Posts
Spotify plan super-premium service
Spotify is about to try a new approach to persuade people to sign up to a subscription: a tenner a month will give you unlimited downloads. DRM free downloads at that.
On a straight cost-comparison, all-you-can-eat for a tenner a month looks like a much sweeter deal than iTunes per-piece pricing; the weakness of the offer is if people look at the £120 annual commitment and feel that it offers better value than grabbing downloads as and when for a quid a time. Are there currently enough people downloading more than 100 tracks a year to make it viable?
And the other question is if current Spotify users will want to pay £10 a month to be able to play whatever track they want to hear, when they want - as isn't that what Spotify are already offering them for more-or-less free? Are there enough people who want to lash out over a hundred a year to be able to keep the tracks forever?
[UPDATE: @DanRebellato tweets the following:
Apparently, it's "100% not a goer" according to Jim from Spotify. :-(]
3 comments:
So I pay £120 a year for unlimited DRM free downloads.
During those twelve months I can grab whatever I want.
Is this any different from selling me a license for unlimited downloads from torrents? And is there anything to stop me grabbing almost everything of note that I'm interested in during that single subscription period? It seems to me that the record industry are willing to give me everything they've got in the vaults in return for grabbing a final £100+ of my money before the whole edifice collapses. I don't get the business model at all...
Ah ha, but it's not "everything in the vaults", it's whatever Spotify have managed to licence. And judging by my own efforts searching on there, it's full of enormous holes. Much like the misconception that Google indexes everything on the web, record companies have only a small, probably 10 percent, proportion of their music available at any one time, be it on CD, iTunes, or anywhere else. Maybe the business model is that "next year, we'll have a load more different stuff old and new available for you to download, don't forget to renew your subscription."
is it not the nature of Spotify to offer out things they have no right to, just to generate headlines featuring the word 'Spotify'??? then, when it actually comes down to it, 'Jim' says that it can't be done (but says it in very small font size and doesn't broadcast it in the same manner as the initial announcement)?
call me cynical, but....
Post a Comment
As a general rule, posts will only be deleted if they reek of spam.