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Spotify Retreats To Invite-Only In UK

Posted by timothy on from the spot-of-trouble dept.

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."

17 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Spotify by sopssa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Spotify by Viperlin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "now just windows mobile!"

      no, now just windows mobile, and android

      both do require a premium account to use

    2. Re:Spotify by Hurricane78 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So it's the media reproduction and artist extortion industry's wet dream: You never actually own anything, and really pay every time you listen to the track. And I still wonder if any of that money is actually going to the artists. Because I think they don't see a cent and that that is the main point over actually selling stuff.

      No thanks. I'd rather die.

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    3. Re:Spotify by beowulfcluster · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And I still wonder if any of that money is actually going to the artists. Because I think they don't see a cent and that that is the main point over actually selling stuff.

      There was an article a few weeks ago about swedish artist Magnus Uggla, who apparently is mad as hell about Spotify and isn't going to take it any longer. The article is here (in Swedish). A summary in english is here.

      Some basics things: Uggla, who's a reasonably big artist in Sweden, made as much from Spotify as he claims an average busker in the street makes in a day. Sony has bought 6% of Spotify, valued at 2 billion SEK for 30,000 SEK. His conclusion for why Spotify would agree to that deal is that Sony in return lets Spotify get their artists on the cheap. In other words, Sony makes money, the artists do not.

      In the swedish article Hasse Breiholtz of Sony Sweden defends the arrangement by saying that Spotify wouldn't exist if the artists would get paid better for now. 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.

    4. Re:Spotify by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't care how much you pay for Pandora; We can't get it in the EU. See http://www.pandora.com/restricted

      What I can get, however, is Spotify, and I am more than happy to pay â9 per month for the service. It's all about value to the customer, to me. â9 this month has saved me many hundreds of euros, as I've not had to go out and buy the back catalogue of: Saxon, Dream Theatre, Sigur Ros, Rage Against The Machine, Nine Inch Nails*, and a few other bands who I thought I'd "check out."

      * - I already own the NIN back catalogue; The service is just so good that it saves me time to listen to it on Spotify.

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  2. spotify poor security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    '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.

  3. Re:This is a good thing... by node+3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That doesn't really mean much other than they're hedging their bets. They could just as easily pull the plug[*] on Spotify as broaden it's scope.

    For them, this is more of an experiment, like Hulu, and there's no reasonable certainty that they won't shut everything down tomorrow if they fear it will undermine their traditional revenue models.

    [*] By "pull the plug", I mean revoking any licensing for the project, if they can, and if they can't (perhaps UK/EU law treats Spotify as a radio station with compulsory licensing, I don't know), then at the very least do everything they can to destabilize Spotify's business model, the way the RIAA/ASCAP have been trying to do in the US with regards to online radio stations.

  4. Re:This is a good thing... by sopssa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    However by far they seem to be happy.

    Spotify makes more cash for Universal than iTunes

    Universal Music Sweden has admitted that Spotify makes it more money than iTunes does. "In five months from the launch, Spotify became our largest digital source of income and so passed by iTunes", said Per Sundin, managing director of Universal Music.

    "It's a fantastic development, explained by the fact that Spotify really has exploded", he added. The admission brings with it a whole host of questions - none of which we have many answers to. How much is Spotify paying the labels? Could this be why the iPhone app still hasn't been approved? Does this validate ad-funded music as a business model?

    The interesting thing will be how it works on US market however. They can potentially get a lot more from advertising in USA than in Sweden, but is USA itself got so used to iTunes and such that it will hurt the sales and labels? However, Spotify is a perfect way to turn those pirating and "sending mp3's to friends in msn" to customers you can get income from, even if its in form of ads revenue.

  5. Re:This is a good thing... by Kjella · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, the big labels are shareholders on Spotify so they do have seen the opportunity.

    If I remember correctly they were offered stock for next to nothing at the very beginning, exactly so they'd have them on board. So they haven't really invested money, but the founders have given them an incentive to make Spotify successful and gain credibility. It's still tough to say how it'll work out though because Spotify is a huge success but not a huge cash cow.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  6. Is it just me by gpuk · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Is it just me by gpuk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How is it cheap? At £8.73 per month that equates to roughly £105 a year. The BBC license fee is only £35 more than that a year.... !

      If you could keep what you listened to and were able to play it outside of the DRM laden spotify client, I think £8.75 / month might be acceptable. But as it stands, if you're a premium user you get nothing much more than their "gracious" removal of ads and a slightly higher bit rate (which frankly isn't worth all the much more imho).

      Seriously, I don't get it.

    2. Re:Is it just me by Zedrick · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I didn't get it either, until a friend sent me an invite so that I could try it for myself.

      a). you can only play it through spotify and lose access as and when you stop renewing your monthly subscription (as I understand it)

      Sure, but it's the same thing with TV.

      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

      I'm not sure how much bandwidth spotify uses, but it's not noticeable for me or anyone I know, OTOH we all have at least 10Mb in the wall. I can see that this might, possibly, be a problem in "developing" countries. But not in where Spotify is available right now (Europe).

      c). you don't get access to some mega bands (e.g. Metallica, ACDC, Pink Floyd etc.)

      Bah, listen to Megadeth, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath instead!

      Spotify isn't perfect, but it's the best legal alternative we have right now. Sure, my collection of 12000 mp3's (about half of them are pirated) is better if I lose my internet connection or if I want to listen to some really hard-to-find-stuff that I have in my collection, but Spotify has 99,9% of the music I like, makes it easy to find new music, makes it easy to share playlists with friends... etc. Which makes it better for me as long as I'm online.

    3. Re:Is it just me by ciderVisor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      why in the hell would you pay a monthly subscription for access to music

      If Spotify dropped the ad-supported model, I'd stump up for the monthly subscription in an instant. It's so convenient, I even fire up Spotify rather than playing a CD that I already own. I used to file share to find music that I'd been recommended. Nowadays, if they're not on Spotify, I just can't be bothered going through the hassle of LimeWire/BitTorrent.

      Someone in the recording industry once said "You can't compete with free". Well, Spotify proved him wrong; you can compete by making it free and more convenient.

      Disclaimer: i haven't used spotify so if some of my points are totally wrong, please tell me.

      You're not wrong, but until you actually use Spotify, it's hard to appreciate just how great the user experience is.

      --
      Squirrel!
    4. Re:Is it just me by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The BBC license fee is cheap for what it is. Just because it's obligatory, people develop a false sense of expense about it.

      The most basic package on Sky (our satellite TV provider) costs more than DOUBLE the license fee (including fitting in first year), and the commercial channels are full of advertisements. The BBC is commercial free and raises the quality of broadcasting as a whole in the UK.

      Spotify doesn't supply as much content bandwidth as the BBC, but does let you choose from a large selection of music. That choice probably balances the fact that it's music-only.. I wonder what it would cost if it fell under the arm of the BBC? They presumably have a great deal of the infrastructure already, so that would be a reduction in overhead costs.

    5. Re:Is it just me by sopssa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The P2P part is used mostly for just the most popular tracks, it would be too slow and unreliable otherwise. For that matter I havent ever noticed it using upload bandwidth so much that I would, well, notice it. It makes sense to try to P2P the most listened tracks, as theres probably thousands of people listening them at the same time.

    6. Re:Is it just me by krenaud · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I bought have hundreds of CDs which I've paid a LOT of money for and in just a few months with Spotify Premium I've already listened to more songs than I've bought through the years up till now and for a relatively small amount. If Spotify goes down after three years, then I've "lost" the equivalent of 18 CDs but I've been able to listen to the music equivalent to thousands of CDs. Seems like a good deal.

  7. Re:This is a good thing... by xaxa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At least it will be easier in North America -- just two countries to sort out.

    "Available in Europe" is wrong, anyway: "Spotify is currently available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain." -- just 41 countries to go!