The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was last week, and the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, was there to spread some interesting facts about his streaming music startup. Mr. Ek stated that the average Spotify users has roughly 15,000 tracks in their collection, and all Spotify users together have created roughly 100 million playlists. These numbers are astonishing, I agree, but it still doesn’t detail any plans of coming to the USA or becoming a viable, profit-making business in the music industry. This is all just talk until we something significant. Check out the article on Techcrunch here.
Posts Tagged ‘Spotify’
Spotify keeps on talking, but not showing
Friday, February 19th, 2010Midem 2010: Six Things To Shake Up The Music Industry This Year
Friday, January 29th, 2010
The Midem conference is the annual convergence of the brightest and best minds in the music industry today. It is there that the ideas and advancements which will undoubtedly shape the industry throughout the coming year are announced, discussed and debated.
MusicRadar.com has compiled a list of six of the most preeminent topics from Midem 2010, and given a few reasons why everyone in the industry should take notice.
1. MusicDNA
MusicDNA is billed as an “enhanced, unified media format” that enables music to be tagged with lots and lots of metadata. Attributes such as tempo, instrumentation, mood and ‘colour’ can be added, which has consequences for the way people search for music, create playlists and discover similar material. Rather than being added manually, this data (or DNA) is generated through an automated analysis process of an existing audio file.
2. Utopian Streaming
The rise and rise of the likes of Spotify, We7 and streaming music is hardly a new revelation, but you’ll be hard pushed to find any Midem 2010 coverage that doesn’t mention at least one aspect of its effect (good and bad) on the future of the music industry.
3. The UK Government To Pass Anti-Piracy Bill Before The General Election
Odds are very much on for PM Gordon Brown to call a general election as early as May this year but, despite the tight deadline, the BPI (the body representing UK labels) is convinced Britain’s Digital Economy Bill will be passed in time.
What this means is that, while the original ‘three strikes and your out’ proposal was deemed too harsh, naughty file sharers can expect a slap on the wrist in the form of a warning letter.
4. Even More Fan Engagement
“To me, the more the fan is interacting with you and feels part of the community, the more interested they will be in buying your music or coming out to your shows,” said Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz during the Artists and Social Media – What’s Next in Fan Engagement discussion.
The adoption of social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook by artists and record labels alike is set to continue in 2010. But, clearly, there’s still a complete lack of unity between the two parties.
5. MySpace?
You might have jumped the MySpace ship at some point in 2007 but, according to Billboard: “MySpace Music, the social network’s dedicated music joint venture with the major labels, had 92% growth in unique users year on year, and 30% growth in the past month.”
Without getting bogged down in percentages, MySpace’s diversification into multiple revenue streams – selling gig tickets and merchandise, integrating iTunes and Amazon download links and pulling in big-spending major brands to sponsor the popular Secret Shows – means we probably shouldn’t write off the original kings of horrible DIY profile pages just yet. Not again, anyway.
6. Ignoring The Middle Man, Self-Marketing and Chasing The Pay Check
All-round modern music guru and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams was one of this year’s big artist draws. While not entirely dissing the approaches of traditional records – “the majors still have a purse that the average kid doesn’t have” – the NERD/Neptunes mainman was pretty direct in his advice for young bands starting out today.
“I would probably build a site, a home for my music, a destination where people could come and see me and what I do and what I’m thinking about. And then I’d probably assemble a team of kids that would go and bug the hell out of advertising agencies and marketing companies to use my music.”
Read more at MusicRadar.com
British Coming In to Battle iTunes and Spotify
Monday, October 12th, 2009
In an article on Billboard.biz, BskyB a British media group is going to try and get into the game and challenge iTunes and Spotify in the downloading business. Sky Songs will be offering over Four million tracks to download with no advertisements and free streaming services planning to launch later this month on October 19th. With a subscription based business model and a catalogue of music from numerous indie labels and distributors plus music from all four major labels. With all of the competition in the digital downloading business, Sky Songs seems to be trying to take it right to the top going after companies like iTunes and Spotify it will be interesting to see how big of a splash they make.
Real Networks Releases its Rhapsody App
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Recently within the last month Real Networks has released the Rhapsody App for the iphone and ipod touch. The Rhapsody App is available for free as a 7 day trial download then it costs 14.99 a month plus taxes. Rhapsody’s streaming music service has been available on phones ever-since Verizon launched its V-CAST Media service. This service allows subscribers to stream and/or buy music through Rhapsody on V-cast ready phones. However Rhapsody’s entrance into the iphone platform gives users an easier interface that allows finding and streaming songs easier especially for veteran Iphone and Mac users. Comparing Verizon’s V-CAST to the app for iphone, I think Rhapsody’s App is cleaner and more user friendly but it can only stream music. If you want to buy any music through Rhapsody you cant you have to use itunes.
Even-though Apple doesn’t have a dominant percentage of smart-phone market-share it is on its way of doing so. This year Apple doubled its market-share worldwide and also topped 2 billion downloads through their App store as both iphones and ipod touch prices continued to get cheaper. For these reasons I believe that the Rhapsody app will be an extremely popular app for old Rhapsody users as well as people who don’t have enough time and money to fill up their iphones or ipod touches. The only downside to this App is that its streaming bitrate is only 64 kilobits per second which is low quality but enough high enough for on the go listening. This figure will only go higher as infastructure improves.