Most of your probably conscious of the recent changes that Spotify has made with regard to opening up its platform for developers to create apps upon. In March, the social music service are going to be opening up an app store to assist app developers get purchased their diligence. Last week, I read a very interesting article on the Guardian titled ” Spotify premium generator: we’ve to show ourselves into the OS of Music.”
As an important user of the free version of Spotify, i actually love what they’re doing for social music but there are few major problems that I feel will prevent it from becoming the OS of music.
The first, being its relationship with Facebook which forces users to possess to login via a Facebook account. Albeit almost everybody that’s breathing uses Facebook, people are still a touch apprehensive about sharing their listening habits and having to login in to at least one system to use another system. And, while some may argue you’ll easily switch to non-public listening mode, it still will continue turn tons of individuals away. With VEVO’s new affect Facebook, it requires an equivalent process and this is often the rationale why I won’t be using VEVO the maximum amount as I even have within the past.
This seems to be the way that Facebook does business, all or nothing. If Spotify is to ever to become the OS of Music, it must break away Facebook or create a version that does not require users to login via Facebook. Jay-Z had an album to return out a short time ago called “The Blueprint 2: The Gift and therefore the Curse,” and in my opinion a beat affect Facebook is certainly a ‘gift and a curse.’
Second, Spotify and therefore the recording industry must find out how to compensate artists more fairly for streaming music play. Major record labels love Spotify, because they own shares and therefore the artists, well…While people argue that taking note of streaming music increases physical album sales, I even have been using Spotify since it launched within the U.S. and that i have yet to get one album because I heard it on Spotify.
Third, services like iTunes and Rhapsody still are the foremost dominant digital music services within the U.S. and that they both operate independently of Facebook. Both services will continue challenge Spotify as they’re adding more social features. Rhapsody recently topped 1 million paying subscribers, making it the foremost popular premium music service within the U.S. iTunes did not get a warm response from Ping, but in my opinion they’re going to leverage their mobile platform to supply a socially integrated service which will challenge Spotify’s dominance within the social music sphere.
