This sounds like an argument for a Zune Pass model. As long as you keep paying, you get access to the whole library. But each month you also get to download 10 tracks, so even when you stop paying, you can keep your favorite tracks around. (They're DRM-free MP3s.)
The article is premised on the assumption we typically "own" our music, but I just don't think that's true.
We don't own what we hear on radio.
Anyone old enough to have owned a vinyl record, 8-track, or cassette knows we "owned" those until the player "pwned" us and scratched the record, warped the record, or otherwise ate the tape.
The CDs I "own" mostly mark me as ... old with 1980s musical tastes.
I'm actually pretty happy with combination of Rhapsody and Google Music, though there are definitely some albums I wish Rhapsody would get (The Beatles, and, ... Soundtrack to American Werewolf in London, and, ...).
But actually Rhapsody, Google Music, and Squeezebox Server have made me purchase a lot more music than I have for a long time.
Of course, the music I purchase tends to be used CDs from Amazon for pennies plus shipping.
Simply put: the way we consume music is fundamentally different to the way we consume movies and TV.
This used to be true, but I am not sure it is any longer - at least not for everyone. Listening to the same album obsessively over and over again is certainly a phase I went when I was younger, but now I am perfectly happy to listen to Pandora, especially as my tastes have broadened, and finding new interesting stuff to listen to trumps the need to hear the same familiar stuff over and over.
Don't underestimate the average consumer's taste for repetition. In the month I've lived next to my current neighbors, they have listened to a grand total of one song. Many times.
And the songs you listen to now may one day be "classics" that you want to listen to again. Given the volume and diversity of present day music, that might only be possible if you have an MP3 stashed away somewhere.
I saw BigChampagne (http://bcdash.bigchampagne.com/who) tweet about the article, and they say that even among the younger people they work with/survey say that ownership is more important than access. I don't think it's changing.
Talk about a nonsense article. I have been using spotify ever since the very beginning in 2008 and I have yet to experience any of those issues. Besides. Even if spotify where twice as expensive it would still be a good deal if you listen to music a lot.
Even if Spotify were to increase prices, it's not bait and switch.
This article makes no sense. Duh, if Spotify goes away, if you leave for any reason (rates, terms of service, whatever)... their music goes with it. That's how subscription services work. If Netflix goes away, I lose access to the movies that Netflix was letting me stream. The fact that someone is used to "owning" their music or re-listening more than you usually re-watch movies doesn't change any of the core principles of the business model.
One album costs $10. If I listen to that album once a day for 30 days (not EVER going to happen, but I'm trying to be generous), then I'm still only filling a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount of time I listen to music.
$10 with Spotify gives me effectively non-stop new music. In 6 months, I'll have spent $60 and had the benefit of listening to hundreds of albums. Even if something happens that I stop using Spotify... are you really implying that I haven't extracted good value from Spotify as a service?
If Spotify's price increases that I don't think I can get the same or a good value.... I just stop using it and go back to life as it was before. What is the lock in? There seems to be an implication that I will have "wasted" my money on Spotify since I have no music mp3s to show for it. Did my family waste their money on Netflix despite the fact that I don't own any of the hundreds of DVDs that they've watched or streamed?
I just don't understand this implied malice at work here. Besides, it (seems) completely ignorant of Spotify's existence in the rest of the world for some time now.
The article itself argues that we consume music in a way that is fundamentally different from the way we consume television shows and movies, thus rendering the comparison invalid.
There is no such thing as we consume music in a way that is fundamentally different. Previous behaviors does not mean natural law.
The entire argument only shows a lack of careful thinking on the matter.
We consume music many different ways.
Radio, pandora, on the tv, in the mall, in games, cd, gramophone on the disco, live music and so on.
You could as easily argue that the spotify model shows that access beats ownership. If anything the way the music industry want us to consume music is what is fundamentally different and out of date.
The article is so shallow and can only be on the front page of HN because spotify is is new in the US.
And I think that that assumption/argument is invalid. I'm sure I've read somewhere about studies of user behaviour in, say, iTunes (your personal music) compared to on a subscription service like Spotify. The studies showed that people who had access to a limited amount of music of owned music would listen intensively (fewer songs, lots of times); whereas people with access to a subs service would listen extensively (more songs, fewer times). There was some stat about a favourite song being listened to far less frequently when there was more to explore.
Right, and I think that's unfair. Even if it's true, it doesn't warrant the implication that Spotify doesn't provide a value-based service, or that it's bait-and-switch, or that they have malicious intent, or that it can't be a supplement to buying music a traditional way.
To look at it another way. I have, in my current library of music, listened to over 400 albums in the last 3 years. I'm not ashamed to admit that I've not paid for all of them. The heavily listened to favorites, I have, but not all. Even if Spotify quadrupled in cost... it would still be small compared to (400 * $5) or (400 * $10). Not to mention the value from offline playlist prefetching, sync-free mobile access, and access to the same library on all 3 computers and my mobile devices.
I really don't see the issue here. I pay peanuts to rd.io each month (can't get Spotify here in Vietnam yet) to have access to a vast catalog of music I want to hear occasionally or just preview. The small handful of albums I really care about I buy in FLAC format and backup in S3. I get the best of both worlds with a minimum of fuss. Subscription-based music services have significantly increased my enjoyment of music and freed me from the hassles of managing a big local library.
I don't care about DRM on streaming music because I know I don't "own" it.
Just for your information, I've been using Spotify in Vietnam for 10 months. You just have to sign up with an address in one of Spotify's launched countries, and pay the monthly fee ($4.99), since it won't work as free.
It's nice of this chap to tell us how we listen to music. I've been a Spotify subscriber for almost two years and if they jacked up the price or went bust, I wouldn't be upset or the victim of a bait and switch. He seems to think we're all music "addicts" who will do anything to get our fix when in reality I wouldn't care if I went a few weeks without listening to anything specific and then I could just patch it up by buying any albums I particularly missed over time.
Once upon a time, a 24/7 persisting network was expensive / out of each for a lot of people.
Now, I at least have been enveloped in 3G / Wifi wherever I go (maybe I should go out a bit more ? ).
Even from an analysis perspective, buffering over networks (which I use) is good enough for music consumption (44.1 * 4 bytes in 1 sec if we consider wav being streamed. That's 44 KBPs needed to repro at original sampling rate. Our networks do several multiples of that right now. I can't listen to music faster than that.)
It is convenient, it is the future.
OP's conundrum is the same my grandfather faced a few decades ago when my grandpa thought "Oh Shit, if the local library closes, I am owned and have to listen to a radio or something to pass my time".
And the MAFIAA ? Well, they're setting themselves up for some severe disruption. I-Will-Fuck-The-World is not a sustainable business model.
I've been a Napster subscriber from some time and they are actively engaged in a version of this. They have two tiers of music: "free to stream" and "purchase only or :30 preview": they have gotten into the habit of moving tracks from one category to the other as they get popular or in some cases pulling entire albums from their catalogue for unexplained reasons.
While I'm sure what they are doing is legal it still is a shady "the first hit is free" type business model. So far the annoyance has been minimal as my tastes are not too mainstream but it still pops up far too often.
> there's nothing to suggest that you'll be able to get the playlists on your computer out as easily as Spotify does from iTunes.
It is actually really easy, I think they have an API for this. Once Spotify launched in the U.S., my friend switched from Spotify to WiMP (wimpmusic.se), and they could easily just import his playlists and boom he had all his music again. It's sure a heck of a lot easier than dealing with DRM - I still have a ton of songs from iTunes Japan (which still uses FairPlay DRM) I can't play on my Android phone at all
My couple of years as a Spotify subscriber have radically changed my music listening habits. I used to buy records and listen to them over and over again. Now it's more about constantly discovering new music (eg. via Facebook links) and having a more casual relationship to it. I only buy the really important ones on physical media, usually vinyl.
The guy who wrote the article is a "collector". I know one when I spot one. A collector accumulates things that he might one day come round to want to use again.
Other people who are prepared to pay know that pop music is fickle anyway. I don't know of too many people who'd dust off their Sonny and Cher albums for their guests (unless it is for Kitsch Nite).
If I buy a CD, burn it to my computer and then sell that CD, do I have to delete the MP3 copy on my computer? The law says yes; I "owned" the music while I possessed the CD. When I sold the CD I gave my ownership and my copies are illegal. I'd bet that 99% of people would keep the copy on their computer though. Until this perception is changed, the author's point doesn't really matter. Because I'm paying so little for Spotify and because of it's very history of struggle coming to the U.S., I know it could be temporal. As is pretty much everything, including the physical media which can also degrade.
Maybe services like Spotify will change that perception and the consumer and the industry will meet in the middle with a cheap subscription price. But unless all of the methods of illegally accessing music are closed, I don't think that'll happen.
