Spotify announced a new API platform for publisher a few days ago, which will give users a lot of great new applications to find and recommend new music. The new version of Spotify with the applications is yet to launch as official release, but if you want to test out the new application you can do so already.
All you need to do is select from these beta clients:
Spotify is about to release their own version of Gift cards that will be in store in time for Christmas.
Gift cards will come in £10, £30 and £50 options. You can redeem the cards for Spotify subscriptions or download tracks.
To redeem a card just head over to our ‘Redeem your code‘ page and enter the PIN number on the back of the card. Starting today Morrisons will be the first store to start selling our gift cards. Spotify will be dding many more retail shops in the near future, stay tuned.
Spotify, can you please add Gapless playback to your music player! This is one key feature that has been missing from Spotify from the very beginning and I really want to see it added very soon.
Daniel Ek (Spotify CEO) took the stage at the F8 Facebook conference yesterday and announced that Spotify has adopted the Facebook Open Graph.
p.s. Facebook Music was a joke and never existed. Most of the top tech blogs really need to check their sources.
Spotify is on a roll at the moment. In only a few weeks they have signed up over 1.4 million US users, with 175,000 paying for the premium service.
This is amazing news for the music industry, because MOG, Rdio and other music streaming services have been having trouble gaining traction.
Spotify is all about conversion rates! The major labels want to see highest possible conversions to the premium service from the free option. In Europe Spotify has a conversion rate of 15% and so far in the US they are seeing 12.5%. Very promising signs for Spotify.
Google Music beta is here and you can request your invite here (only if your in the USA).
So what is Google Music? Google Music is a very basic music locker and music player. Google music allows you to store your music library in the cloud (simply just add your mp3 files) and then play your music on both PC, MAC and Android phones. Google Music is currently free but has an upload capacity of 20,000 songs.
It seems like Google are trying to get into the music industry, but the product itself seems to have a limited shelf life. I really think music streaming of an unlimited library is the way forward. Owning your own mp3 files is very limiting and is going to cost a lot to the consumer in the long run (that is if they dont torrent the files in the first place). It seems like a music subscription service on every possible device is the way the industry is moving. I think it is going to be very difficult for the leading technology companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple) to win in this market, because they will have to get their products on all platforms through very difficult negotiations.
Google Music seems to be exactly the same as the recent Amazon Cloud Drive, so Google will need to match and beat them on price.
Overall, Google Music seems to be like a poor mans Spotify.
It seems as though Spotify is going through some tough times in terms of advertising revenues. Spotify is about to make some big changes to their free music service in Europe and it would first appear this is because of poor advertising returns at present.
Spotify will be limiting their free service to 10 hours of listening per month, down from 20 hours. What’s more, they’ll only be able to play individual tracks five times ever, before they are made greyed out and unplayable.
Upgrading to the Spotify Premium service will obviously remove both of these limitations and provide better quality streaming.
“We’ve got to balance a number of priorities,” says chief content officer Ken Parks. “Chief amongst those priorities is to keep the free service, which is what makes Spotify unique, and what you’re seeing here is a balance of these priorities. We’ve shown that the model is doing extremely well, but as things stand we need to tweak the service to ensure everyone has access to legal music in the long term.”
It seems that these changes are down to rightsholder demands, but I know first hand that this is because of the major labels not liking the free service! Independent record labels and aggregators seem to be onboard with Spotify’s free service, as long as it brings people off illegal services and allows rightholders to generate at least a little royalties.
It has been reported by AIM (Association of Independent Music) that iTunes, Amazon and Spotify, make up 94.4% of all indie digital revenues in the UK. Thus, the other services arent really worth worrying about at the moment.
Alison Wenham, head of the UK-based consortium, pointed to a lopsided logjam. “There are now a series of monopolies and it is jolly hard for anyone else to get a slice of the market”.
In the US there is still no Spotify presence and it seems as though eMusic is the third largest player, but Im sure they will change when Spotify finally enter the US this year.
via RouteNote
It seems like Sonos is now on every controller and has a leading partnerships with up and coming music streaming startups (Spotify and Rdio). Sonos will now launch their own Android client which looks brilliant.
The Sonos Android app has the same features as most other Sonos controllers, but it has been mapped specifically to take advantage of the Android menu keys.
Sonos is bringing the Android client to demo at MWC next month, and the public release is set for the end of March.
Spotify is undoubtedly one of the fastest growing music and entertainment services on the internet today. And as with all good services they have decided that it’s time for more Apps. They recently announced that they would be releasing an App for android devices similar to those for the iPhones.
This would allow users to access their Spotify accounts easily from their android devices. However, they have a competitor.
“I can’t believe it’s not Spotify” has just launched and is taking on a lot of users as they wait for the official app to be released. It packs much of the same features as what we expect in the official version but lacks in one – offline playback. However, the developers say that this may come later if it continues to grow in popularity.
While I can’t see this app lasting as people tend to veer towards products with an official stamp on them, I can definitely see its use at the present. The developers deserve their time in the limelight because they plugged a gap in the market. But soon the official app will push them out with no really effort.
