. Also, the industry has arguments regarding some artists that are missing in certain countries because of licensing restrictions imposed by the record labels, which is a laughable matter. iTunes has proven the impact of a worldwide release of a record or album, so is the streaming music different or special? No. Moreover, the software doesn’t allow users to download songs ilegally, so what’s the fuss?
With such absurd limitations and such a good platform, many people from the non grace zone of Spotify influence has tried -successfully or not- to open accounts in order to enjoy the service (changing the IP directions via proxys, using private VPN, etc). On a personal level, I did it once when I opened an account using the mentioned procedures and after begging -literally and unsuccessfully- to get an invitation for a Free account from friends of a friends of a friends; a very mean way to do it, I swear. And in the beginning the service promised and the playlist ran smoothly.
Then, the 10 hours per month period ran off very quickly…
Overnight, I could not open Spotify, not even play my lists that were so good and pleasant to create, because of my birthplace (Venezuela, which is not in the plans of the company for offer the service any time soon). There’s no need to tell how I felt after that happened. But what irritated me the most is the fact that dutifully I still recieved emails about the service and notifications on my Facebook account, even after been unsuscribed. And having the nerves to invite me to use it. Pffttt!!! Wrong, Spotify. Wrong!
Coda
In the end, all those drawbacks and issues cover the good things that I know Spotify has, so as for me I’m not gonna download it even if they add my country to the list of availabilty. The only way that I’d consider to install it is in the -not probable- case that those sweds apologize to me for the inconveniences and offer me a year-free-Premium suscription. Otherwise, I’m not taking it.
So good and so bad at the same time.
I’m beggining to think that Spotify is like us: not entirely bad, but also not totally good.
Post Stand…
