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Tag: Spotify

  • Google Music Store To Play Well With Google+

    It’s looking almost certain that sometime in the near future, Google will be throwing its hat into the ring of online music sales with the Google Music Store.

    And when they do, you can probably expect it to be highly integrated with another young Google product, Google+.

    The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google Music users will be able to recommend songs to their friends and followers, through the Google+ platform. Google+ users would then have the chance to listen to the track one time before deciding if they wanted to purchase it. The mp3s will probably cost in the neighborhood of $0.99.

    There’s no word on how much this would work like Spotify on Facebook, where it would allow Google+ users to see what their friends are listening to in real time. But integrating a music store into Google+ would be good for Google+ and well as the burgeoning music store itself.

    According to sources close with the matter, Google Music Store will launch within the next two weeks, even though it is probable that they will not have the agreements in place to sell music from at least two of the four major record labels. Rumors that surfaced last week hinted that EMI, the fourth largest label, was the only one close to reaching a deal with Google.

    As you probably remember, the inability to reach agreements with the labels affected Google Music Beta’s launch. Prior to its launch, that service was expected to offer the user the ability to buy music. Instead, it launched without that functionality. Google Music Beta, in its current form, is a giant music locker in the cloud, capable of giving users access to all of their music that they have uploaded themselves.

    But it’s no stretch to imagine a situation where the Google Music Store is linked directly to a user’s Google Music account to provide seamless transfer of purchased songs to their locker.

    Last week, Google SVP of Mobile Any Rubin said that they were close to launching the Google Music Store. He also said that it would have a little “twist” to it, that it would “have a little Google in it, it won’t just be selling 99 cent tracks.”

    Could deep Google+ integration be part of that Google twist?

  • Is Spotify The True Alternative to Music Pirating?

    With the popularity of Spotify growing daily, especially since the Facebook partnership announcement, does this mean the service also represents an honest-to-goodness alternative for would-be music pirates?

    If reports from Sweden are extrapolated out to the rest of Internet-using population, the streaming music service may very well be an effective replacement for those who normally download their music. According to a report from TorrentFreak, ever since the launch of Spotify in Sweden — the country where the service was created — publicly in 2009, music pirating from the Swedish population has dropped by 25 percent. The studies were conducted by the Swedish Music industry, and aside from the noticeable drop in pirating, Spotify’s music service is, as well as others like it, are credited with the pirating decrease.

    In fact, Spotify’s launch is directly attributed to decrease:

    When Spotify opened up to the public early 2009, it took only three months before the number of Spotify users had outgrown the number of music pirates. In the months after that the number of downloaders continued to decline while Spotify expanded its user base.

    Furthermore, the report reveals streaming services like Spotify are the preferred method of accessing music, outgrowing those who download music legally:

    More than 40 percent of the participants in the survey now use a music streaming service, compared to less than 10 percent who say they download music legally.

    TorrentFreak’s report features quotes from Music Sweden’s CEO Elizabet Widlund who also praises Spotify directly for the decrease:

    “The long-term trend is a sharp increase in legal streaming while we see a reduction in illegal file sharing and downloading. When 800,000 Swedes are willing to pay for streaming music, there is clearly a market for more legal players in the digital music market…”

    The idea here is amazingly simple: if you give potential consumers access a vast library of music they can pick and choose from, and you offer a version of that service free of charge, supported largely by non-intrusive ads, these same consumers will be less likely to resort to downloading.

    Granted, there are those who equate supporting the music industry as being akin to supporting the RIAA, and therefore, they are going to download regardless of what kind of service is being offered. Well, except for that make believe service offering legally free downloads to any and everyone, copyrighted music or no. If such a service existed, the anti-RIAA crowd would probably use it.

    Oddly enough, the RIAA and other governing bodies could’ve ended the download craze if they would’ve simply bought Napster and charged $5 a month for unlimited downloads, but I digress.

    Sadly, it took over 10 years for other services to pop up, services that essentially offer the same thing I suggested with Napster. Nevertheless, Spotify is here now, as is Pandora, SoundCloud and Groveshark. As a result of these services, pirating music is decreasing. Who would’ve thought such a thing?

    Certainly not the RIAA.

  • Facebook Partnership Boosts Spotify Sign Ups

    While the fallout from Facebook’s f8 conference focuses directly on privacy and user data gathering, and the requisite backlash once the new features went live, there are some success stories to be told as well.

    Just ask Spotify.

    Since the f8 announcement of the Facebook/Spotify partnership, Spotify is experiencing a great deal of growth for its music service, to the tune of a quarter of a million users a day. Since the announcement, AppData reveals (via PC Magazine) that Spotify’s subscription total increased from 1 million to 4.6 million users.

    Clearly, Facebook users want their music and Spotify is an effective method for receiving it. The service offers three subscription tiers: Free, Unlimited and Premium. It’s not known how many of the new users are choosing the “free Spotify” option, but considering the fact that the Spotify blog issued a post aimed at those who use the free version, it’s easy to imagine many of these Facebook users who are new to Spotify opted for the one that doesn’t cost anything.

    From the post, which details how the free service will go:

    …from today, there’ll be no more Spotify Open. Everybody who listens to Spotify for free will simply have a Spotify account.

    All Spotify accounts come with a 6-month time-limit honeymoon! During this time, there’s no limit to the amount of ad-supported music you can enjoy. After 6 months, you’ll be limited to 10 hours of streaming a month and a 5-play limit for any individual track. Unless, of course, you’ve subscribed by then!

    It’s pretty obvious which direction Spotify is steering its users, and that is directly at the paid versions. For those who haven’t yet joined Spotify, but are curious about doing so, you must have a Facebook account to access the service. That news, however, has not been received with open arms, something a comment from the Spotify blog demonstrates quite well:

    Well, that’s all very well and good, but you’ve lost my trust, so for now I’m keeping my spotify account and facebook account separate. Which is a shame, because I liked seeing other peoples public playlists. It doesn’t help that you’ve done this at the same time as other facebook dirty tricks are coming to light, otherwise I’d be more inclined to try it out. But for now, I’m not getting into anything I can’t get out of. Now, when are we getting the Beatles and the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

    Whatever the backlash, it’s pretty clear based on the growth Spotify has received since the f8 announcement that complaints like the previous do not rule the day, although, maybe they should. But then again, do casual Internet users even worry about privacy; that is, until these issue falls hit closer to home? Doubtful.

  • Spotify on Facebook Means No Invitation Necessary

    Spotify joined Facebook yesterday at f8 to talk about its new Facebook integration. While, there, CEO Daniel Ek reportedly said that Spotfiy will no longer be invite-only in the US, and that unpaid users will get six months of free service. Users will have to use Facebook to bypass the invite system, a Spotify community manager is quoted as saying.

    “Spotify users who connect to Facebook listen to more music on a weekly basis. They also listen to a wider variety of music,” Ek said on stage.

    “We have over 400 million playlists to back that up,” he added. “They’re also more engaged and more than twice as likely to pay for music.”

    Spotfiy talked about the Facebook integration on its blog, providing the following video:

    “You’ll now start seeing new music posts and play buttons all over your newsfeeds,” Ek explains on the blog. “Hit a play button and the music starts. Right there. Spotify fires up to give you a new soundtrack to your social life. Check out your new Music Dashboard and your real-time ticker to discover the music that’s trending with your friends.”

    “This integration with Facebook will help everyone to discover more free music than ever before,” he adds. “Thanks to our unrivaled, truly free service, users can just hit play to enjoy the music, no hassle, no gimmicks; month after month after month.”

  • f8: Music, Video, News, Games, Lifestyle Apps

    After Facebook unveiled the timeline, the company started talking about its new version of the open graph and how it’s going to change apps. They’ve already partnered with a whole bunch.

    More than a dozen developers have worked with Facebook to build social music apps with the new open graph, according to Mark Zuckerberg.

    “Developers are using open graph not only to rethink music, but to rethink the whole music industry, and i think Spottily has done a great job with this,” he said.

    Daneil Ek CEO of Spotify took the mic for a bit. He said, “Spotify users who connect to Facebook listen to more music on a weekly basis. They also listen to a wider variety of music.”

    Daniel Ek

    “We have over 400 million playlists to back that up,” he added. “They’re also more engaged and more than twice as likely to pay for music.”

    “It’s a big day for music and an even bigger day for the music industry,” said Ek. But it’s even a bigger day for users, he added ( or something to that effect).

    Spotify has a post up about its integration.

    This isn’t all about music though. Movies and music are also part of the equation of course. Hulu, Netflix and a bunch others have integrations.

    f8 video partners

    There is also a video timeline. This contains movie and show info that the user has watched. It’s highlights. Not everything.

    Reed Hastings CEO of Netflix took the mic to talk about how much better movie suggestions are from friends and how the new Facebook will help this. It’s already helped him watch Breaking Bad since a friend suggested it, despite the Netflix algorithm having recommended to him for a long time. Unfortunately for U.S. users there are some privacy issues preventing the new integration from being available here. For now. More on the Netlix integration here.

    Reed Hastings

    Then there’s news. You can see all the most popular articles that all your friends are reading across all kinds of publications. Yahoo News is using Open Graph so you can discover more news stories through your friends, Zuckerberg explained, for example.

    A Yahoo spokesperson tells WebProNews, “A milestone in Yahoo!’s social strategy, the company has launched a new way for users to discover and connect with friends around the world’s most popular content on both Yahoo! and Facebook. The Yahoo! News Activity Feature is putting people’s friends front and center to usher in an innovative way of connecting around content socially.”

    More on this is here.

    He looked at a new app for Washington Post (social reader). He showed one for The Daily as well – a Facebook-specific canvas app. More than a dozen developers have worked with Facebook on new social apps for news.

    Of course game apps are all over the new Open Graph. With the new open graph, all kinds of activities from games will appear in the ticker. There are a bunch of game partners who have already taken advantage of this as well.

    f8 game partners

    Finally, there is what they’re calling “Lifestyle apps”. Zuckerberg describes lifestyle apps as apps that let you keep track of and express different things from your life. “I think that this is going to be really big,” he says.

    He showed off a Nike app for running. He then showed the Foodspotting app. He says they worked with “dozens and dozens” of other partners to create other lifestyle apps for the new open graph.

    More on Facebook’s new Open Graph here.

  • Facebook Music Product Expected at f8 in September

    Facebook Music Product Expected at f8 in September

    Last week, Facebook announced that its f8 developer conference will take place on September 22. The company said it would explore topics including: new products, building social apps and open Q&A.

    “We have some exciting product announcements that enable a new class of social apps,” the company said.

    There have been rumors going around for months that Facebook was gearing up to launch a new music offering based on partnerships, so naturally, there has been plenty of speculation that this would be revealed at f8.

    News out today seems to indicate that this is more than just speculation. CNBC reports that a “source with knowledge of the plans” says that they will indeed launch a music platform at f8. CNBC’s Jon Fortt says, “it may be creating an environment where third-party music services such as Pandora, Spotify, MOG and others can offer their wares.”

    Mashable says it has learned that three of its launch partners will be Spotify, MOG and Rdio. It would be surprising if Pandora wasn’t involved, as it was a launch partner for Facebook’s Open Graph at the last f8 conference.

    Facebook’s statement is: “There’s nothing new to announce. Many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we’re constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations.”

    That didn’t say, however, that there won’t be anything to announce on September 22.

  • Spotify Hits 175,000 Paid Members Says Source

    Two things have launched in the past month or so that sent people into a frenzy to acquire invites. First, Google+‘s invite system had the internet community in a virtual freakout with people finding ways to game the system as well as bargaining for invites on eBay. Google eventually lightened up on the restrictions and now Google+ enjoys 25 million users and that number is steadily rising.

    The second service to launch with invites was overseas streaming music service Spotify. The long-awaited U.S. release was met with excitement from the internet community. Basically, the desktop client allows users to stream millions of tracks for free, on demand. You can check a more in-depth run-through of the service here.

    And now, less than a month after debuting in the States, Spotify looks to be expanding its subscriber base at a pretty quick clip.

    According to All Things D and their “source familiar with the company’s operations,” Spotify has 1.4 million U.S. users enrolled in the free trial. Even more importantly, they already have 175,000 subscribers who have opted for the paid plans.

    The paid plans allow for offline music, unlimited play, and mobile capabilities. The most expensive paid plan is $10.

    This makes a conversion rate from free trail to paid subscribers of 12.5%, which is just a little below the 15% rate that Spotify said they had in Europe last year. Spotify has at least 1.6 million paid users in Europe. It’s unsure whether U.S. paid subscriptions will ever reach such a large number. Not only does the U.S. version of Spotify sport a larger music library with its free service, but the competition is strong in the States

    Just to name a few you have Last.fm, Grooveshark, satellite radio like Sirius and Rhapsody.

    But to put it in perspective, Rhapsody has 800,000 paid subscribers. They have been around for almost a decade.

  • Spotify Gets Sean Parker’s Approval…In a Big Way

    Spotify Gets Sean Parker’s Approval…In a Big Way

    It’s always interesting when past voices in a particular area talk about the up and coming, brand new thing. It was interesting when MySpace’s Tom Anderson discussed Google+ shortly after it launched. And today, it is even more interesting to read what Sean Parker has to say about Spotify.

    Of course, you know Justin Timberlake Sean Parker, right? Mr. Napster. I thank Sean Parker every night in my prayers for allowing me to be the cool kid in middle school with all the bitchin’ tunes. Seriously.

    On the American launch day of the previously Euro-limited streaming music service Parker wrote a Facebook note that could be described as “excited.”

    Absolutely beside himself with excitement, more like it.

    Check out his note, in its entirety below –

    My thoughts on Spotify launch…

    Today represents the realization of a dream. For a decade I have waited for a music service that could rekindle my excitement about music by enabling music to be shared freely across the world — all the while empowering artists to reap the economic benefits of selling their music.

    Spotify is the service I have been waiting for.

    Since Napster the recorded music business has been steadily declining and, until now, there has been no light at the end of the tunnel. Today’s historic announcement marks the reversal of this downward trend and the beginning of a return to growth by the recorded music business.

    Spotify promises to get people excited about music again, and the result will be a new golden age of music–more people discovering and listening to more music than ever before. Spotify is removing the barriers to sharing music with friends so that music can move freely and find its fans organically. In this hyper-efficient system great music will find its natural audience. This means that more artists will find success, more fans will discover them, and artists will make more money selling their music than they thought possible. The rusty gears of the record business will turn again.

    Since Spotify takes music viral, listening to music online is finally going to be a social experience. (Just like it’s always been offline.) And by making music social the experience of discovering and listening to new music will be more fun than ever before. While Spotify can be downloaded and used or free on the desktop, users of Spotify will need to purchase content when they want to take music with them “on the go” via their iPod or iPhone. In this sense, Spotify is the answer to piracy: migrating millions of piracy-based music fans to a legitimate platform where their consumption of music can be monetized and the artists who dedicate their lives to creating music can finally get paid.

    So, Parker thinks that Spotify is not only a wonderful, fun, smooth experience, but that it also the savior of the music industry. Parker also hits the point that stood out too me when I first got my hands on Spotify – the social presence. Spotify truly wants its service to be about sharing – from the integration with Facebook and Twitter to the “gifting” of songs to friends.

    But is it the answer to piracy, as Parker says?

    I don’t know about all that.

    Check out my hands-on first look at Spotify here.

    [Hat tip to Tech Crunch]

    [Image Wikipedia]

  • Spotify First Look: American Launch Day Hands-On

    Spotify First Look: American Launch Day Hands-On

    The Spotify fairy has taken it upon herself to leave an invite to her little music service under my pillow, so I feel it is my obligation to see if it lives up to all the hype. At very first glance (less than an hour messing around with it), those Europeans aren’t smitten for nothing.

    After using my code to register for the service (I have the premium level) and filling out my username and password, I was prompted to download the Spotify desktop client. This is where the magic happens. Upon opening the client, you are greeted with a home page that both shows you “What’s New” (today that happens to be Britney Spears’ Femme Fatale) and “Top Lists” which is exactly what it sounds like – top albums and top tracks.

    Of course, I’m not on my home computer, but if I was Spotify would prompt me to import all of my personal music to store in my library. This would include all my files from iTunes, WMP, Winamp, whatever you use to currently keep tracking of all your digital files.

    What Spotify did prompt me to do right away was to connect to Facebook –

    This is one thing in which Spotify seems to want to promote – social sharing. Once connected to Facebook, all of my friends that have also connected via Facebook appeared in a collapsible column called “People” on the right side of the screen. As of now, I only have one Facebook friend that has done this, but I can use her to tell you what this entails.

    The “people” on Spotify are your own personal music buddies. When you click on their “profile,” Spotify shows you their top artists, top songs, and any publicly published playlists that they have created. From their page you can listen to any song as well as subscribe to their created playlists.

    And once you are connected to Facebook (and Twitter), Spotify makes it easy to share your playlists and currently-listened-to tracks with your social media accounts. On the bottom left corner of the client, where your “now playing” track is located, there is a little button that opens up a sharing center. From there you can post your now-playing track for your Facebook and Twitter followers to see –

    The star of Spotify, though, is the music – and it doesn’t disappoint. The search feature allows you to quickly find any song, artist or album for immediate playback and/or starring. Starring a song or album will put it directly into your library.

    Unlike last.fm or Pandora, this isn’t picking a band or song and then hearing a radio channel based around that choice. This is searching for a song and playing it, in its entirety, right then and there. With the premium version, this will never change. With the free version there are some stipulations after about 6 months. Read more about those here.

    Under the “other devices” tab, you are prompted with the graphic below. If Spotify will sync all your mp3s for you and import all your mp3s from your computer, is there truly a need for iTunes anymore (unless you use it a you music store)?

    Final Thoughts

    Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive review, I just got the thing. But I can say that it is quite impressive. The user interface is clean, sleek and simple. It sure does remind me a lot of iTunes, except instead of a music store with 30 second clips I can just listen to the whole song. And store it in my library.

    Of course Grooveshark is an obvious competitor to Spotify, but from what I can tell Spotify’s library is more extensive. And as CNET points out, “while Grooveshark has its fans, their music catalog is limited and its user-uploaded music approach could prevent the kind of direct label relationships Spotify benefits from. The company has also had their mobile app yanked from the iOS catalog, which for many users is a deal-breaker.”

    Some early musical omissions that I’ve found – The Beatles, Arcade Fire, half of Sufjan Steven’s catalog. And of course there will be other music missing from Spotify. But with the massive amount of music that it does provide for free, paired with the social aspect and easy, sleek interface, Spotify seems to be a more than solid service as it makes its American debut.

  • Spotify Launches in the U.S. After Years of Anticipation

    Spotify, the music service that Europeans have had access to for years, while we Americans have only heard about how awesome it supposedly is, has finally come to the U.S.

    The service has over 10 million users in Europe. It was originally launched in Sweden by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon as “a better, more convenient and legal alternative to music piracy.” The company claims that it is now the second single largest source of digital music revenue for record labels in Europe.

    It comes in three packages: Free, Unlimited, and Premium. Free is on an invitation-only basis at this point, but comes with on-demand, buffer-free access to over 15 million songs. It has ads. The Unlimited option costs $4.99 a month, but is ad free on the computer. Premium is $9.99 a month, and all music can be listened to online or offline on a computer, phone, and various other devices. It also comes with enhanced sound quality and access to exclusive content, competitions, and special offers.

    Here are the key features as run down by the company:

    • Spotify gives you on-demand access (with no buffering) to a library of more than 15 million songs. What’s more, you can import the MP3s you already own with just one click, to create a mighty music player. And with Spotify, there’s no need to skip tracks you don’t like. Why? Because you choose the music in the first place.
    • It’s super simple to create and manage all your playlists with Spotify – our users have made and shared over 250 million of them so far. You can also discover the most popular playlists on sites like www.sharemyplaylists.com and www.bbcify.com, or use clever sites like www.spotiseek.com to create playlists of new music based on your favorite artists.
    • Music is made for sharing. Simply drag and drop music to your Spotify friends, or share with them via Facebook, Twitter, email and SMS. See your friends’ top tracks, artists and playlists via their Spotify profiles, subscribe to their playlists and drop tracks into their Spotify inbox. How very sociable.
    • Take your music with you by installing Spotify on your cellphone or iPod Touch. Wirelessly sync your MP3 playlists to listen offline and subscribe to Spotify Premium to combine your own music with access to our catalogue of over 15 million tracks. It’s the perfect music player.

    “We’re launching in partnership with some of the biggest and most pioneering brands in the world, who all want to help us spread the good word of Spotify,” says Ek on the company blog. “Our exclusive launch partners are Coca-Cola and Sprite, Chevrolet, Motorola, Reebok and Sonos. These brands will be launching innovative campaigns in partnership with Spotify in the coming weeks and months.”

    “We believe that music is the most social thing there is and that’s why we’ve built the best social features into Spotify for easy sharing and the ultimate in music discovery,” he added. “Even if you aren’t a total music freak, chances are you have a friend who is and whose taste you admire. I’m looking forward to connecting with some of you guys in the US through Spotify and discovering some cool new tracks.”

    @eldsjal
    Daniel Ek    Spotify has landed in the U.S. Sign up to get your invite now – http://t.co/z4aBg1k via @spotify 58 minutes ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto

    @eldsjal
    Daniel Ek    The power of imagination makes us infinite. 1 hour ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    According to Spotify, over 1.6 million people are paying to subscribe to the service in 7 countries. The U.S. is the eighth country to get it. There are over 15% paying subscribers to active free users.

  • What is Facebook Vibes?

    By now I’m sure you heard of the Skype-powered Facebook video calling that was announced yesterday, if not you can read more here. Essentially you install a small application and it upgrades your regular old Facebook chat to include a few new options, video calling being one of those.

    Recently self pro-claimed geek, Jeff Rose, blogged about something he found while sifting through the code of the recent Facebook download file, which is necessary to run the new video calling feature. His findings are quite interesting, as the code supports two projects: facebook.peep (which is the video calling feature), and something un-announced… facebook.vibes.

    Facebook Vibes?
    Rose elaborated on what he thought this could be:

    “At some point in the future they seem to be prepared to download another app though, called Facebook Vibes. I searched around to see what this is all about, and it seems that this is an unannounced feature that has yet to be released. The vibes app connects with a music download dialog in the page though, so I’m guessing that with this release we are seeing the seeds for Facebook’s upcoming music offering.”

    Could this be the name of the rumored partnership between Facebook and Spotify? It’s interesting timing, as it was just announced that Spotify was coming to the U.S on Wednesday.

    What do you think Facebook Vibes is? Let us know in the comments.

  • Spotify U.S. Launch Coming Soon

    Spotify U.S. Launch Coming Soon

    Ready your headphones, kids. Spotify, the European music-streaming service, has officially announced it’s U.S. launch. No, not specifically, but we do know that it is “coming soon.”

    Go to the spotify.com site and you will be redirected to the coming soon page, where they announce –

    The award-winning music service that’s taken Europe by storm will soon be landing on US shores. Millions of tracks ready to play instantly, on your computer and your phone.

    There you will also find a box where you can sign up for and email invite that will allow you to be one of the first to be able to use the service when it launches for real.

    The American expansion of the Sweden-based service was expected after they scored $100 million in funding and reportedly signed licensing deals with UMG, Sony and EMI among others.

    Spotify currently offers a basic free streaming service, although it has recently been dialed back a little to encourage users to pay for premium packages. The free service still offers millions of tracks on-demand and is ad-supported, as you would expect. One subscription service offers unlimited music and is currently 5 euros ($7.22) a month. The more premium package lets users stream unlimited music to their mobile devices and is about 10 euros ($14.46) a month.

    The paid subscriptions also offer higher bitrate streams and offline music access.

    There’s no doubt that Spotify will have competition from other streaming online music services that have grabbed a corner of the American market. Services like Pandora and Last.fm have pretty fervent fan bases in the states. Not to mention the new cloud-services from Google and Apple that allow you to listen to your own music anywhere.

    But if there is anything to the rumor of a Spotify / Facebook partnership, that could catapult the service into the top spot when it comes to streaming music.

    There’s no denying that Spotify is much loved in Europe. Are you excited about their move to the U.S.? Tell us what you think.

  • Facebook as a Music Destination?

    Facebook as a Music Destination?

    Earlier this week, rumors surfaced, stemming from a Forbes report, indicating that Facebook and Spotify were partnering on a new music service, though the comments from both companies didn’t seem to indicate that their relationship was changing very much.

    According to a report from the New York Times, Facebook is actually in talks with “several online music services” on the development of a tab/widget that would “display a user’s most-played songs and provide an easy way for friends to hear them.” The report cites “two people involved in the discussions”.

    Facebook’s official statement on the subject is, “We’re always looking for better ways to help people discover the most relevant content on Facebook but have nothing to announce.”

    CEO Mark Zuckerberg is quoted as saying this week, “Listening to music is something that people do with their friends. Music, TV, news, books — those types of things I think people just naturally do with their friends. I hope we can play a part in enabling those new companies to get built, and companies that are out there producing this great content to become more social.”

    The earlier Forbes report regarding a Facebook/Spotify partnership indicated that no money would change hands.

    It remains to be seen what other services are involved, but there are certainly opportunities for a variety of services to get more heavily integrated with Facebook, and the online music space continues to grow.

    Google, a company whose rivalry with Facebook also continues to grow, launched Google Music beta a couple weeks ago (still on an invitation-only basis). Amazon has souped up its offerings with the cloud, and mSpot unveiled a very interesting service this week, combining cloud music storage with Internet radio streaming based on the user’s collection – kind of an mSpot meets Pandora.

    Given that Spotify isn’t available in the U.S. it’s good for Facebook users in this country that that’s not the only company involved. We can only speculate that other companies may include Pandora, Last.fm, and Grooveshark, each of which provide free services.

  • Facebook, Spotify Partnership Rumored

    Facebook, Spotify Partnership Rumored

    According to a new report from Forbes, Facebook and Spotify are partnershing on a music service that is already in testing, and it could launch within 2 weeks. According to Facebook and Spotify, there’s nothing going on…officially.

    Clearly, we’ll have to keep any such partnership filed under rumor for the time being.

    Parmy Olon at Forbes says “sources close to the deal” told the publication the two have in fact partnered, it will be launching in as little as two weeks, it will see a Spotify icon added to the left side of the Facebook News Feed, and clicking it will install the service on the desktop in the background, while allowing users to play songs from Spotify simultaneously with friends.

    That same Forbes report also quotes a Spotify spokesperson as saying, “We have a Facebook integration. We’re continuously working with them to make that as good as it can be. But that’s the extent of our relationship.”

    Spotify told Mashable something similar: “We have a good relationship with Facebook in that we have done an integration on Facebook Platform that has been valuable in terms of driving engagement with the Spotify service. We’re continuously working together to make the social experience on Spotify the best it can be and welcome relationships with any company looking to innovate by building more social value into the user experience.”

    Facebook also said there was nothing to announce. While pre-announcement details being kept private is to be expected, Spotify’s responses seem to suggest that any partnership is simply an extension of Spotify’s existing Facebook presence, as opposed to any new joint service.

    Even Olson’s report says that no money would change hands.

    Regardless, it won’t be coming to the U.S. because Spotify still has been unable to get all of the licensing details worked out that would allow its service to legally operate here. That includes any Facebook integration. That could all change in time, but people have been waiting a long time, and meanwhile, plenty of other Internet music services continue to carve out their own spaces in niche.

  • Spotify Launches iTunes Competitor, iPod Support

    European music service Spotify made some big waves today, as it announced support for Apple’s iPod (in addition to iPhone/Android devices), as well as a new download service that would compete directly with iTunes.

    CEO Daniel Ek says on the Spotify blog, “Listening to the music you want to hear, wherever you want it, just got a whole lot simpler – and cheaper.Your playlists are special to you. You’ve spent untold hours putting together your own mix-tape masterpieces on your computer and want to take them with you, but without the trouble of having to buy each track separately, switching music players or breaking the bank? Then look no further. Spotify’s new MP3 download service makes it possible to own your playlists in one easy step. By introducing a range of MP3 bundles, we’ve been able to offer you some of the most competitive prices available – from as little as 50p per song.”

    Of course the U.S. is still waiting for Spotify to make its way over here. Spotify is quite popular in Europe, but has some licensing issues to work out before it can work here. The issues have been lingering for quite some time. Ek said at SXSW last year, that there could be slight changes made to Spotify for an American release if that happens.

    In recent weeks it was reported that Google was in talks with Spotify as a potential partner on its own stalled music service. It’s unclear what’s happening with that at this point, but one thing that is clear is that Google loves to compete directly with Apple.

    Google has also reportedly hit some snags in the licensing department.

    Spotify also launched an app for iPhone and Android to allow users to download their MP3 playlists and sync them to their phones.

  • Who Will Be the Apple of Streaming Music?

    Who Will Be the Apple of Streaming Music?

    Since April, Rhapsody has gained over 100,000 net new subscribers. The total number is upwards of 750,000. The company estimates that there are around 1.5 million US music subscribers, which means that it has captured around half of the market. While mobile has helped fuel their growth, Rhapsody is also speaking with cable television companies.

    They hope that by bundling the service with other amenities like cable TV and high-speed internet, fans will be more prone to accept an extra charge of $10 on their monthly bills for music, as opposed to paying for it separately.

    To put Rhapsody’s subscriber numbers into context, it’s worth noting that Spotify is reported to have over 750,000 paying users too. If Spotify comes stateside in 2011, they will be a direct competitor to Rhapsody, as well as, everyone else.

    "In 2011, someone will become the Apple of streaming — perhaps Apple itself. Consumers are getting closer and closer to accepting renting over owning content," Jason Feinberg writes. "Companies such as MOG, Rdio, Spotify, and Rhapsody are poised to capitalize on this. With good timing, savvy marketing, and clear messaging that succinctly communicates the benefits, a streaming music provider can easily take the leading role in this race."

    It looks like Rhapsody has a running start, but Spotify or Apple could catch up.

    Originally published at hypebot.com

  • Spotify Lead Designer Heads To Facebook

    Spotify, the popular-in-Europe music streaming service that hasn’t quite made it to the U.S., will soon be down a lead designer.  Rasmus Andersson announced today that he’ll be leaving the company in order to join Facebook.

    We’ll note right here that this development doesn’t necessarily mean Facebook intends to launch a new music service.  Andersson indicated on his blog that he’ll be a product designer, not Head of Music Initiatives or something quite so grand.

    Also, Andersson explained that he’s not just interested in music, writing, "For me, working with basic human needs (music, social interaction, etc) in an aspect where peoples lives are being improved, has always been the focus of my professional life, thus both Spotify and now Facebook."

    It’s still significant that Facebook was able to lure Andersson away from Spotify, however.  As successful as Spotify’s been, Andersson expressed even more confidence in his new employer, stating, "I believe Facebook is a very interesting entity which is changing the way we look at the internet in large – I’m thrilled and very happy to become a part of that."

    Anyway, Andersson is supposed to start at Facebook in October after he completes a move to San Francisco.

    Meanwhile, here’s a press image of Spotify’s desktop app so you can get an idea of his sense of style.  And a hat tip goes to Robert Andrews.

  • Spotify on the Future of Music Delivery

    I sat in on the Future of Music Delivery Keynote interview with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and author Eliot Van Buskirk on the last day of SXSW Interactive. Buskirk’s covered the digital media industry for ten years in various publications. This keynote was not nearly as crowded as the Evan Williams one was at the beginning, but definitely kept a lot more people hanging around through its entirety.

    The first part of the keynote was essentially a product demo for Spotify, and I can’t imagine that an hour of that would’ve kept people around (nothing against the service itself), but things got more interesting once it turned to more generalized conversation between the two on stage, about where digital music is going (if Spotify is in fact where it’s gong). 

    Spotify is quite popular in Europe, but has some licensing issues to work out before it can work here in the U.S. Ek says there could be slight changes made to Spotify for an American release if that happens. They are working on the next generation of Spotify, and pre-install deals will likely be key for the service’s continued success. Ek says right now, you can go in and pick up a smartphone, it comes preinstalled with Spotify and you can get three to six months.

    With the exception of the iPhone, most lack really good media players, says Ek. A lot of people use Spotify as a media player on Android/Nokia handsets, he says, and if you’re a BlackBerry user, you want it to work with that too. "We want to enable your library on all of these devices," says Ek. "We want to make music like water."

    Daniel Ek of Spotify at keynote at SXSW on Future of Music Delivery

    One of the more interesting parts of the keynote was when Van Buskirk took a question from someone on Twitter about Spotify’s advertising – something along the lines of if somebody listens to a lot of down-tempo music, will Spotify start filtering ads by mood?

    He says they have targeting, and they continue to learn more about users, and more and more brands are discovering Spotify. "We’ve seen a lot of promising results with advertisers who have included artists," says Ek. He says click through rates have been 3, 4, and 5%. "If you look at traditional metrics, that’s super high."

    As far as the question asked, Ek says, "that’s definitely something that we want to do."

    You can figure out brand preferences, and if people are in the same demographic (like live in same place, listen to the same kind of music), they might get a different ad if they drive a BMW vs. an Audi, he says. He also says the ad model’s "getting better every month."

    On another note, Ek thinks playlists are the new mixtape. With Spotify, among other services, they can be shared with others. Spotify users (of which there are seven million), he says, have a hundred million playlists, and about thirty percent of playlists are albums. "A lot of people say the album is dead," says Ek. "I disagree  – maybe pricing needs to be adjusted…"

    All in all, the future of music delivery, according to Spotify, appears to be that users should be able to access their music libraries from virtually any device (through the cloud), share playlists with friends, and they can subscribe and/or get highly targeted advertising.

    A lot of work remains to be done as far as making this all a universal reality, but in a nutshell (at least with Spotify), this seems to be the vision for what’s to come.

  • Will Google Phone Bring Spotify to the US?

    Even if you haven’t used Spotify, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it. The service’s description goes: "A world of music. Millions of songs on your computer, on your mobile and available offline. Brought to you ad free."

    Spotify on Android DevicePeople in the US have been unable to use the service so far. There has been talk that this may soon change upon the launch of Google’s Nexus One phone, but this may not happen. There was rumored to be a US Spotify app for Google’s Android ready just in time for the launch of the phone. Michael Arrington reports:

    The two companies sketched out a plan where Spotify’s excellent Android application would be build [sic] into the 2.1 version of Android and would launch in the U.S. with the Google Nexus One phone on January 5. The application – which is available in Europe and allows for offline syncing of songs – would give Google a much-needed competitive answer to Apple’s iTunes. The Android could realistically be seen as a media consumption device, like the iPhone, with things like Spotify built into it.

    Google wanted Spotify badly enough that they were willing to cover the label costs for every user of $3 – $4 per month. Spotify would add advertising on top of it, as they do with the free version in Europe, to make additional revenue. Without Google paying those label fees there was no way Spotify could handle the costs of the user flow that 2.1 would provide. Currently, European users must pay for Spotify Premium to use the mobile versions of the service.

    Those in the US waiting to get their hands on Spotify may have to wait though. Arrington says his sources indicate that the deal has likely "gone cold," but he says there is a chance Spotify could still be part of Google’s Nexus One announcement, slated for Tuesday, January 5.

    Such a deal could mean big things for sales of Android devices and really give the iPhone a run for its money. It’s going to be quite interesting to see how the smartphone competition plays out over the course of 2010. This is only the beginning. Even if a deal is not made, Google is clearly interested in the musical side of mobile, and will likely pursue other options.
     

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