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Spotify To Bait and Switch?
hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review, of all places, is running a story suggesting that Spotify may have to rely on a bait & switch strategy — or might have one forced upon it by the record labels. From the article: 'Spotify gets all its content from the same place everyone else does – the same industry that has forced price increases on other online services once they have become successful. That appears to be at least partly what happened with Netflix last week. At least in the case of the existing a la carte music services, if you don't like the new price, you don't have to buy the new track. In Spotify's world, if you don't like the new price, there goes your music library. Or, if Spotify tries to stand up for its users, the labels can just pull the songs and those songs simply disappear.'"
I think this is the difference between buying and renting. If you can't pick it up, it seems like you can't "buy" much any more... Pirate? Yes. Buy? No.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I hope they all go out of business, so I can go back to using the "but there is no viable legal alternative".
Oh what the fuck, I'm just going to pirate anyway, cause it's awesome.
Whatever it takes to protect the rights of artists, the people must endure.
Just ask the copyright holders - they'll explain that's the only reason they do anything.
The guy is worried that Spotify will start cheap and then raise it's prices if successful. And if you cancel you don't get to keep listening to music (unless you figured out a way to make your own copy, like many slashdotters will).
Not sure what this guy's point is. A better article would be don't buy Spotifiy because GrooveShark and youtube are free. And you can get firefox extensions that make turning a youtube video into an mp3 really easy.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
only reason netflix raised prices was because they are trying to license more content. even with the latest deals the selection is still pathetic and titles vanish all the time. i might just cancel my streaming soon and buy a DVD or blu ray every month for my kids
But if Spotify were to do this and you choose to stop subscribing, all that music you have on your Android or iPad is gone. You can't get the music out, and 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.
Really? Even if you're really careful and remove the screws and carefully pry the cover off, you couldn't get the music out?
What about just smashing the device? Wouldn't the music leak out of it then?
I don't know. I'm just a caveman.
It's still a good deal compared to satellite radio.
If you expect to pay $5-$10/month and actually own everything in the catalog, you're just being ridiculous.
Meanwhile, my collection pf pirate mp3s sits on my harddrive, perpetually available, can be transcoded into any forseeable format in the future, and has wide support on every modern portable and computing device out there...
The market has spoken! And it has said "f*ck you".
P.S. RIAA/MPAA I've taunted you on this website and dozens of others ever since the DeCSS incident, daring you to start legal action against me. I've got close to 2 terabytes of "your" crap on my harddrive and I have yet to hear so much as a cricket-noise from you.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
When you have music from video games or independent artists like Tryad and Tomas Dvorak?
Some video games have amazing music. Halo, Knytt Stories, Command & Conquer?
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Where you perpetually lease it from publishers who have been granted a artificial monopoly by the government that lasts the better part of a century on good that have exactly zero scarcity.
Don't you just love how "free-market" capitalism drives down costs and makes things more efficient.
Back to pirating I guess.
Once Apple buys up the entire music industry with their $70 billion in cash and shuts everyone else out.
Anyone got a couple of Spotify invites they can send my way? sithlordoflanc @ gmail . com
I've been on Spotify Premium for couple of year now, I think, maybe year and a half. That means I have so far spent about 250 songs worth (from a la carte download music shop) on the service that grants ability to browse music: I have listened to many thousands of different songs, many of which I would have hard time gaining access without the service. I would be very bummed if Spotify would shut down for any reason, but I consider the service well worth the cost.
The summary does make a valid point though, Spotify may indeed find itself in a fairly difficult negotiation with copyright holders for access to music. It might be a good idea for Spotify to be extremely public about its licensing contracts and related negotiations: this would make it harder for copyright holders to act as a de facto cartel. It would also assure the consumer that loss of the service is not likely. Another thing possible worth trying would be a loyalty reward system for paying customers that would allow customers to claim (or purchase at a discount) the songs they most often listen to.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
easiest way to achieve reductions on play counts on the expensive tracks.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In the early days you could play unlimited music, but with ads, that got a lot of people, including my parents interested. They were pushing their premium service via the ads and other things, but my parents didn't mind ads, they were used to the TV / Radio which has plenty.
They they started making new sign ups have a monthly play limit (x hours) which was pretty low, and of course because all your playlists were stored 'in the cloud' getting around it with multiple accounts was a bit of a pain. People using the free service from the early days still no limits were still recommending it, yet others were signing up and finding these limits in places.
Now they appear to have switched it completely and introduced the monthly limits to all free users, the ads weren't enough apparently.
This annoyed my parents, who were mostly only using it to listen to songs they had on CD anyway. I ripped their CDs, and uninstalled Spotify. As a result they don't have to listen to any ads at all, but are also denied the opportunity to discover new music via it. Net result.. uh, everybody loses?
I've been using Rhapsody for a while now, and am pretty happy with it. I work at my computer constantly and like having music on while I'm programming (it helps me get into the groove). I listen to a lot of music that I'm not inclined to buy. I appreciate being introduced to music that I wouldn't otherwise have known about, and I appreciate the fact that if I hear about a song or an artist I can almost always find it on Rhapsody and listen to it immediately. In other words, I get a lot out of my $6/mo (I should explain that I have a grandfathered account that was transferred from Yahoo Music years ago so my pricing is different from their standard pricing).
So for me, Rhapsody is great, and I have only been thinking about checking out Spotify because of some somewhat minor annoyances with the Rhapsody software (which may or may not be better in Spotify).
Please do not taunt us on message boards. We really hate that.
Premium Spotify user here. If the prices increase I will simply stop paying and my account will be in "free" mode again. I won't lose my music collection. It's not like Spotify deletes your playlist in free mode. I'll just have to spend some hours pirating it again, so I don't think "bait and switch" applies in this case...
Pointy-Haired-Bosses who think everything needs to be "in the cloud", pay attention.
Proverbs 21:19
I paid good money for that music. How DARE they?!!!
I drank what? -- Socrates
You make it sound like you need to trust them with the lives of your children or something. You pay them to listen music (or just use their free service) and you listen. If they raise the prices you can cancel. What do you have to lose? You can't listen to Kesha's greatest hits anymore?
The best answer is to get their free service and figure out how to make your own mp3's off their stream. But if someone tells me they pay Spotify five dollars a month, I'm not going to be, "OMFG! DON NOT TRUST THE CLOUD FOR ANYTHING!"
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
There are plenty of alternatives. Anyone who is putting all of their eggs in one basket doesn't understand the shelf life of technology.
Most everyone I know has some kind of personal music collection on their local machine(s), and the streaming is a complement to that. Because of the general hassle associated with managing a large and growing music collection, of course we'd love to offload that to someone else for a nominal fee.
My current strategy involves tripling up on cloud storage and trying before I buy any of the streaming services. Google and Amazon both offer substantial music storage for ridiculously low prices. $20 a year for a cloud drive with UNLIMITED storage means a one time hassle of tagging and uploading everything to the cloud...let them worry about it after that. Amazon is the winner now, just because of the download capability. Google Music is great too, though. Both work well on your mobile device with limited bandwidth requirements.
After investigating and playing with Spotify a little bit, it actually appears to be an inferior product to MOG [assuming you plan to pay for either service] for a few reasons, which you can seek out for yourself and come to your own conclusion.
BitTorrent and File Lockers aren't going away. Turntable.fm is fantastic. We've got options. Let Spotify do whatever it wants, and we'll do whatever best suits our needs/wants.
Same thing happened to Yahoo! Music Unlimited, years and years ago. That's when I learned my lesson about having owned, local copies of my music.
It's quite simple, really. Don't buy. Don't infringe.
Doesn't matter what the story is. Unless they're going to offer a decent deal, it's done- they offer little, if anything, that is worth what they're demanding right at the moment.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
... increases is content disappearing for no reason. For example UMG has disabled all songs longer than a certain amount 8+ months ago (which affects a lot people listening to classical and jazz, but not only, for example try to listen to the 2112 album by Rush on spotify...) and it hasn't been fixed yet
http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/long_songs_are_missing
I love the idea of spotify and would sign up in a heartbeat even at $30/month, but not with this kind of issues where a record company can arbitrarily mess with your account and you have no recourse.
-- the cake is a lie
Spotify is pulling their customers from the bay (eye patch one) if it becomes less convenient than the bay they will end their subscription. There is no risk involved in spotify, either you have it or you do not have it. All you lose is the not so expensive monthly fee. There is no start fee, there is no eradication of your current warez collection. You do not buy stuff inside spotify that you can only enjoy while on spotify, EVERYTHING on spotify (*) is yours to enjoy while it is there. Spotify is an all you can eat buffet, not a subscribe to stuff you have to buy. Disclamier: While I do love the ideas behind spotify, it is not for me becuase I only listen to my obscure records I already own and only half of them is on spotify. *subject to local discrimination - not all music is available in all countries.
Spotify gets all its content from the same place everyone else does...
you mean bittorrent?
I signed up for an invite and it came the other night. I immediately signed up to check it out, went to add the mobile app and found that it required a Premium membership. Immediately uninstalled. I didn't really get the premise in the first place but thought I'd give it a chance to see what all the buzz is about. But I'm not going to use it on a desktop - I can't stream at work which is where I spend most of my computer time anyway. There, or at home I'm likely to use my phone. It seems like if I want a specific song and have to pay for it, I'll buy it on Amazon. If I want to listen to random music I'll use Pandora or Slacker Radio or any number of thousands or Shoutcast streams, or streams of terrestrial radio via TuneinRadio. All for free.
What am I supposed to do with Spotify? And why would I ever pay for it as well?
This isn't bait and switch. Bait and switch is where they lure you in with a special offer on X, and when you go there they try and get you to buy Y which isn't such a good deal.
I was going to say it's selling a pig in a poke, but they aren't actually selling anything anyway, since it's effectively a rental.
So it's perhaps like you lease a foocar, and you go to bed in a house. But when you wake up you're in a cardboard box and there's a barmobile on the driveway, without so much as a by-your-leave.
But who am I to quibble? I'm not a fellow at Harvard, I'm just someone who can form a possessive correctly: "it's compelling offerings, not lawsuits, that win customer's hearts and minds".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
For most folks in the U.S., you have to sign up for a free account invite. What is the schedule, quota, criteria for doling out those free invites, does anybody know? Their site says, "We'll send you [an invite] as soon as we can". Hmmmmm. When is that? Meanwhile, you give them an email address that they can use to promote their paid service to you or sell to 3rd parties. Easy for /.-ers to work around, but for the vast majority of consumers Spotify gets a free mailing list of interested music fans.
Also agree with the posters who don't trust the cloud or rental model, mainly because of record company shenanigans. Vinyl still rules.
--- When I grow up, I want to be a legislator of scientific laws.
as far as i can understand, spotify is internet radio, with ads. so why do people pay for it?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I used to have an emusic subscription and since I canceled that I really can't see signing up for one again. When I first bought into emusic you could download every album you ever purchased through emusic again over and over, which was the main feature I was paying for really. Then they changed the terms of service and made it so that you had to pay for the record again if you wanted to download it again. In short, no matter what the terms of service are now, the people at Spotify will no doubt arbitrarily change them to massively disadvantage you once you are hooked. That's why I almost never sign up for internet subscription services of any kind. For example, I am loathe to upload anything into Dropbox, even though I still have my account, because I am sure one day they are just going to start charging per download to access the content I already uploaded or something weird like that. There's nothing you can do other than walk away from your data when you start using cloud based services if you end up not being satisfied with the service. Experience taught me that all such services on the internet are really just operating like those rat traps where the rodent can crawl into an opening very easily but they cannot crawl back out. In this case the record industry is basically trying to find ways to make everyone buy their music collection again: I already own records, tapes, cds, mp3s and now I will pay for a music subscription that will pretty much just give me the same music all over again? Its a treadmill for generating revenue.
napster was the only commercial digital music service that worked in the long run (for the user) so far.
pirate bay etc nowadays.
I don't think people use itunes et al. for the music as much as to have a white cube gizmo software experience of the music.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Revenue = Price * Users
The user base grows until
NonUsers * JoinRate = Users * LeaveRate
Raising prices lowers JoinRate and raises LeaveRate,
and therefore shrinks the user base.
Lock-in reduces the effect of Price on LeaveRate.
But (most likely)
NonUsers >> Users
so the effect of Price on JoinRate may swamp the effect of lock-in on LeaveRate.