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.'"

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good

[Xaedalus]

Ah yes... drool all day, stare at chicks who'd rather throw themselves in front of a bus than talk to me, and masturbate all night. Pimples, voice breaking, and endless rounds of Quake complete with teabagging, cheetos, and trash-talking. Sneaking booze out of Dad's liquor cabinet and getting the hell beaten out of me later. Ripping tunes for the lulz, and staring in envy at those goddamn 18 year old Seniors who have it all. Good times...

Re:Rent?

[poetmatt]

Doesn't really matter. You paid for the subscription, you should own the content. http://www.spotifyrip.com/ is one solution. Legal? Grey area. Provable in court? Not in a million years. You're recording the playback. There have been apps that do this for everything from shoutcast to a variety of other things. Streamripper equivalents for spotify can probably do this. I see http://spotiplay.com/how-to-rip-music-from-spotify/ pointing to other alternatives.

That was the first result of https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=export+music+from+spotify&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t , and I'm sure that more is coming, especially with US demand.

Do I trust Spotify? No. Do I trust my hard drive with what I choose to put on it? Yes. This is pretty much equivalent to forking an app, except that we can't really trust the labels any more than spotify.

Re:A somewhat obvious and panicky article

[ElectricTurtle]

It's not panicky, it's real. People need to wake up. Look at how Amazon has deleted things people have purchased for the Kindle, with no warning and recourse.

DO NOT TRUST THE CLOUD FOR ANYTHING.

If you do not wholly control a non-DRMed local file, you don't have shit. When you use services like Steam or Spotify or any content delivery service that retains the right to delete things you've bought whenever they feel like it, you're asking for a disaster eventually. Even if the whole service doesn't tank, it will just be a matter of time before they start doing things like Amazon and deleting things you've purchased without warning. Whether it's a licensing issue or 'for the children', it will happen and you won't be able to do jack.

You've been warned.

Re:Rent?

[Richard_at_work]

If the terms of the subscription are quite clear that you only have access to the music so long as you pay the subscription, why should you own the content?

I don't own every film I get in my Netflix subscription....

Re:A somewhat obvious and panicky article

[Overzeetop]

Look at how Amazon has deleted things people have purchased for the Kindle, with no warning and recourse.
 

You mean the single title which they found out (after the fact) that a partner did not have the rights to, so they pulled the book and refunded your money? Or are there a slew of others I just haven't heard about?