The discussion about Spotsave, an unauthorized program which lets you save Spotify songs to your harddrive, is pretty intense on the net right now. I think it highlights something very important – that Spotify is fairly immune to this type of thing. Here is why:
Since Spotify, unlike iTunes Store for instance, contributes REAL VALUE to the consumer in the form of hosting, searchability and shareability, there is really not much point in downloading from Spotify. The added of value of Spotify dissapears if you do that. Then you have a self hosted MP3 (or OGG) again that is clunky to share and sync and that takes up space on your harddrive. This is why the Spotify model, or any other model that contributes REAL VALUE is impervious to pirates. Or rather, it makes the term “pirate” irrelevant.
And by the way, if you haven’t understood this yet, I’m very much on the side of the artist in these matters, but is realistic about the fact that the artist–”end user” value relationship has to be win-win. This goes for software, films, or any other digitally mass-restristibutionable product.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Well said! I agree completely. (and i´m also a bit surprised that a couple of newspapers presents Spotsave as the great big threat to Spotify, they don´t seem to understand what spotify is really about….)
Well – plus, using Spotify as a download service would be ludicrous because you would have to download everything in real time. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. Spotify contributes value. Downloading takes it away.
Pointing it out as a threat is just at token of ignorance.
Sorry, you’ve just got this backwards. After the “Great Purge”, what’s the guarantee that Spotify won’t delete another huge bunch of tracks – if one of the signed-up record labels gets skittish? Downloading gives you the security that you have the file on your disk and that’s never going to go away (as long as you backup!), and you can manage audio files on your own hard drive far more flexibly than you can manage tracks through Spotify’s extremely limited user interface. You can also share them in a myriad of ways – legal issues aside – and you don’t have to be technically inclined to do so.
Thanks for commenting.
The fact (or opinion) that Spotify is a move in the right direction is no guarantee that the labels will suddenly become enlightened. As you can see in earlier posts, I am no fan of current and prior record label strategy. In fact, I think it’s almost hostile towards artists and art. So I agree with you that pulling songs from Spotify is highly counter productive.
But still, do you not agree that there is clear and real value in all of us sharing one database? Sharing and communicating music then becomes a matter of tiny links rather than 3Mb files, syncing players becomes a matter of the past, just like storage and backups. To me that is real value.
And quite frankly, I don’t see the harm in Spotsave. It doesn’t remove any value from Spotify or replace it in any way, and if you want to download a song for use in a family picture slidshow or whatever, you can.
Services like Spotify (and other that are yet to come) add value. People are willing to pay for value. Revenue is then created and artists will get royalties from this revenue. I believe that this is the only feasible road to take for the music industry.
REAL VALUE!