Spotify

Do Dictatorships Use Social Media More Effectively Than Corporations?

September 24, 2009

I‘ve done quite a bit of thinking about how the social web will make the world a better place. I’ve written about it, and also lectured about the social web, good, and evil. So when a talk by Evgeny Morozov popped on TED on the topic of how the net aids dictatorships, I was naturally [...]

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Is Spotify the Darth Vader of Music?

September 8, 2009

As Spotify launched their iPhone app, the crowd cheered. The talented SEO-expert (and comedian) Simon Sundén publishes the follwing graph of Spotify Premium sales that went viral amongst us nerds. Half us us thought is was true, and who knows, it may be. But even if this graphic joke isn’t true, it illustrates something quiet [...]

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Spotify Goes Mobile and Offline!

May 28, 2009

When I lectured at Stockholm School of Economics about the future of music and video I remember receiving a few critical questions about mobility: “What about when you’re mobile?”, “What about when you’re on a plane?”, “What about when you don’t have an internet connection?”. Ladies and gentlemen, here is your answer: And by the [...]

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A Guilty Pirate Bay Verdict Will Make us Look Like Idiots in The History Books

April 17, 2009

In about an hour we will know the verdict in the Pirate Bay-trials. Let’s hope that people are being smart about this. Because a guilty verdict would not be good for anyone. Especially not for art and artists. A guilty verdict would do little to boost sales. I believe we’ll see the opposite result. Darknets [...]

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Checkmate. Spofity Opens Up API To Developers.

April 7, 2009

Finally it happened. Spotify released libspotify, thereby making it possible to develop third party applications to interact with the Spotify platform. I know we’ve all been talking about it since the start, and that it has been a long time ambition, but we were never quite sure if they would make the move or when. [...]

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Think Twice Before Even Dreaming About Using IPRED. Or Associating With Anyone Doing It.

April 5, 2009

We are now starting to see the effects of the Swedish IPRED-law, which states that copyright holders can go after individuals downloading protected content. Apparently, Swedish internet traffic has now dropped by nearly half. And since when is that a good thing? I thought traffic was valuable? I believe that you can never be quite [...]

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Spotsave is an Excellent Display of the Spotify Model Robustness

February 27, 2009

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 [...]

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Augmented Intelligence And 3 Other Ways of Saving The World (And The Music Industry) From The Internet

February 23, 2009

A few days after the fact I read this article on Realtid.se. The contents of the article are nothing jaw dropping. The comments on the article however, reflect the fact that so much of this discussion is taking place well outside the realm of relevance. People are talking about whether or not artists should be [...]

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It’s Not About Pirate Bay, It’s About The Bigger Picture.

February 17, 2009

I really think that the Pirate Bay trials are a big waste of money. Possibly worse. What is the music industry hoping to achieve? Will people start buying records again? Buying DRM-sabotaged (yes, that is what DRM is) digital files? Hosting them on their own hard drives? It’s the worst of two worlds. In the [...]

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The Labels Are Playing a Dangerous Game With Spotify

January 29, 2009

Yesterday Spotify announced that they are removing songs from their database, and imposing country restrictions on others. Again, we see the record labels showing off their power. But it’s really a dangerous game to play. As I’ve said before, both in lectures and on this blog, the only way to properly fight piracy is to [...]

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2009 Free Spotify Advice

January 2, 2009

Dear Spotify, Here is an idea that I would like to see implemented: When I go to the URL spotify.com/walternaeslund I get this: Instead, what I would like to see here is a feed containing everything I have shared (songs, playlists, etc). Easy piecy, expected, and very handy. How about it guys and gals at [...]

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Dear Spotify, Walter Loves Music Too, But Would Also Love To SHARE Music.

December 29, 2008

I’ve given some thought to Spotify over the past few days, and here are some of my thoughts. Perhaps I’m wrong and Spotify has gone social after all. But not in the spheres where I move and socialize. And I have tried to spark some collaboration and social behavior without success. These thoughts build upon [...]

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Is It Me, Or Is Spotify Not So Social After All?

December 25, 2008

Sitting in front of the fireplace on christmas day, I can’t help but wonder why I even think about work. But I do. I guess it’s a sign that I love my job. On the table beside me lies a copy of The Economist’s special christmas issue. In bold blue, the headline question “Why we [...]

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Google Friend Connect and The Walter Naeslund VIP!

December 3, 2008

I just recieved my whitelisting for Google Friend Connect, and will now start testing on this and my other blog. We’ll call the membership Walter Naeslund VIP, and you can join below on the right. Members get special give-aways, invitations and other goodies. For instance I have a few Spotify-invites to give away as we [...]

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MySpace 2.0 Launched

November 10, 2008

A while back I wrote about MySpace on my other blog (which has been asleep for some time now while I’ve been busy with this one). Last night MySpace launched it’s 2.0 version, and that is of course big news for the world of social media. I haven’t played around with it much yet, but [...]

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Spotify Launches And MySpace Counters

October 9, 2008

Interesting. Spotify launched a couple of days ago, and I just got this in my Facebook-feed a couple of minutes ago:“Joakim Friedman is Spotify har inte AC/DC. Lyssna istället på www.myspace.com/acdc”.Loosely translated: “Spotify doesn’t have AC/DC. Listen to www.myspace.com/acdc instead”. (J works for MySpace).Go back and read what I wrote in the post before this [...]

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The Social Media Wars Continue. Will MySpace Rise To Power Once Again?

October 7, 2008

There has been a lot of talk about MySpace lately. Remember MySpace? (It’s that social media place which always looked like crap because you had too much say about it’s design and too few tools to do it well). Anyway, I read about it again in Fast Company, and I get the feeling that this [...]

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A Visit To Gaming Wonderland

September 3, 2008

The other day I visited computer game giant EA’s Swedish branch DICE. From their fantastic and huge offices, sprinkled with amazing Phillippe Starck designed lamps and furniture, I overlooked Stockholm from 100 meter+ panorama windows, while sipping away on a latte. Am I in the wrong business I wondered? This two floor mega office houses [...]

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Are You a Frustrated Artist Too?

July 9, 2008

Lou Reed plays “Berlin” in Stockholm tonight. Can’t miss that now can I? He also says in an interview that “if he hadn’t been a musician, he would have been an ad man”. Sure, there is obvious and somewhat loathsome irony in his statement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is true. So many [...]

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The New Coldplay Album and its Ancient Business Model

May 19, 2008

I’m sitting here listening to a track from the new Coldplay album Viva La Vida. It’s ok. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve actually pre-ordered the album from iTunes Store. Mainstream as they may be, I’m a bit of a Coldplay fan. Not just that, I’m also a lazy Coldplay fan [...]

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