A lot of music journalists write about Spotify like it’s the future of music. Bob Lefsetz for example. Sure, they are right, but only a little bit because the thing is: Spotify doesn’t have many listeners. At the moment it has 40 millions users and only 25% (10 million) are paying for it. Compare that to the 1 billion unique users (!) who visit YouTube each month. Or compare that to the more than 250 million listeners SoundCloud has.
In my opinion Spotify makes a few mistakes. The major mistake they make is not connecting directly to musicians and bands. The internet has proven that middle men are having a hard time. And although these middlemen might be needed for some specific tasks in the production and/or marketing process many bands and musicians can do all these things on their own (DIY). YouTube and SoundCloud have realised that the New Creatives will upload their work themselves and will connect to their fans directly. This is also what the fans love. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are doing the same thing. But Spotify doesn’t. Spotify will not allow a band to connect to its fans. Spotify lacks all the nifty network features of modern webservices. All that social stuff. You can’t even embed a Spotify track/album or listen to something if you don’t have a Spotify account. Which is a major mistake because the number one reason that YouTube is the biggest player in the streaming world is that…
