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Music News: 5 reasons Spotify poses a threat to iTunes
Member Since: 3/7/2011
Posts: 2,187
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Quote:
Originally posted by toyboy
For all german speaking guys here
there is an alternative service
it's called:
Simfy
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Yeah. Deezer is much more popular than Spotify in France. Deezer has 1.3 million subscribers in France and is expanding to England.
According to Billboard, Spotify is looking to expand to Denmark next.
spotify is not available in Germany by the way. Maybe one day. What music subscription service needs is SCALE. Think Netflix with over 23 million subscribers.....that kind of scale.
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Member Since: 3/12/2007
Posts: 83
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Quote:
Originally posted by ExtraChapstick
I quite like the idea of owning my music, though. I have Spotify, and I like it, but haven't really brought it into daily use. Is there something I'm missing? Keep in mind I don't have a plan...
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If you want to have a copy of any song you listen to on Spotify you can. With the right software you can download any song or album you listen to on Spotify or any other streaming service. 
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Member Since: 3/7/2011
Posts: 2,187
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maybe the threat isn't from Spotify but from something like Muve Music.
Imagine the like of ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint bundling their phone plans with unlimited music. These 4 biggest carriers have something like 200 million paying subscribers among themselves in the USA.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/product...ers/50318492/1
Quote:
Muve Music, the unlimited music plan offered by prepaid cellphone company Cricket, has doubled the number of subscribers it has to 200,000 in the past two months.
The milestone announced Thursday makes Muve the clear No. 2 in the subscription music category behind only Rhapsody, which has about 800,000 subscribers.
Cricket, a division of the nation's seventh-largest carrier, Leap Wireless International, also announced that it would begin offering the service along with unlimited voice, data and texting for $65 a month on Android-powered smartphones by the end of September. Up until now, the service has only been offered on a traditional cellphone with stripped-down capabilities for $55 a month, a deal that also offered unlimited voice, data and texting.
Cricket's music service has grown rapidly since launching in January, partly because it bundles the music service with customers' regular cellphone bills and eliminates incremental charges for downloading new songs. Users on average download more than 400 songs per month and listen to music two to three hours per day.
Jeff Toig, general manager of Muve Music, said the usage data is "staggering."
"They're putting down their MP3 players, their iPods, and they're making the phone the centerpiece of their music experience," Toig said.
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$55 a month for unlimited MUSIC along with talk, text and data.
" BUNDLE" with a phone plan might be the future of music consumption. if you're paying $50-60 a month for a phone plan, what's $5 more in order to listen to ALL THE MUSIC you want.
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Member Since: 3/27/2009
Posts: 30,284
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Quote:
Originally posted by MP2K
kisuke, get in!  |
Bitchhhhhhhh
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Member Since: 3/7/2011
Posts: 2,187
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http://www.depauliaonline.com/arts-l...unes-1.2583399
Spotify: Bigger & better than iTunes
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Technology coups are rarely noticeable until several years after they take place. The cassette took over the vinyl record. The CD took over the cassette. The MP3 took over the CD. All had their believers and detractors, but years later, it seems obvious that at some point in time, a changing of the guard had taken place.
Most recently, the MP3 fogged the big picture of the music industry. In reality, it crippled the music industry. The ability to purchase individual songs made the purchase of music, even over the Internet, obsolete.
Not much has changed since then. Various artists continue to support or not support the *******ing of music, and the Recording Industry Association of America seems to crucify people at random for doing so. The purchasing of music has become convoluted.
Problem solved: Spotify.
It may be hard to understand, just as the idea of an MP3 was difficult to understand when it became the industry leader, but Spotify has antiquated iTunes.
Yes. Spotify has antiquated iTunes.
In July the Swedish company made its product available to the United States. There was a scramble of music listeners everywhere to get an "invite." This wasn't all that difficult but gave the program an air of prominence, even though acquiring an invite came a day or two after entering an email address.
The biggest issue with Spotify is figuring out what exactly it is. Another cause for confusion? Spotify seems illegal, it is quite simple. A user must think of a song, search for it, add it to a playlist (or just click the star next to the song) and it gets added to a general playlist. The only thing left to do is listen.
But how?
Spotify's catalogue has over 15 millions songs on it, all legal. Through deals with various record labels, both independent and mainstream, the program streams the songs straight to your computer or phone.
Initially, many compared the program to Pandora. The similarities between the two music websites end once you get past the fact that they both stream music. Pandora uses an algorithm to analyze songs chosen by the user and find similar songs. If you have used Pandora before, you'll notice after awhile that this algorithm sometimes just selects songs from a similar era or genre, not songs that sound like the one you wanted.
With Spotify, there is no randomizing. The user selects the songs they wish to hear. It's like iTunes with over 15 millions songs--15 million songs you don't have to pay for. Once signed up, Spotify will actually take the songs from your iTunes (including the unique playlists you have created) and make playlists on your Spotify account with them.
Like Pandora's free version, music play is interrupted after several songs with commercials breaks. The commercials on Spotify are longer than Pandora's, and many of them are sponsored songs (in many cases, songs you never wished to hear.) If you attempt to turn down the volume, these commercials will pause until the user turns the volume up again.
The best way to enjoy Spotify is to pony up for the Premium account. This features no commercials, the ability to hear some albums before they are released, a better sound quality, the option to listen to your playlists on your smartphone and the option to listen to your playlists while offline. At $9.99 a month, it isn't cheap, but if you are always listening to music, then it's worth it.
I haven't opened iTunes, downloaded an album or put new music on my iPhone since getting Spotify Premium. If I hear of a new band, then I check them out on Spotify, where I can listen to a whole song, as opposed to iTunes' sample time.
Quite simply, Spotify seems to be the best way to listen to music digitally. The variety of available music, the capability of finding and listening to new music and the portability it allows make Spotify a better bet than iTunes.
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Member Since: 3/7/2011
Posts: 2,187
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http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestu...latforms.shtml
Quote:
My friend Tom alerts us to a blog post by the indie European band Uniform Motion (which he found via a blog post by Jason Weinberger), in which the band lays out clearly the cuts they get from selling their music on various services. It's pretty detailed, and since the world is often starved for this kind of data, we're going to share it
If you choose to purchase our music or use one of the ‘legal’ streaming services, here’s an overview of where the pennies go.
SPOTIFY: With Spotify, we’ll get 0.003 EUR/play.
If you listen to the album all the way through, we’ll get 0.029 EUR.
If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we’ll get 0.29 EUR
If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 2.94 EUR
If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 29.47 EUR!
If you use the free version of Spotify, it won’t cost you anything. Spotify will make money from ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money. They only disclose this information to the Major record labels...
DEEZER:
Deezer seems to pay a little more.
We’ve been getting 0.006 EUR/play from them. That’s 0.052 EUR/album play. If you listen to the album 10 times on Deezer, we’ll get 0.52 EUR. If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 5.2 EUR. If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get a whopping 52 EUR!
If you use the free version of Deezer, it won’t cost you anything and Deezer will make money from the ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money either.
eMUSIC:
eMusic is a subscription service. The cost of the album will depend on the plan you have. We get roughly $0.29/song or $2.60/album (9 songs).
AMAZON MP3:
You’ll pay 7.11 EUR to download the MP3’s. We will get 4.97 EUR of that. That’s a 70-30 split.
iTUNES:
The album will cost you 8.91 EUR to buy from Apple.
There’s a 70-30% split there too, so we will keep 6.28 EUR/album.
That being said, it costs us 35 EUR/year to keep an album on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon (105 EUR per year for all 3 of our albums!) so we don’t make any money until 24 people have bought a digital copy of the album on iTunes, or 150 single songs, or if we get tens of thousands of listens on Spotify! In most cases, it’s actually more economically viable not to sell the music at all.
But what about if you buy the Digital version directly from us?
DIGITAL:
We allow people to pay what they want for the digital version. If you choose to pay 5 EUR, Paypal takes 0.37 EUR, Bandcamp takes 0.75 EUR. Uniform Motion keeps 3.88 EUR. it doesn’t cost us anything to have a page on bandcamp
If you decide to pay nothing, well, we get nothing, but at least you didn’t give money indirectly to major record labels, which seems to be the case with Spotify!!
CD:
If you buy a CD, directly from us for 10 EUR, Paypal takes 0.515 EUR, Bandcamp takes 1.5 EUR. So there’s slightly less than 8 EUR left for us. But hold on a second, it costs a fair bit to make the CD.
The CD itself costs 1.2 EUR, the booklet costs about 50 cents, the CD packaging is 1.8 EUR and the sticker on the front costs 35 cents.
That’s a total of 3.65 EUR
So in reality, there’s 4.34 EUR left for us.
VINYL: If you buy a 12” Vinyl from us at 15 EUR, Bandcamp takes 2.25 EUR, Paypal takes 0.646 EUR so there’s 12.10 left. The cost of the Vinyl itself is 3.06 EUR
The labels cost 1.3 EUR. For a total of 4.36 EUR
So there’s 7.75 EUR left for us.
However, we had to press 250 of these (because that’s the minimum order), so it’s very unlikely we’ll make any money on them.
We need to sell 72 copies before we break even on the vinyl edition. We’ve sold about 30 so far.
If we break even, we’ll lower the price a little bit. 
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Member Since: 3/7/2011
Posts: 2,187
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/ente...c-service.html
MOG to debut free on-demand music service
Quote:
MOG Inc., a digital music company based in Berkeley, on Thursday is launching a free version of its streaming service that normally goes for $4.99 for computer access to $9.99 for cellphone and mobile listening.
The offering cranks up the competition among players in a small but growing market for subscription-based music services dominated by Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, Slacker, Napster and others.
Unlike online radio services such as Pandora in which listeners don’t always get to hear the exact songs they want, subscription services let customers access libraries of millions of tunes they can play on demand.
Until recently, most of these services gave potential customers only a small taste of their services, trials anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, before asking them to pay. That changed in July when Spotify, a Swedish company with 10 million users throughout Europe, debuted its service in the U.S. with a free but limited service supported by advertising.
MOG is the first U.S. company to counter with its own free version. Dubbed FreePlay, the service gives users who access the service from computer browsers a “tank” of free music. Users who do things to help the company reach new customers, such as create playlists or recruit friends, will be rewarded with more free spins.
Sometime next year, they can also interact with sponsors or advertisers to refill their tanks by, for example, watching a movie trailer or subscribing to an email newsletter.
“There’s no cap, so you can easily get a lifetime of free music,” said MOG’s chief executive, David Hyman.
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Member Since: 9/12/2011
Posts: 18,018
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I don't like it, I prefer to have the music on my computer.
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Member Since: 3/7/2011
Posts: 2,187
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http://www.spotidj.com/blog/?p=264
Quote:
I have just received the Q2 statement on the Spotify payouts to the band Little Things That Kill.
Spotify must be doing really good because they now pay 0.4 Eurocent per stream. That means the payout has almost doubled over the last 3 months.
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ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 9/24/2001
Posts: 10,763
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The only reason I'm considering upping to Premium on spotify is so I don't have to have my music on my iPhone - I can stream all my music over the cloud. iTunes Match downloads the music onto the phone if you don't have it there already. That's a big plus on Spotify
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Member Since: 3/7/2011
Posts: 2,187
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http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/indus...05365042.story
Spotify Now Has 2 Million Global Subscribers, Up 400,000 Since July
Quote:
Spotify now has 2 million paying subscribers in eight countries (the US and seven markets in Western Europe). The number, revealed during a CNBC interview with CEO Daniel Ek, according to a company spokesperson, implies Spotify has gained about 400,000 subscribers since it launched in the US in mid-July.
But it's unlikely all 400,000 recent subscribers come from the US. After all, Spotify was adding subscribers at a good clip in the months leading up to the US launch. On March 8, Spotify announced it had reached one million subscribers in the seven European markets in which it operates (UK, Spain, France, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Finland). By the time Spotify arrived in the US on July 14, the company claimed it had 1.6 million subscribers - a gain of 600,000 subscribers in roughly four months.
The US launch has undoubtedly led to a healthy increase in subscribers, however. An August 8 report at AllThingsD pegged Spotify's US user base at 175,000 paying subscribers and 1.4 million users. And now one industry executive tells Billboard.biz that Spotify has about 1 million active users in a given week.
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Member Since: 3/7/2011
Posts: 2,187
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Spotify is now open to everyone in the USA. No invite required.
Also, look at its paid subscribers growth:
January, 2010:------------ 250,000 paid subscribers
March 17, 2010:----------- 320,000
July 20, 2010: ---------------- 500,000
December 8, 2010: ------ 750,000
March 8, 2011:--------------- 1,000,000
July 14, 2011: -----------------1,600,000
Sept 21, 2011: ---------------- 2,000,000 paid subscribers
1 million paid subscribers added in the last 6 months.
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