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Spotify Retreats To Invite-Only In UK
Barence writes "Music streaming service Spotify has been forced to enact tight restrictions on new members in the UK, and revert back to an invite-only system. The company has decided to take drastic action following the release of its iPhone and Android apps earlier this week, which have created 'huge demand in the UK,' according to Spotify. People who don't want to put their hand in their pocket and don't have any friends can sign up to a waiting list instead."
The good thing is that Spotify premium (9euro/month) really isn't a lot for the service they provide. Since an year ago that I started using Spotify it's been pretty much my only music player. Now that they're getting the mobile clients out too its just getting better (also Symbian version coming soon, now just windows mobile!).
And like with every Spotify news here, for those who are going to ask why spotify is supposedly so much better than last.fm or pandora or other web radios. Spotify isn't a radio. It's more like a huge music library where you can search for any song and listen to them as you please. If you like to, you can even just repeat one song all the time. It's more like your WinAmp or other music player, just that the music is streamed and you have access to huge amount of songs.
Their technology seems to work great too. When you select a new song it starts playing *right away*. Just like listening from your own hard drive. The UI is simple and lightweight but still good. You can also easily paste links to songs, albums and playlists. For pretty much everyone I know its became the way to listen to music, and a great way for music labels to kill piracy. Finally a product that is actually better and more convenient than pirating, and I'm happily paying the 9 euros for the premium account.
As mobile side I'm just waiting for their Windows Mobile client for my HTC. The nice thing is that mobile 3g internet is really cheap here too: unlimited (yes, really) 384 kbit/s is 5e a month, while unlimited 5Mbit/s is 35e a month. Since I have them anyway, I can just stream all the songs normally while sitting in a car or anywhere.
And yes, its only available in Europe currently. But they plan to launch in USA this year too.
'On 4 March 2009 Spotify announced that personal data including email addresses and birth dates of members of Spotify prior to 19 December 2008 were "potentially exposed" by hackers exploiting a bug in the system'
Err, no thanks.
No native Linux client (only w/ wine). Err, no thanks.
I'll keep on supporting Creative Commons artists by giving money to the ones I like. It's open. It's also a fairly huge library, and I don't have to listen to the same recycled mass market pulp.
Avoid.
It must be a real downer to have an irrational fear of pockets and nobody to talk to about it.
This type of problem should be seen as a good thing, and provide a clue for the music labels. They already serve the public when it comes to purchasing music with CDs and DRM-free downloads (finally!). Now they have an opportunity to serve the public with streaming music.
They tried something similar with rentals, but people don't really seem to like it that much. Streaming (for a fee) is a *lot* like renting, but since you never have the music on your hard drive or media player, it doesn't feel like you're losing anything once the subscription expires. Mixing owned and rented music doesn't seem to be that desirable. But with the clear demarcation between owned and streamed, it's much more enticing.
I know I'd prefer to stream than to rent. Hopefully the labels will see this as an opportunity, and not a threat, and bring this to the US.
Yeah, I know, placing hope on the intelligence of the music industry is a recipe for disappointment, but what the hell, right?
...joined them 4 days ago, so all sorted!
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
I guess it's more sad that I have 10 invites and no friends to give them to.
or does anyone else not get the whole "spotify" thing? I mean I can sort of appreciate the utility of the free, ad supported version but why in the hell would you pay a monthly subscription for access to music when:
a). you can only play it through spotify and lose access as and when you stop renewing your monthly subscription (as I understand it)
b). you have to surrender your bandwidth not only for streaming songs (although I think it does make use of a local cache) but also as a node in the spotify p2p network
c). you don't get access to some mega bands (e.g. Metallica, ACDC, Pink Floyd etc.)
Basically, it seems to me that the Spotify guys are the only one's laughing all the way to the bank. I mean, their music is encoded in ogg (presumably mainly to avoid paying any licensing fees), users themselves provide a large chunk of bandwidth to make the system work (through the p2p nature of the spotify client), the spotify infrastructure (according to their own site) runs primarily on open source/free software yet they (afaik) contribute nothing back. Their client is closed source, they don't let you keep the music you stream, they make use of your bandwidth and hard drive space in order to help power the network.
Can someone enlighten me?
Disclaimer: i haven't used spotify so if some of my points are totally wrong, please tell me.
But everyone I know already uses Spotify, so Slashdot readers from Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France or Spain (only countries its running in), here are 4 invite codes.
Bxz9KZABCFUnxBjm
D2XmExytRXKpdDsd
yXXtPeWnGzSaK2Fq
GiSxJRqdtkdGLTLW
I may be back later to post some more.
He says you have to give the legal services a chance to establish themselves first, and later raise the fees to a level where the artists get fairly compensated.
Yeah, because everybody knows that new technology always gets more expensive after release, rather than less...
The price of a good is controlled by supply and demand. Demand for older technology drops over time; demand for older music does not. Demand for a slower Mac drops; demand for older products of the other Apple (like the Beatles catalog) does not. Copyright in this case is more like land: the value tends to go up over time.
Don't see much newsworthy content here. Spotify was sign up before so nothing much changed. (Seems more free PR than anything for them.)
A change to the real competition would be news. Free streaming music without registration.
In the UK;
http://www.we7.com/
The US equivalent;
http://www.lala.com/
I like the idea of the "day pass" system. For £1, I get access to everything for 24 hours.
That would be excellent for parties.
No it wouldn't, because once you're at a party, you're likely performing the service publicly, which copyright ordinarily prohibits and which I'm guessing is not explicitly allowed by the TOS.
With the big names now owning significant amounts of Spotify and the discontinuation of non-invite free service it appears that Spotify is moving on to phase 2: Profit. Get the people hooked on free service using community open source tools and p2p technology. Then stop allowing new members to get the service for free. Then promote the paid service. Then jack up the rates on the paid service over time. Looks like business as usual.
Nothing will change just because "... on the internet!" is appended.
A person in possession of a CD can't be remotely identified to the performance rights organizations. The user of a streaming service can. Spotify already has to geolocate the IP to block people outside approved countries. It wouldn't be unimaginable for the performance rights organizations to request that Spotify look closer and count how many streams are going to home vs. business IP blocks, using something like MAPS DUL.
Most albums released this year won't sell many copies in 2014.
Yes, things get discontinued. For example, Apple discontinues Mac mini models once they fall below roughly $600. But among the albums that are not discontinued, the price generally doesn't go down.
Only a very few bands will still be selling their 10-year-old albums in 2019
But they don't sell cheaper. In fact, the price of a new Beatles CD is probably higher than the price of the same Beatles LP the day it came out. Compare new copies to new copies issued later, not new copies to used copies.
You could look at it another way: how much does a loaf of bread cost now compared to how much a loaf of bread cost 45 years ago when the Beatles were a new band? In at least the United States, the Royalty Board adjusts the standard royalty for some compulsory copyright licenses based on the Consumer Price Index, which in turn is based on the price of bread. I see no reason that this cost-of-living adjustment philosophy would differ noticeably in other countries.
Spotify works well in Wine -- complete with systray icon and automatic client updates.
They even have a page on how to run it under Wine, so they almost officially support it: http://www.spotify.com/en/help/faq/wine/
I signed up for an account using a UK-based anonymous proxy site, and entered a valid UK postal code (which I got from a postal code lookup site). I use a free UK proxy server to run the application. As far as Spotify is concerned, I live in the UK and run Spotify from inside the UK. Fortunately I signed up while the UK still didn't need an invite to get an account.