This morning on Twitter I was whinging that my Spotify had ceased working for the past eight hours. @spotify did actually reply (which was nice) but in the end it was The Man Solution that did the trick (turning it off and on again). However, there entailed a brief discussion with @DavidFiske and @ChrisEFrost about paying for, or even using Spotify after the Freemium Model Disaster.
@DavidFiske @philhancox I lvoe them too, but I’m not paying for love
I’ll undoubtedly rejoin in the future, but for now trying MFlow.
— Chris E Frost (@ChrisEFrost) May 20, 2011
I have used Spotify for a very long time. Five years I think it has been since I received my first invite and fell in love. If you’ve been living in a cave, Spotify is a music program that allows you to listen to millions of songs for a tiny fee per month or free with adverts and (now) other restrictions.
It has been growing massively in popularity and soon all my less technically minded, non early-adopter friends had Spotify too. Of course, the vast majority, if not all of them, are using the Free Model which was subsidised by advertisements. After the new restrictions were enforced, such as only being able to play a track five times per month, my friends starting ditching Spotify instead of upgrading which I presume Spotify had hoped.
I switched to Spotify Premium (£9.99 a month) about a couple of years ago. Working from home means the incessant and awful adverts that break up the music irritated me endlessly plus I can sync it for offline use or use it on my iPhone. It also makes me feel like I’m supporting them and the music industry, even if it is supposedly only a tiny little bit. I don’t believe Spotify really is screwing the artists, but I won’t, and never have purchased CDs (I’ve bought about five in my entire life). CDs (or MP3s, whatever) have never interested me and with the advent of this kind of technology, never will. So a tiny little bit of money from me is better than absolutely no money and I bet if everyone stopped pirating music, those tiny little bits of money would add up.
What Spotify does is replace my piracy with a legal method which I’m happy to pay for. Since Spotify came into my life, I’ve actually been recommended artists and gone to see them live (Bonobo being a particularly favourite example) which I hear from my musically educated friends is much more profitable for the artist.
I love Spotify and the community that has evolved around it (I’ve been an avid fan of sharemyplaylists.com also since it’s inception). For Spotify with no limits and no adverts is a stupendously small £4.99 a month (the £9.99 model has offline mode and mobile Spotify which I admit are features I seldom use). This, I’m sure, is less than the price of one album a month and I’m surprised that more people haven’t upgraded, even if Spotify are effectively forcing people to.
I am aware of other services such as we7 and grooveshark; I use them myself occasionally when I can’t find a band on Spotify (such as INME, don’t laugh – they were my first gig). But I still believe Spotify is an amazing tool that is revolutionary and I hope to continue to use it for a very long time.
