An interesting article by Spacelab’s Corey Tate points out the reasons why Spotify has not delivered on their promise of a U.S. Launch:
- Licensing is holding up the Swedish based music service
- Spotify is based on freemium model
- Spotify offers both paid and unpaid services
- 10% sign-up for paid; 90% use free services
- U.S. Labels want guaranteed money
- Difficult to sign-up enough users to meet labels’ guarantee $
- Spotify may look to additional funding to appease labels
The main difference between Spotify and Pandora is that on Spotify you have the option for music on demand – think of a free jukebox without having to be the Fonz from Happy Days.
Groovshark – based in Gainesville Florida – is a current music streaming site that is similar to Spotify in many respects. Below is a great graphic courtesy of The Danosphere that compares all three music sites:
By Erik Qualman
Read More: Cory Tate Spacelab | The Danosphere
Wired just ran a really good in-depth article on this as well. The biggest hurdles are that record labels and copyright holders are fragmented in the US as opposed to under one agreement in Europe, as well as a freemium model that US record execs can’t seem to grasp.
Search for “Spotify Is the Coolest Music Service You Can’t Use” on Wired. I’m not able to add links to the post for some reason.
Spotify has social sharing as well.
Yes, that’s what I wrote.
The possibilities to find friends are very limited, in my opinion.
Spotify connects with Facebook and you can search within the Spotify searchbox on a rather user-unfriendly way.
But no friendlist from, for example, your twitter account, or g-mail, or…
Thanks for the clarification JR.
Good point Jonas! I signed up for Apple’s Ping, but haven’t tested it much, have you?
Actually, the comparison is not correct:
Free Spotify does have limits: there’s a maximum of 20 hours per month and it has social sharing features for Twitter and Facebook.
It is not possible to upload your own music (as far as I know), but it is possible to integrate your own music collection with Spotifys search results.
Wow, 20 hrs isn’t much. Thanks for letting everyone know that important point. Will be interesting a] if it ever gets to the US b] how it does
Cheeers!
Well, I hope so for you guys. I really love it.
There are millions of songs to be found, even some pretty rare ones. And it’s very fast.
Paid subscription gives you the possibility to download your playlists so you can listen off-line. You need a paid subscription to use Spotify on a mobile device.
A premium account also gives you a better sound quality (320kbps).
As far as I’m concerned, these kind of services are the start of the end of the CD. You don’t need one anymore, you have all the music there is available on-line.
Cheers,
Wessel
Well, at least Americans receive access to some streaming music services. In Canada? no Last.FM, no Pandora, and certainly no Spotify. Thank goodness for Grooveshark. Don’t know how they did it.
Well Chris at least the Canadian dollar has been strong of late!