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Spotify

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Spotify
Original author(s)Spotify AB
Stable release
0.4.9.295.gf1902819 / December 15, 2010; 13 years ago (2010-12-15)[2]
Preview release
Linux: 0.4.9.302.g604b4fb[1] / Linux: December 22, 2010; 13 years ago (2010-12-22)
Written inC++
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, iOS, Linux, Android, Windows Mobile, S60, Telia digital tv, webOS
Available inEnglish, Spanish, French
TypeMusic
LicenseProprietary
Websitehttp://www.spotify.com/

Spotify is a Swedish DRM-based music streaming service offering unlimited streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal.[3][4] It is presently only available in certain parts of Europe, mostly Western European countries. The system is currently accessible using Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and mobile devices such as the iPhone and those running Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile or Palm's HP webOS.[5]

Music can be browsed by artist, album, record label, genre or playlist as well as by direct searches. On desktop clients a link allows the listener to purchase selected material via partner retailers.[6] Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup "Spotify AB", the service has approximately ten million users as of September 15, 2010;[7] about 750,000 of these are paying members.[8]

Users can register either for free accounts supported by visual and radio-style advertising or for paid subscriptions without ads and with a range of extra features such as higher bitrate streams and offline access to music. A "Premium" account is required to use Spotify on mobile devices.[9]

Spotify is currently available only in certain parts of Europe, with paid subscriptions restricted to people with credit/debit cards or PayPal accounts registered in particular countries.[10][11]

History

Spotify has been developed since 2006 by a team at Spotify AB, Stockholm, Sweden. The company Spotify was founded by Daniel Ek, former CTO of Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of TradeDoubler, in Stockholm. The headquarters are located in London and research and development is located in Stockholm.

Spotify was launched for public access on 7 October 2008. While free accounts still remained available by invitation only in order to manage the growth rate of the service, the launch meant that paid subscriptions were opened to everyone. At the same time, Spotify also announced licensing deals with many major music labels.[12] Spotify reported a USD 4.4 million loss for the year of 2008.[13]

The first step towards offering free accounts to the public without invitation was taken on 10 February 2009 when Spotify opened for free registration in the United Kingdom.[14]

Due to a surge in registrations following the release of the Spotify mobile service, Spotify closed its open registrations in the UK on 11 September 2009. The free service is now invitation-only,[15] although it was possible to bypass the invitation system for several months by opening the registration page directly. This loophole has now been closed and the registration page requires an invitation code.[16] Subscriptions may still be purchased without an invitation.

On March 4, 2009, Spotify announced that there had been a security flaw in the Spotify service, by which private account information (including email addresses and Salt password) of members registered prior to 19 December 2008 were potentially exposed.[17][18][19][20]

On January 28, 2010, Symantec anti-virus marked Spotify as a Trojan horse, disabling the software across millions of computers.[21][22]

On May 18, 2010, Spotify announced that two more accounts were available. Spotify Unlimited is the same as Spotify Premium but no mobile and other features. Spotify Open is a reduced feature version of Spotify Free which remains by invitation only.[23]

On September 1, 2010, the World Economic Forum announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.[24]

Roberta Maley[25] also known as "Roberta from Spotify" was the Premium Services Director of Spotify. She is known for her appearance in some Spotify adverts.[26][27]

Features

Catalogue

Users can access approximately 10 million tracks (growing by approximately 10,000 tracks per day) [28] via searching for artists, albums, titles, labels and genres, and gives users access to tracks from many major and independent labels. Some artists have opted not to be added to Spotify at this time.[3][29] Additionally, some artists are missing in certain regions due to licensing restrictions imposed by the record labels. For example, Oasis and Led Zeppelin are currently unavailable to listeners from United Kingdom-based IP addresses. However, cover versions of the music of these artists can be found on Spotify with a full-text search.[30]

Playlists

Users can set up playlists and share them,[31] or edit them together with other users (see collaborative software). For this purpose the playlist link can directly be dragged into an email or an instant messaging window. If the recipient follows the link, the playlist will be downloaded into the Spotify-client of the recipient. Downloaded playlists will then auto-update if the author adds or removes tracks. Like normal links, the playlist links can be used everywhere. The same principle also works for single tracks, which can be used via drag and drop on applications and websites at will.[32] There are a number of websites for sharing of Spotify playlists and songs where users can share, rate and discuss them.[33]

Last.fm integration

The application features Last.fm integration which allows the current track to be "scrobbled" without making use of the Last.fm software.

Radios

Spotify also includes a Radio feature available to unlimited and premium accounts, which creates a random playlist of songs chosen based on specified genres and decades. An Artist Radio feature creates a random playlist of songs by artists related to (and including) the selected artist.

Users from the UK, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands can also buy most tracks, if available, from Spotify's download partner 7digital.[34]

Social features

On April 27, 2010, Spotify gave each user a profile page and allowed users to connect to their friends on Facebook to share playlists and view friends' most listened to artists and tracks.[35]

Local playback

Music can also be imported from either iTunes[36] or directly from local files.[37]

Technical function

The Spotify software is proprietary and uses digital rights management to protect copyright holders.

The contents of each client's cache is summarized in an index which is sent to the Spotify stream hub upon connecting to the service. This index is then used to inform other clients about additional peers they can connect to for fetching streamed data for individual tracks being played. This is accommodated by each client, upon startup, acting as a server listening for incoming connections from other Spotify users, as well as intuitively connecting to other users to exchange cached data as appropriate. There are currently no official details from the developers about how many connections and how much of a user's upstream bandwidth the Spotify client will use when streaming to other users; the Spotify client offers no way for the user to configure this.

Audio streams are in the Vorbis format at q5 (approx ~160 kbit/s),[38] or optional q9 (approx ~320kbit/s)[39] for Premium subscribers, the highest streaming rate for any online service. Spotify boasts having an almost buffer free streaming service.

As of version 0.4.3, it is possible to also play back local MP3 and AAC files, though this does not work in Linux because Spotify is "[...] blocking codecs with the identifier “WINE-MPEG3″ until the Wine system works satisfactorily."[40]

Cache size and location is configurable. 1 GB or more disk space is recommended. {{citation}}: Empty citation (help) On Mac OS X, a G4 processor or higher is required. A user must set up an account in order to use the software. This account can be used on several computers, but music playback is limited to one computer at a time.

Revenue model

Spotify is funded by paid subscriptions, adverts in the Spotify player for non-subscribers and music purchases from partner retailers.

In February 2009, the advertisements for non-paying users were reported as lasting 15 seconds[41] though in May 2009, Neowin reported that the approximate length has increased to 30 seconds.[42] The interval between advertisements is not constant.

A payment of a monthly fee upgrades an account to "Premium" status, which removes advertisements, increases the bitrate to 320 kbps and allows usage of mobile clients for iOS, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile 6.x devices. On December 2, 2009, Spotify launched "Premium ecards" (premium codes), which upgrade an account to "Premium" status for 1, 3 or 6 months.[43]

In March 2009, Spotify began to offer music downloads at £0.99 per track in partnership with the 7digital music store.[44] This feature was moved from a context menu to an explicit "Buy" link in mid-October 2009. {{citation}}: Empty citation (help) In May 2010, Spotify introduced "Unlimited", which allows one month of unlimited, advert-free playback for half the price of Premium; however, it does not include any of Premium's other special features..[45]

In October 2010, Wired reported that Spotify is making more money for labels in Sweden than any other retailer, "online or off".[46]

During 2010 Spotify paid more than 45 million euro to their licensees.[47]

Clients

Desktop versions

Official desktop clients are available for Microsoft Windows (XP or newer) and Mac OS X (10.4 or newer).

A preview of a forthcoming native Linux version for Debian Squeeze and Ubuntu 10.04 was made available on July 12, 2010, currently restricted to Premium and Unlimited subscribers because of a problem with displaying ads.[48] The preview release Linux version is unsupported and there are issues regarding decoding of local music on the Linux platform so there isn't included support for local files.[49] The Windows version can also be run on Linux and FreeBSD using Wine and the Spotify website has a section devoted to this topic.[50]

Mobile versions

A Spotify application for Android was demonstrated at Google I/O on May 28, 2009,[51] and then an iPhone application was officially announced on July 27, 2009.[52] Apple approved the iPhone app one month later on August 27, 2009.[53] The applications allow Premium subscribers to access the full music catalogue, stream music and even listen to music when disconnected using the Offline Mode (which is also available on the desktop version for premiums users). The mobile versions of Spotify were released onto the iTunes App Store and Google's Android Marketplace on Monday September 7, 2009,[54] while a Symbian version was made available on Spotify's website on November 23, 2009.[55] A version for Research in Motion's BlackBerry smartphones is in development.[56] On the 4th of October 2010, Spotify launched an official client for the Windows Mobile platform,[57] supporting many devices running Windows Mobile 6.0 or higher. mySpot was a freeware client that supported Windows Mobile. The mySpot 0.85b application provided access to the Spotify service on the Windows Mobile platform via an intermediate proxy. It required a QVGA, VGA or WVGA device running Windows Mobile Professional (Pocket PC) 6.0 or higher.[citation needed]. It was discontinued and the service disabled several months before the official client was launched by Spotify.[58]

Third-party clients and libraries

A number of third-party (and open source) projects have developed software to access Spotify services. The most prominent of these is Despotify, originally released as a ncurses text-mode client for Linux and Mac OS X. All third party applications and development libraries require a Spotify premium subscription to work.

  • Despotify: [3]
  • Jotify: a Java client.

Despotify

Despotify
Original author(s)#hack.se
Written inC
Operating systemLinux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, MacOSX, Windows
TypeClient, Library
License2-clause BSD license
Websitehttp://despotify.se/

Despotify is a free software client for Spotify. Its authors remain anonymous, but write on their website that they are a group of Swedish computer science researchers and security professionals who "believe strongly in the right to tinker with technology".

The software can be run on most mainstream operating systems with POSIX support and for which there is an ANSI C compiler. It also requires Core Audio, Gstreamer, libao or PulseAudio to be installed. There is also a Despotify-based client, Spot, for jailbroken iPhones.[59]

Spotify have blocked usage of Despotify for 'Free' and 'Open' accounts, but those with a 'Premium' account can use Despotify if they wish. The Despotify team have said that they won't attempt to circumvent the block. The code may however be forked by others to attempt to do this.[60]

The Despotify library has language bindings for Python and Ruby. It depends on OpenSSL, zlib and libvorbis.

Geographic availability

Availability of Spotify across Europe
Map showing the availability of Spotify across Europe as of May 2010.

Spotify is currently only available in Sweden, Spain, Norway, Finland, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Switzerland the Premium service was offered until July 2009, but never the free version. Currently only customers with credit cards issued in one of the above-mentioned launch countries can buy a Premium account.

According to Jonathan Forster of Spotify AB, Spotify was supposed to be launched in the United States before the end of 2010 but has been pushed back for 2011 release.[61]

Accounts and subscriptions

There are currently four Spotify account types. Spotify Open and Spotify Unlimited were launched in May 19, 2010, which thus became the first time Spotify allowed free listening by everyone.[62]

Name Price Ad-free Listening Time Premium Features
Spotify Open Free No 20 hours/month No
Spotify Free Free, but invite-only No Unlimited No
Spotify Unlimited £4.99 or € 4.99 per month Yes Unlimited No
Spotify Premium £9.99 or € 9,99 per month Yes Unlimited Yes [note 1]
  1. ^ Offline mode, mobile device support, enhanced sound quality, exclusive content.

User community

A community of websites, blogs, applications and tools exists to support Spotify.[63] Community resources include Facebook and Last.fm groups, Twitter bots and user forums, tools to display lyrics and services to list and notify users about new releases.[64]

Spotify has also led to an array of editorial content integrating playlists into articles. Popular music website Drowned in Sound is among the most notable examples, running every Friday as 'Spotifriday' which involves a playlist of the site's content during the week shared with readers. {{citation}}: Empty citation (help)

Criticism

Despite its popularity, the service has come under fire for failing to compensate independent artists fairly. Helienne Lindvall of The Guardian reported that "indie labels... as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis." [65] Swedish musician Magnus Uggla wanted to pull his music from the service, stating that after six months he'd only earned "what a mediocre busker could earn in a day".[66] Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet recently reported that record label Junior Racing had only earned NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times.[67]

Luke Lewis of NME points to problems with the Spotify business model, saying he was "convinced the 'free' aspect of Spotify is unsustainable" and that if "Spotify is to have a future, it needs to be a viable business".[68]

See also

References

  1. ^ Previews - Spotify
  2. ^ http://www.spotify.com/se/blog/archives/2010/12/15/v049-iphone/
  3. ^ a b Salmon, Chris (January 16, 2009). "Welcome to nirvana". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-01-28. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  4. ^ "Musiktjänsten Spotify lanseras". Dagens Nyheter. 2008-10-07. Retrieved 2009-04-24.
  5. ^ "Spotify on your Mobile - A world of music in your pocket". Spotify AB. Retrieved 2010-10-25.
  6. ^ "website: Background information". Spotify. 2008-05-18. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  7. ^ "Spotify hits 10 million users and 10 million tracks".
  8. ^ "Spotify: One step closer to the U.S.?".
  9. ^ "Spotify Premium - A world of music - Ad free, mobile, offline". Spotify AB. Retrieved 2010-10-25.
  10. ^ What countries is Spotify available in? Spotify.com FAQs
  11. ^ "Spotify Free - A world of music". Spotify AB. Retrieved 2010-04-16.
  12. ^ We've only just begun! Spotify blog. October 7, 2008.
  13. ^ Spotify doubled its loss last year Swedishwire.com, 17 August 2009
  14. ^ Spotify now available to everyone in the UK. Spotify blog. February 10, 2009.
  15. ^ https://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/09/10/back-to-invites-for-a-while-in-the-uk/
  16. ^ https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
  17. ^ Spotify security notice. Spotify blog. March 4, 2009.
  18. ^ Updated security notice. Spotify blog. March 4, 2009.
  19. ^ Muncaster, Phil (March 5, 2009). Spotify user details compromised in major hack. vnunet.
  20. ^ Despotify, Criticism. Developers of the open source Spotify client Despotify explain about their findings.
  21. ^ http://aka-community.symantec.com/connect/forums/spotify-detected-trojan-horse
  22. ^ http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/spotify_defined_as_a_trojan_by_symantec
  23. ^ [1]
  24. ^ Thirty-One Visionary Companies Selected as Technology Pioneers 2011
  25. ^ Rory Cellan-Jones (2009-02-26). "dot.life: Will Spotify change the music biz?". BBC. Retrieved 2009-08-24.
  26. ^ Yiannopoulos, Milo (2009-04-14). "Roberta from Spotify must go - or I'm heading back to iTunes - Telegraph Blogs". London: Blogs.telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-08-24.
  27. ^ "Tim Walker: 'Like a charity mugger, Roberta from Spotify is secretly after my money' - Features, Gadgets & Tech". London: The Independent. 2009-04-13. Retrieved 2009-08-24.
  28. ^ "Spotify Catalogue Info".
  29. ^ Spotify FAQ: Missing artists, Retrieved on June 15, 2009
  30. ^ Spotify Search for Beatles, An example for music that can be found in Spotify although it is officially not included.
  31. ^ ShareMyPlaylist A popular playlist sharing service. http://sharemyplaylists.com. April 2010.
  32. ^ "FAQ: Share music". Spotify. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  33. ^ "Blog: Sharing is good, share your spotify playlists". Spotify. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
  34. ^ MacLean, Allan (April 11, 2009). "Spotify's free music model – binge until your ears are fat!". Daily Music Guide. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
  35. ^ "Spotify - the next generation".
  36. ^ "Spotify Updates with iTunes Library Importing, Social Integration".
  37. ^ "Spotify local".
  38. ^ "Spotify FAQ". Spotify. Retrieved 2009-03-16.
  39. ^ http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/06/25/bumping-up-the-bitrate/
  40. ^ Spotify under Wine. Spotify.com help pages.
  41. ^ McCormick, Neil (February 24, 2009). Make way for Spotify: a big digital jukebox in the ether. The Daily Telegraph.
  42. ^ Harrison, Elliot (May 2, 2009). Spotify review: The iTunes killer? Neown.net.
  43. ^ Spotify e-cards announced Spotify blog, 2 December 2009
  44. ^ "Expanded "Buy From" feature and a Spanish translation". Retrieved 2009-10-20.
  45. ^ "Spotify now top-tier music revenue source in Sweden".
  46. ^ "Spotify now top-tier music revenue source in Sweden". Retrieved 2010-12-30.
  47. ^ "Spotify has 750 000 paying users". Retrieved 2011-01-30.
  48. ^ Spotify for Linux
  49. ^ A sneak peak into Spotify’s secret labs
  50. ^ "Spotify in Wine". Retrieved 2010-09-13.
  51. ^ Blog: Spotify mobile demo at Google Android I/O. Spotify mobile demo at Google Android I/O Spotify blog. May 28, 2009.
  52. ^ Blog: Spotify for iPhone. Spotify for iPhone Spotify blog. July 27, 2009.
  53. ^ "Spotify app approved for iPhone". BBC News. August 27, 2009. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
  54. ^ http://twitter.com/eldsjal/status/3667069562 Spotify CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Twitter Post
  55. ^ "Spotify for Nokia and more". Spotify blog. November 23, 2009. Retrieved 2009-11-23.
  56. ^ "Spotify Planning BlackBerry Addition In Premium Mobile Tilt". paidContent. 2009-10-27. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
  57. ^ "Spotify Coming to Windows Phone". WM Power User. 2010-10-20. Retrieved 2010-10-20.
  58. ^ "mySpot - Project Ceased". XDA Developers. 2010-10-20. Retrieved 2010-10-20.
  59. ^ [2]
  60. ^ "Update regarding the usage of 'free' or 'daypass' accounts". Despotify. February 26, 2009.
  61. ^ "Interview in Helsingin Sanomat, 12-AUG-2010 (Finnish)".
  62. ^ "Article in Sydsvenskan, May 2010 (Swedish)".
  63. ^ "Unofficial Spotify resources". Spotify. Retrieved 2009-11-06.
  64. ^ "Blog: Spotify Resources". The Pansentient League. Retrieved 2009-05-05.
  65. ^ Lindvall, Helienne (August 17, 2009). "Behind The Music: The real reason the major labels love Spotify". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
  66. ^ "Uggla furious over Spotify and Sony Music". Entertainment Blade. Retrieved 2009-08-13.
  67. ^ "55 100 avspillinger ga 19 kroner". Dagbladet. Retrieved 2009-10-12.
  68. ^ "The Problem With Spotify". NME. Retrieved 2009-09-11.


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