Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

Spotify is changing the way it operates its 'free' (Advertisment-supported) service. From May, users will only be able to stream 10 hours per month, and will only be able to listen to any given track on the service an absolute limit of 5 times.

http://www.spotify.com/uk/blog/archi...ify-free-open/

They seem to want to encourage some of their 6 million free users to join the million or so on the subscription-paid 'premium' service. Personally I'm not sure that's going to happen so long as free alternatives exist (I mean legal ones!).

What do we think? Are there any Spotify users here? More to the point, are there any premium subscribers here?

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

I use the free service and have been hoping that VM use spotify for there music service.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

I use Spotify quite regularly and noticed this change the other day. It's ridiculous, only being able to listen to each track 5 times. I can't say I will be paying for their premium service either as I can't afford that much per month just to listen to music on my computer as my phone can't get the Spotify app. It's just going to mean more people switch to YouTube or alternative music streaming services. I can't see many people switching to their premium service as a result of this.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

I have various streaming apps on my HTC so i always have something to listen to and the best bit is there free to use. :)

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

What legal free alternatives are there (that have a similar number of titles on offer)?

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

Yeah, the downsides of having a non 3G BlackBerry, won't make that mistake again when I upgrade :p:

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

I am a premium subscriber. I have been for a good amount of time now, over a year I am sure. The problem is simply that is that if the ad model worked for Spotify they would probably have kept it, all internet companies would rather make their profit via advertising as it is much easier to attract a wider audience that way.

It doesn't appear to work. Advertising does not support businesses based on content, such as music, video or writing. The cost of producing the content is too high that the ad revenue cannot support it. So content providers have to charge.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

So everyone which service do you think will be the one everyone will jump ship to now Spotify has topped itself ??.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

I will continue to buy CDs.

I just wish there were more that are worth buying...

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

Not really commercial suicide if it limits non-paying customers plays, I'm sure the small amount of people that will be 'forced' to change plans will make up for the loss of ad revenue. People should pay for music anyway, whether it be subscription, paid download or CD's.

Zune is a much better subscription service than Spotify anyway, yet it is viewed as if it doesn't exist to most tech blogs who are waiting for Apple's revolutionary exact copy of it that people will then laud as being better than Jesus.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

Either YouTube or http://www.virginmedia.com/music/video/ :)

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

Grooveshark with the 'Groovewalrus' desktop client is one 'alternative'


I've never felt I've been able to subscribe to the Spotify service, with the way they [currently] remove tracks at will (or make them unavailable), and the MANY mistagged tracks in their library ...if [like me] you care about last.fm stats like I do

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

i happily have a premium subscription it is excellent on the iphone and quality of songs is astounding

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

Well, I don't know how many, but I have been playing with Grooveshark this week and it hasn't disappointed me so far - everything I have searched for has been in their catalogue.

It might be commercial suicide if they succeed in driving so many listeners away that they lose what little ad income they have.

What Spotify appears to have forgotten is that the customer is always right ... by that I mean, if you offer two services (as Spotify did), and one of them is six times more popular than the other, then Spotify should be looking at ways to maximise its income from that service, not looking for ways to wreck it in order to force people onto the less popular alternative.

We do pay for music - we pay for it on commercial radio every day by listening to commercials. That's how 6 out of every 7 customers was happy to pay for it on Spotify's service.

I think what is really at the heart of this is Spotify's failure to agree a sustainable deal with the record labels.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

They never really properly advertised on the free service. Most of the adverts were about upgrading to one of the other tiers of service. I wonder why they couldnt find a way to make it work.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

Well after a bit of searching i have found what looks like a new home for my streaming service however i don't think it legal so cannot give its name here :)

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

That's because, in most of the searches you'll be doing, most of that 'catalogue' has been uploaded by the users of the service. They have not been provided by a legal agreement with the record companies, people have uploaded whatever they want to it. It's basically a streaming P2P service. It's legal status is dodgy.

I think whatever is the case, it wasn't able to provide music for free and make a profit. It may be the record companies asking too much, it may simply be that advertising didn't cover the cost of a reasonable deal with those companies.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

I think it is a bad decision. I've used spotify now and again to listen to a certain track, but those that pay for the full subscription probably buy original CDs. Those that only use spotify because it's free probably download all their music anyway, so if you can get your music for free what's the point in paying for it via spotify. So they'll lose all those users now and the ad revenue from those.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

They have to pay per track streamed. I am guessing that the ads shown don't cover that, so if they can't make money of those users I doubt they care if they go.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

True, then time will tell to find out if there are enough people that are willing to pay for the full subscription to cover their costs. The loss from the ads ain't going to help them much either way.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

That's because they have tried to have their cake and eat it. How can you sell advertising space to someone when they know the advert that follows theirs will be a plea from Spotify asking the listener to 'upgrade' and get rid of the adverts? That's a tough sell in anyone's book.

Useful link re Grooveshark BTW, thanks :tu: ... more reading up required I think.

Re: Spotify commits commercial suicide?
 

I think that was because they decided that adverts wouldn't be enough to cover their costs and wanted to move people to the subscription plans. There are very few examples of services making money via advertising alone, especially services that depend on content rather than searching or social networking, where the cost of a page being served is very cheap as it's contents are generated, rather than 'created' as a song, video or piece of writing is.