I saw a cute Goth chick behind a record-store counter once, but it turned out she'd just dropped by to visit the (far more typical) fat bearded guy with dirty glasses on who was actually working back there.
Well, I take back what I said a while back about spotify's advertising being ill-designed. The pain of regularly hearing country songs that I REALLY don't like (but now have in my head from hearing the clip about eight times) or Ke$ha (or whatever her name is) releases in the middle of my experimental ambient or desert blues has actually had me thinking once or twice it might be worth paying to get rid of them. I think they know exactly what they are doing. It's evil but it might work. Grrr.
Yes GP! I had to LOL - so far I have resisted the pay model, but our adverts seem to be more targetted. Maybe as you use Spotify more it might happen as it develops an undersstanding from the music you play?
Well actually I have seen an increase in the regularity of ads for country, rap, and mainstream pop...so if it's learning from what I play it has a learning disability.
For you existing Spotify users and those who to-do list includes signing up/registering with them:
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Spotify is the most extreme example of the looming forced-sharing trend. The company moved this week to require new users to sign in with a Facebook account. If you don't want to use Facebook, you can't use Spotify.
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...from link
and..
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Streaming music service Spotify is one of the first to aggressively make use of Facebook's new sharing options. The app broadcasts every song you listen to into your Facebook contacts' Ticker and adds the list to your Timeline, a new profile-like feature that will roll out in coming weeks.
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...from link
While apparently you can turn off this type of over-sharing I'm more inclined to just deep-6 my (rather inactive) FB account as it sounds like the direction FB is heading is one that would require me to constantly monitor what is being shared vs. a more preferable model (for me anyway) where I specify what I want to share when I want to share it. Hmmm..... might have to give Google+ a look.
That's interesting. I got an email earlier today telling me about a 30 track Noise Trade sampler. But in order to access it you had to link into it via your Facebook or Twitter account and tell all your friends in the process. I decided to give it a miss, especially as you can actually get all their tracks for free if you really want.
I agree. This is intrusive. If this trend continues, spotify will be a passing experiment for me. I want to choose what and whether I share, and I want to be able to just listen without having to give a moment's thought to what is broadcasting. Facebook is starting to feel like a crowdsourced Big Brother.
From that discussion:
"...despite losing quite a bit of my favourite music when several labels removed their catalogue from Spotify a few weeks back..."
now where have we heard that before???
At least when that happens on emusic you still have what you've downloaded.
I'll be the contrarian here, I gave up on Spotify because of the ads and the FB integration and opted for Rdio. The upside to Rdio is that you can buy giftcards to fund your account and no requirements to be "social".
Indeed, though FB may be less than thrilled to learn their partner is encouraging users to violate their TOS! Glad I signed up previously. Not that I've used it much...I'm too busy with the amazing world of discovering the excessive amount of music I've already downloaded.
"The company, which launched a U.S. division this summer, still offers most of the music that people want to hear."
This kind of sentence annoys me. Apparently if you were really into those labels that left you're not "people".
I looked at the list of departing labels and there was not one that I recognized. The thing to take note of is that the distributor is seeing a drop in sales, which he attributes to streaming. It's still early, but will other labels see similar numbers and reach the same conclusion?
Right, because poor sales couldn't be due to the economy being in the toilet, poor product quality, lack-luster promotion, or any of the other causes that normally affect business.
It's still early, but will other labels see similar numbers and reach the same conclusion?
yeah, i bet we'll see a lot of labels and artists abandon spotify. the service only makes sense if you believe that it's converting illegal-downloaders into legal music-listeners (so the labels and artists get something, instead of nothing). but it also eats away at the deterrent value of the RIAA lawsuits, since it gives listeners a legal alternative that's dirt cheap (literally). more importantly, i'm guessing that spotify attracts far more than otherwise illegal-downloaders: it attracts, for instance, emusers. and other music lovers. people who would pay for songs they can hear for free on spotify. and given the incredibly low revenues generated for labels and artists via spotify streams, any hint that spotify trades-off with other legal means of music-consumption (e.g., emusic; itunes; record-buying) will make labels and musicians flee. finally, by legally making full albums "free," spotify's model cheapens the value of music in a way that even illegal downloading can't.
now many of these concerns evaporate when spotify puts restrictions on its model (e.g., basic users will soon be limited to (a) 10 hours of streaming a month and (b) a 5X play-cap on a given song), but that will lessen spotify's basic value-proposition for many users.
In the UK we already have 10 hour per month cap and limit on plays if you are a basic user - you only get more if you pay. So I limit my spotify use to albums that I cannot get on emusic and I want to listen to before deciding if I want to pay itunes prices. I haven't noticed any reduction in labels here, but as I am not a big user it may not have hit me yet
I didn't get around to joining Spotify early on, and now I won't because I have been avoiding all that connecting to sites through Facebook. Facebook does enough invading my privacy now by tracking all my web clicks when I am logged in. I have started checking into Facebook once or twice a day, then logging out when I leave. Wonder how many other web sites track our every click.
I am not the typical user by any means, but on my usage spotify cuts both ways. There are quite a few titles that I have weeded out of my SFL after a listen on spotify - at least some of those, before spotify, I would have taken a chance on based on the samples, so those labels lost my income. Others I have listened to on spotify and decided to buy (and sometimes for convenience reasons listened to some more times on spotify after purchase, eg. if I don't have the files with me), so the pittance the label gets from spotify becomes additional income added to the purchase price.
In one week, we'll be marking the streaming music service's six-month anniversary.
And in one week, all those users who signed up for the free all you can eat desktop music that day will find out that they're going to be limited to just 10 hours per month now. You're also only allowed to play individual tracks no more than five times per month.
For the moment I'm going to be cobbling together my free hours on spotify, MOG, and Rdio. I might get the cheap package on one of them eventually, but there's no clear front runner for me right now because none of them have all of the labels I want, and all of them have different subsets of them. I'm still mainly using them as a SFL-sifting device.
That's what we have in the UK too Luddite. I'm just selective on what I play. I must admit that I am now thinking about paying for Spotify. I've had a year or so of very cheap emusic downloads from Groupon that have now finished, so I now have just my grandfathered 100 downloads per month from emusic. Spotify might just fill the gap.
Rdio (which, over time, I am liking better than Spotify) just launched a new interface at http://www.rdio.com/#/new/. Haven't played with it much yet. Don't see a lot of difference when finding/playing a specific album (unless that has still to be rolled out; not quite clear on the status of the launch yet); I think they upgraded the front end browsing. Interesting re emusic that if I understand the discussions online correctly Rdio has moved away from large artwork.
Comments
lol
>>>>>>
Spotify is the most extreme example of the looming forced-sharing trend. The company moved this week to require new users to sign in with a Facebook account. If you don't want to use Facebook, you can't use Spotify.
>>>>>>
...from link
and..
>>>>>
Streaming music service Spotify is one of the first to aggressively make use of Facebook's new sharing options. The app broadcasts every song you listen to into your Facebook contacts' Ticker and adds the list to your Timeline, a new profile-like feature that will roll out in coming weeks.
>>>>>
...from link
While apparently you can turn off this type of over-sharing I'm more inclined to just deep-6 my (rather inactive) FB account as it sounds like the direction FB is heading is one that would require me to constantly monitor what is being shared vs. a more preferable model (for me anyway) where I specify what I want to share when I want to share it. Hmmm..... might have to give Google+ a look.
You can also make a 2nd facebook account just for spotify, as suggested by a spotify employee
It really is cool - I wouldn't let the facebook thing stop you!
They will probably add Google+ anyway, and it will be the same dilemma when that happens.
The response downstream in that thread about FB integration "creating an amazing new world of music discovery" is...it's...it's just....
"...despite losing quite a bit of my favourite music when several labels removed their catalogue from Spotify a few weeks back..."
now where have we heard that before???
At least when that happens on emusic you still have what you've downloaded.
@Doofy, they can go diddle themselves ; )
This kind of sentence annoys me. Apparently if you were really into those labels that left you're not "people".
yeah, i bet we'll see a lot of labels and artists abandon spotify. the service only makes sense if you believe that it's converting illegal-downloaders into legal music-listeners (so the labels and artists get something, instead of nothing). but it also eats away at the deterrent value of the RIAA lawsuits, since it gives listeners a legal alternative that's dirt cheap (literally). more importantly, i'm guessing that spotify attracts far more than otherwise illegal-downloaders: it attracts, for instance, emusers. and other music lovers. people who would pay for songs they can hear for free on spotify. and given the incredibly low revenues generated for labels and artists via spotify streams, any hint that spotify trades-off with other legal means of music-consumption (e.g., emusic; itunes; record-buying) will make labels and musicians flee. finally, by legally making full albums "free," spotify's model cheapens the value of music in a way that even illegal downloading can't.
now many of these concerns evaporate when spotify puts restrictions on its model (e.g., basic users will soon be limited to (a) 10 hours of streaming a month and (b) a 5X play-cap on a given song), but that will lessen spotify's basic value-proposition for many users.
Spotify made its big U.S. debut on July 14, 2011.
In one week, we'll be marking the streaming music service's six-month anniversary.
And in one week, all those users who signed up for the free all you can eat desktop music that day will find out that they're going to be limited to just 10 hours per month now. You're also only allowed to play individual tracks no more than five times per month.