Diamond of the week – Spotify
My diamond of the week is spotify. A fantastic new music service. Here’s how it works. You download the program from spotify and create an account. Then you log in and search for a band. Then you can play the music for free. The only catch is that every 20 minutes or so there’s an advert. Like the radio only you can choose who you listen to.
A friend of mine asked me the other day how long it would take to get shut down. That’s the beauty of it, it’s legal. Getting music for free is so normal to so many people that it would be easy to think spotify was illegal on first glance. However Spotify have deals with a number of major labels who get compensated for the music listened to from the revenue from the ads. They also offer a premier plan for £9.99 a month which is ad free.
Where the service is missing a trick at the moment is the ads themselves. I had to listen to that loathsome iggy pop advert five times in a day. If spotify had just asked me to fill out some more information about myself when I signed up they could have asked me things like if I drove which I don’t. Then they would have realised that they were wasting their money advertising car insurance to me.
I did also find it particularly odd when one advert came on urging me to buy an album when I could just search for the artist and play it for free. Whether the public could get used to not owning the music they listen to will be interesting to see. If spotify get busy and get a mobile app released and tailor their advertising in a smarter way then it could well spell the end of music ownership.
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