Nicky Watson spent an enjoyable afternoon on Friday in her new local music
library. The 54-year-old gallery owner from Chagford in Devon found herself
picking over tunes from the 1960s and 1970s, the soundtrack of her youth.
“I was listening to all the Turtles songs, which I haven’t heard since I was a
teenager,” she said. “There were also Bruce Springsteen songs, half of which
I’d forgotten.”
A neighbour joined her and they spent a couple of hours compiling playlists of
their favourites, often just picking a name of an old band and seeing what
was available.
Of the library Watson said: “It was so desperately needed. I’ve told all my
friends about it, and now everybody in Chagford is using it.”
This is not like any typical library, however. To access it, Watson and her
neighbours didn’t have to leave their homes in the town on the edge of
Dartmoor. Nor did they pay for the service, or have to use a stereo system.
Instead, the music was “streamed” free to their computer from the website
Spotify.
Launched barely a month ago, Spotify is fast catching up with the social
networking site Twitter as the most talked-about new site on the internet
and has been hailed as the “21st-century jukebox”. It keeps a library of
millions of songs, both pop and classical, which users can access and play
through their computer. Tracks are not downloaded on to hard drives, but
merely played once. The effect is similar to listening to a radio station -
but one in which you choose all the songs.
In its ease of use, it compares favourably with Amazon, the online retailer,
and also offers suggestions for further tracks based on what you’ve chosen.
The take-up rate has been rapid. In its first month, more than 250,000 people
in the UK registered as users (the site has also launched in Germany,
France, Italy and Spain). The word-of-mouth buzz has seen it mentioned in
more than 40,000 internet blogs this month. Jamie Cullum, the jazz singer,
is a fan, as is Mike Skinner, the British rapper also known as the Streets.
U2, the Irish rock band, gave Spotify users an exclusive preview of their
new album earlier this month.
Other similar sites have launched, but Spotify is novel in that it is both
free and legal. Experts say it also represents a new model of the way in
which people will buy music and watch television shows and films in the
future. LIKE many internet success stories, Spotify - the name comes from a
combination of spot and identify - has been a long time in gestation.
Founded three years ago by two Swedish self-styled serial entrepreneurs,
Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon - who have previously been responsible for a
website that allows you to dress up virtual celebrities - it now occupies a
suite of offices in Centre Point, a block that towers over Oxford Street in
central London, as well as having a base in Stockholm.
The London set-up is typically webby. The offices have table football, a pool
table, bean-bags and lots of white boards. “We also have a top-end coffee
machine that we spent days agonising over before choosing,” joked Jim
Butcher, one of the firm’s 30 employees.
Their aim, however, is what sets Spotify apart. For years, the music industry
has struggled with the problem of illegal downloads. Apple’s iTunes website,
which made downloading individual tracks or albums for a small fee popular,
was initially seen as a saviour, but it hasn’t cured the problem. A recent
survey suggested that 83% of European iPod owners did not regularly buy
music online, instead filling them with illegal downloads or copied CDs.
“The digital generation never learnt the habit of paying for music,” said Mark
Mulligan of the digital analysts Forrester Research. “There are fewer people
buying fewer units, but there is more actual music being consumed than at
any time in history. The problem is, very little of it is being paid for.”
Spotify steps into the breach, offering consumers the free music to which they
have become accustomed while also giving music companies revenue.
The trick is in its business model, which offers three different membership
options. Users of its free service hear an advert every 20 minutes, far less
than on commercial radio, while for paying customers - a day pass costs 99p
for 24 hours, the Premium account costs £9.99 a month - there are no ads at
all.
“We are huge music fans ourselves,” said Ek. “We set up Spotify to cater for
that demand, but, at the same time, create a functioning revenue stream for
artists and labels.”
For users, this means the music labels are keen to see their music on the site
- although there was recently a dispute over the licensing of tracks - so
the range of music is expanding rapidly.
“Our library is growing all the time,” said Butcher. “We’re adding 10,000
tracks a day, we’re well into the millions, but even that’s only 50% of all
the labels’ combined catalogues.”
There are some odd omissions, though. “You can get Lily Allen and Amy
Winehouse, but you can’t get Oasis, which seems a bit weird. It must be
teething difficulties,” said Charlotte Vaughan-Williams, a 24-year-old
student from Southwark, south London, who first used the site a fortnight
ago.
She added that she thought Spotify had been lucky in its timing given that
YouTube, the video-sharing site, recently removed large numbers of music
videos from its British website in a dispute over royalties.
“At parties you always have someone who wants to hear one particular song, and
they would find it on YouTube, which had literally everything,” said
Vaughan-Williams. “Spotify hasn’t got that range yet, but I expect they’ll
get there.”
About 88,000 tracks were added last week - most of Radiohead’s catalogue has
just come on stream, for example. The plan is, one day, to have all the
world’s music available.
The next trick, which would allow them to take on Apple and the iPod, would be
to allow users to listen to Spotify on portable devices such as mobile
phones. For now, however, the service is purely computer-based, though that
doesn’t seem to be harming it.
“The depth and breadth of their catalogue would take years for someone else to
match,” said Eamonn Forde of Music Week magazine.
“Everyone else is a long way behind. The BBC’s iPlayer [which allows online
access to the corporation’s television and radio programmes] is John the
Baptist to Spotify’s Jesus, a powerful idea that led people further along
the path. The idea has now exploded in the public consciousness.”
FOR true apostles of the digital revolution, the path leads towards a future
in which nobody will want to own music, films or even computer hard drives,
instead accessing whatever they need whenever they want from central
data-bases held on the internet. It has been given the rather sinister name
“the Cloud”.
All the major technology companies, from Google and Mirosoft to Intel and
Yahoo!, are working on ideas for “cloud computing”, where data and
applications can be accessed remotely, so they don’t need to be held on
business servers or home computers.
In America, Amazon is already streaming movies via the Cloud on an “instant
playback” service, meaning no content has to be permanently stored on a
user’s computer. DVD sales are already declining rapidly; such advances
could kill them off entirely. What is the point in owning a DVD, or indeed a
CD, if what you want is instantly available to view or listen to online and
is much cheaper, if not free?
Previous arguments about the quality of music heard on computers seem to be
fading. Research by Jonathan Berger, professor of music at Stanford
University, published earlier this month found that the iPod generation
actually prefer music played on digital players and do not think it is of
inferior quality to records or CDs.
Ek argues that Spotify is already the Cloud’s musical manifestation, but
others say that broadband connections and wireless networks will have to get
more powerful and ubiquitous before it can truly be said to have arrived.
Many people already download films illegally but find it frustrating because
of the length of time it takes to complete the process.
“The Cloud will change everything,” said Forde, “but that’s years away yet.
This is the transition time.”
That transition time can give older people a period in which to mourn the
potential passing of symbols of their youth. While vinyl has practically
disappeared, its tradition of sleeve artwork was preserved to a degree in CD
booklets. If the brave new world arrives, they too will disappear.
“Nothing announces your taste better than an old LP cover under your arm,”
said David Hepworth, a former editor of Smash Hits in the 1980s who is now
editorial director of The Word magazine. “A CD doesn’t begin to do it, so
it’s not hard to see why people who grew up with CDs now reject them. I
think in years to come whole treatises will be written on why one works and
the other doesn’t. The 12in LP made music seem more precious; the CD made it
seem more disposable. Spotify is a direct reaction to all that.”
Ek acknowledges that there will always be refuseniks. “It comes down to
choice,” he said. “There is room for all kinds of platforms to access and
listen to music. CD and vinyl will continue to be popular with certain
groups for a long time to come. There will always be those that prefer
ownership over access.”
However, it’s clear which way he thinks the web is spinning.
Additional reporting: Holly Watt
