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Microsoft Readies a Rival To Spotify
Barence writes "Microsoft has confirmed it is preparing to launch a music streaming service. The service will be a direct rival to Spotify, hugely popular in the UK (but unavailable in the US), which allows users to stream music for free in return for listening to around a minute's worth of advertisements every half hour. 'It will be a similar principle to Spotify but we are still examining how the business model will work,' said Peter Bale, executive producer of MSN." The article claims that the new service will boost the popularity of the Zune player, though how this is to happen is not explained. There doesn't seem to be a close tie-in between device and service, as there is between the iPod and the iTunes Store.
And I'll say, if they can get this right, they deserve to be the biggest. Music could be dealt with so much better than it is, in terms of business and technology. If I could listen to a measly 1 minute of commercials for 30 minutes of music that I choose, and didn't have to pay for, and not break the law, I'd do it.
Yeah, I could just download whatever I want off of TPB or whatever, but I don't do it - not only because I don't want to break the law and get sued, but because I still don't personally feel comfortable consuming something which I did not pay the artist for. (Don't jump down my throat, I'm not judging those who choose to do it, but I'm just saying for myself no matter how I justify it, I'd be getting something for free which I shouldn't).
Get some good, targeted ads, make arrangements with the labels, and get this going in a good direction once and for all. Oh, and making the Zune not be an ugly piece of shit would help too.
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My linux box keeps ripping some shoutcast stations 24/7. Everything I dislike is moved to a folder, a shell script adds them to a blacklist and another one deletes these tracks if they are played again (sort of local last.fm). :)
This way I keep getting new tracks in mp3 format which are more or less ready to copy to my mp3 player - and it is legal where I'm located
So why should i use this instead of lastfm which features no adverts per half hour of music
Because it's the fastest music player with the smallest footprint available that lets you listen to *any song* you want.
You can search and play a song in milliseconds.
There is no equal, period.
I recently went to Oslo, from the UK, and when i switched on Spotify I received Norwegian adverts!
The fact that they slash 5000 jobs is no indication of how well they're doing.
...is that will use Silverlight. My initial reaction to this was "My God, it will suck: it won't be cross platform". Then it occurred to me - Silverlight is cross-platform. So not only would this allow MS to target a larger market, it would get SL on to a huge amount of machines. Oh, and it could be an additional 'pull' factor for Windows: You get free streaming, but you can only download (onto a device) if you have a Zune. And you can only use the Zune if you have Windows... or some such strategy like that
Obviously this is only my personal prediction, but I'm personally expecting this to be an offline app with embedded Silverlight stuff. Either that, or a .NET app (but I'm uncertain on that - what's the status of Mono with OS X?)
because I still don't personally feel comfortable consuming something which I did not pay the artist for.
Do you really think that with all the middlemen still in the loop that listening to 1 minute of commercials per 30 minutes of music is going to generate any significant revenue for the artists? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that any major label music available on spotify is counted as promotional per the artists' contracts with their distributors and that they get exactly 0.0% of all such revenue.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.