If you love music and spend a reasonable amount of time online, you can’t have failed to have been caught up in the hype about Spotify, the popular ad-supported online music service, over the past few months. This week it’s all been about the upcoming Apple iPhone application, which Spotify has submitted for approval.
Whether or not it gets past Apple – which I’m sure has concerns about cannibalising its iTunes user base – it’s yet another reminder about how consumers are moving into ‘the cloud’ (see Gordon Kelly’s Google post last week) to get everything they need, from music and maps to spreadsheets and sharing photos.
At TalkTalk, we’ve noticed a big increase increase in traffic to the Spotify site (although in the scheme of things it’s still very small compared to YouTube). It makes sense too. We love to have music at home and on the move. And we love to try new stuff out – as the soft drink ad says, what’s the worst that can happen?
Over on TelecomTV, an interview with digital music expert Gerd Leonhard, proposed that Spotify’s business model was unsustainable and that the bigger it gets, the more money it’ll have to pay in royalties. Something he reckons that Apple doesn’t have the stomach for.
The answer, according to Leonhard is structural. The music industry must support a new, fair and equitable licencing approach to enable models like Spotifiy to flourish. As things currently stand Spotify has absolutely no bargaining power and will be unable to develop.
He believes that the music industry’s problems with piracy is nothing to do with the ‘pirates’ who would be willing to pay a reasonable amount to get the music they want… just where, when and how they want it. The problem lies, he says, with the music industry and its inability to see past its historic business models.
Whatever happens, the likes of Spotify and Last.fm have been a breath of fresh air and they support Gerd Leonhard ’s proposition that at a time when their is so much talk about piracy and draconian disconnection threats there has to be another way for consumers to be able to get access to the music they want, when they want it, with artists being fairly remunerated.
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