Since Spotify launched in the US back in July 2011, I've been a convert and now a devout user of the service. I had managed to get an invite when they launched in private beta and was impressed by the execution of the desktop app. It was slick and simple to use. Of course the most important thing for me was their extensive collection of music. Not only did they have all the popular titles and artists, but they also carried a lot of indie and foreign music. Of special interest to me was their collection of Indian music. Not just Bollywood, but also carnatic, hindustani, pop and regional stuff.
Spotify Desktop App
Having been thoroughly impressed by the collection of songs I was already completely hooked on by the time they launched their paid plans by way of monthly subscriptions. My initial thought was do I need another $10 a month service in addition to my Netflix and Hulu plus accounts. But finally when I was going on a long trip to India, I decided to signup for the service for the month to try it out. The most important consideration was that I already had a bunch of playlists created and sorted by likes. And once I had signed up and enabled offline access, the mobile and desktop apps automatically synced up all my selected 'offline' playlists, so I no longer needed to connected to listen to my songs. And that's it, once you get used to the convenience and ease, there is no going back. Needless to say it was totally worth the money. The Android app was fairly functional but does tend to freeze up once in a while. Although I think the sluggishness is exacerbated by my Droid which has been running slower and slower day by day. They finally launched the Windows Phone 7 app couple of weeks ago and it is sweet piece of software that runs beautifully on the prettiest mobile OS on market.
Windows Phone 7
Android App
I think Spotify now and Netflix before have shown the way forward for the media is going to be distributed in the future. Obviously all the music labels and movie studios, who have for years had their heads in their asses are not going to get this or like it one bit. They will fight futilely to defend their fast eroding turfs. Thankfully the music industry is a little better off than their movie counterparts. And this is mainly due to the bullying power of Apple. iTunes is the single biggest market for music and Apple controls almost 70% of all music sales. Although I hate the iTunes ecosystem and do not want my music to be locked up on Apple's closed system and clunky interface, especially if you don't use an ipod or iphone. Again, I'm not against DRM per se, but I just can't accept a system which doesn't let me carry and access my media in a convenient way across devices. Now for a lot of people, owning their songs is important but I'm willing to give up on that for the convenience of having almost any song I want all at once. And here's my reasoning: most of the times you end up listening to new songs and then eventually you move to the next set of songs. Of course, everyone has their own set of classic songs or collection which they keep going back to. But other than that, out of your 5000 strong list how many does one go back to listen to.
At this point, Rdio is the closest competitor to Spotify. I haven't really had a chance to give it a spin but my initial impression was the song selection was almost the same in terms of American music but the foreign collection was a weaker. In any case I'm still not impressed by Google Music. Now obviously Google is hoping that the Android users would be its natural audience but at this point it is nothing more than a glorified locker. They only have 3 out of the 4 major labels signed up and anything else is just too much to ask of them so early in the game. Now, I'm sure their music content would grow over time but there is no incentive for anyone to rebuild their collection with Google if they're already on iTunes or Amazon. It's not a game changer like Spotify nor does it offer anything significant over its other competitors. It feels very much like a Microsoft product usually when they are way behind the curve and get a weak product out there (Remember zune, the early xbox, winmo 6). Google has struggled with selling media or any kind of subscription models. They are always used to working with the 'Free' model (of course monetized through advertising), that they don't understand how to create a product or service which people would want to pay for. Google Books, Music, Movies, Offers all seem like half-baked products and pretty much lame copies of other runaway hits and successful companies. The Google of erstwhile which created groundbreaking products like Maps and Gmail has been pretty much playing catchup to the news kids on the block and the old powerhouse Apple. I would still be watching Google Music closely but I'm not holding my breath for it to succeed.
Spotify Desktop App
Having been thoroughly impressed by the collection of songs I was already completely hooked on by the time they launched their paid plans by way of monthly subscriptions. My initial thought was do I need another $10 a month service in addition to my Netflix and Hulu plus accounts. But finally when I was going on a long trip to India, I decided to signup for the service for the month to try it out. The most important consideration was that I already had a bunch of playlists created and sorted by likes. And once I had signed up and enabled offline access, the mobile and desktop apps automatically synced up all my selected 'offline' playlists, so I no longer needed to connected to listen to my songs. And that's it, once you get used to the convenience and ease, there is no going back. Needless to say it was totally worth the money. The Android app was fairly functional but does tend to freeze up once in a while. Although I think the sluggishness is exacerbated by my Droid which has been running slower and slower day by day. They finally launched the Windows Phone 7 app couple of weeks ago and it is sweet piece of software that runs beautifully on the prettiest mobile OS on market.
Windows Phone 7
Android App
I think Spotify now and Netflix before have shown the way forward for the media is going to be distributed in the future. Obviously all the music labels and movie studios, who have for years had their heads in their asses are not going to get this or like it one bit. They will fight futilely to defend their fast eroding turfs. Thankfully the music industry is a little better off than their movie counterparts. And this is mainly due to the bullying power of Apple. iTunes is the single biggest market for music and Apple controls almost 70% of all music sales. Although I hate the iTunes ecosystem and do not want my music to be locked up on Apple's closed system and clunky interface, especially if you don't use an ipod or iphone. Again, I'm not against DRM per se, but I just can't accept a system which doesn't let me carry and access my media in a convenient way across devices. Now for a lot of people, owning their songs is important but I'm willing to give up on that for the convenience of having almost any song I want all at once. And here's my reasoning: most of the times you end up listening to new songs and then eventually you move to the next set of songs. Of course, everyone has their own set of classic songs or collection which they keep going back to. But other than that, out of your 5000 strong list how many does one go back to listen to.
At this point, Rdio is the closest competitor to Spotify. I haven't really had a chance to give it a spin but my initial impression was the song selection was almost the same in terms of American music but the foreign collection was a weaker. In any case I'm still not impressed by Google Music. Now obviously Google is hoping that the Android users would be its natural audience but at this point it is nothing more than a glorified locker. They only have 3 out of the 4 major labels signed up and anything else is just too much to ask of them so early in the game. Now, I'm sure their music content would grow over time but there is no incentive for anyone to rebuild their collection with Google if they're already on iTunes or Amazon. It's not a game changer like Spotify nor does it offer anything significant over its other competitors. It feels very much like a Microsoft product usually when they are way behind the curve and get a weak product out there (Remember zune, the early xbox, winmo 6). Google has struggled with selling media or any kind of subscription models. They are always used to working with the 'Free' model (of course monetized through advertising), that they don't understand how to create a product or service which people would want to pay for. Google Books, Music, Movies, Offers all seem like half-baked products and pretty much lame copies of other runaway hits and successful companies. The Google of erstwhile which created groundbreaking products like Maps and Gmail has been pretty much playing catchup to the news kids on the block and the old powerhouse Apple. I would still be watching Google Music closely but I'm not holding my breath for it to succeed.
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