It takes 14 pages, but eventually a point is quietly made: Spotify advertising revenue is forecast to rise five percent in 2014. The plain-English premise is this: Spotify has labored successfully to sell advertising in a down economy, so imagine the good times as things recover. Continue Reading
Spotify’s new Spotiamp, in addition to being an homage to Winamp, is a fine, lightweight desktop program for streaming Spotify playlists. Only Spotify Premium members need download it. And by the way, Winamp isn’t dead yet. Behind the scenes, a buyer might be forestalling its announced shutdown. Continue Reading
An unofficial revenue report reveals YouTube as a financial giant. On the content side, YouTube is winning the streaming-music war before launching its rumored music service. Led Zeppelin signed an “exclusive” streaming deal with Spotify, but already has a much larger presence on YouTube. Continue Reading
At yesterday’s Spotify media event, founder Daniel Ek referenced radio frequently, and not uncritically. Spotify’s new free-mobile feature targets the ease of radio, plus the personalization of the Internet age. In use, it resembles Pandora. Does Spotify have a new identity? Continue Reading
“Let’s get to today’s announcements,” said founder Daniel Ek after a quick intro at the Spotify Event in New York today. There were three main headlines, each one certain to make some people happy. It’s about mobile, international, and getting the Led out. Continue Reading
Spotify will announce free mobile access to its listening platform, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources. If true (we think it is), the announcement will probably be part of a Spotify media event in New York on Wednesday of next week. Continue Reading
The “Spotify Debate” has been raised to a new level. It features the same debate points, but now presented as dueling websites. Until now, the war of words and philosophies was waged in sniping blog posts and interview quotes among… Continue Reading
Spotify might not have a big-data operation like Wal-Mart or Target. But 24-million users listened to 4.5-billion hours of music in 2013, and have created one-billion playlists on the platform. So there’s a good flow of metrics. Spotify, which has… Continue Reading
Frances Moore, CEO of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, made some waves and splashed some cool water of long-term thinking on the hot debate over artist payouts from streaming music services. Moore spoke at the ARIA Masterclass in Sydney,… Continue Reading
Worthy of note: Doc Searls, author and one of the first cognescenti bloggers (since 1999), has published a prescription for radio in the Internet era called “How to rescue radio.” In it, Searls seems taken aback by the changing definition… Continue Reading
The “Spotify debate” swirls around one core hypothesis: Musicians don’t get enough value from the service. As such, Spotify is a surrogate for music streaming sites, which promote access instead of ownership, and attention instead of purchases. The debate flared… Continue Reading
Group-listening app Soundrop announced an extension of its platform to Deezer, as a built-in app in the Paris-based music service. Soundrop has been associated with Spotify since 2011, operating within Spotify’s app ecosystem. It also works independently as a mobile… Continue Reading