Spotify is the latest trend on Facebook and in the online music industry. Basically, it is an Internet connected music player in which you can listen to all your favorite artists and songs, create artist or genre radios, all for free whenever you're on your computer, or for an extra fee on your mobile device. But here's what's genius about Spotify. Every song you listen to comes up on your profile page on Facebook for all your friends to see. Not only does listening to music make the artists and Spotify money each time you play a song, but it's also an excessive amount of free advertising. Listening to music is not only convenient on Spotify, but it's also beneficial to everyone. Yes, there are the annoying breaks of audio commercials, but that, I suppose comes with the territory of a business trying to rack in as much profit as possible. Those are a little annoying, but not enough so to leave the program altogether. It's revolutionary, really. People on Facebook are not acutely aware enough of how their pages are being used as social networking advertisements, because most people don't mind displaying their music on their pages, because it's enjoyable to share your taste in music with your friends. It's not so much a burden really, but more delightful. Spotify is definitely one of Facebook's greatest feats.
As with any program that most people enjoy with limited complaints, Spotify, is indeed, too good to be true. It's getting people addicted to its ease and convenience, and making listening to songs on YouTube seem cumbersome, and using Last FM. a thing of the past.What we're using right now is a 6 month free trial connected to our Facebook accounts, and after that is when they expect us to pay up. Users at this point can stream unlimited music with radio advertising breaks in between, which most people get used to after a while. After the trial, which most people aren't even aware is a trial, Spotify makes tracks off limits once they are played 5 times, and has a limit of 10 hours of streaming per month. An "unlimited" subscription to Spotify removes ads and time limits, and a "premium" subscription introduces features such as higher bit-rate streaming, access to music offline, and mobile app access.Other criticisms of Spotify have been that they do not compensate their artists enough, especially indie or non-mainstream musicians. The Guardian
reported that "indie labels... as opposed to the majors and Merlin
members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a
50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis." And apparently, a record label called Racing Junior had only received $3.00 after their songs had been streamed 55,100 times. An independent artist on Spotify would need over four million streams per month to earn $1,160. Many instances like this have been reported, and I'm sure Facebook users in the next six months after their trials are over will be more than outraged because of this perceived deceit.
We should've known the "free" aspect of Spotify was unsustainable, so I guess this is goodbye. You know Facebook users hate paying for stuff.
Haha that's so true, I bet if Facebook started charging for it use that the most of the Facebook community would turn to antoher form of social networking like Twitter or pinterest. Also is this spotify thing basically pandora except for the fact that it tells Facebook what you're listening to? Like to do you get to pick which songs come on or is it like a radio station thing where you type in the artist or song and it gives you a playlist of the same kinds of music?
ReplyDeleteHaha yeah, Spotify is a really convenient way of streaming the music you want to listen to. You can choose the songs and artists you listen to, or you can use the radio based off of songs and artists you like. There are thousands of playlists and popular music listens to select from also.
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