On Spotify

I’d like to think that it was timed perfectly for my transition from full-time, well-paid worker to hard-up, loan-scrounging student, but it was probably just a coincidence.

The mainstream emergence of Spotify has totally changed the rules for music fans in the last six months or so. Suddenly having a legal, reliable place to find music, old and new, and the ability to listen to whatever you want, on demand, has completely shattered the old model.

In recent years, as legal downloads became an easier and a more, dare I say it, enjoyable method of obtaining new music, I personally warmed to the idea of spending my hard earned (or scrounged) cash on something which doesn’t really exist, at least in the physical sense. Some time ago the idea of paying for something I couldn’t pick up and hold seemed ludicrous but as time has gone on, my attitude has changed.

But now Spotify is here, and I suddenly find that the act of obtaining digital music to listen to – at least indoors – is easy and free (though obviously it comes with the potential peril of having an aural cuntpunt in the form of a shouty radio-style ad in the middle of that album you love so much).

Once again my attitude is changing. If I can listen to new music for free, at least in streaming form, then why would I buy a digital download if the majority of the time spent listening to it, I’m tethered to a broadband connection?

If I really want to cough up a tenner – a sum of money now reduced to units of currency that can be spent on sustenance and alcohol – I want all the mod-cons. A DVD? Go on then. Pretty artwork? That should be a pre-requisite. Extra acoustic versions? Sounds delightful. But for the vast majority, pulling it up on Spotify seems to be enough, and I’m now left with a slightly sore head as to where my allegiances lie.

Similar to my feelings about paying for legal downloads, I’m left wondering which bands warrant a physical purchase, and which don’t. As I say, sometimes it falls down to the bonus content, but other times a sense of completism comes over me and I feel like I just need to own this physical manifestation of something inherently intangible. And I can’t explain it.

Spotify do offer a monthly subscription, but when that only really removes the admittedly infrequent ads, you’re left with another conundrum of paying cash for something you can’t really see or touch.
All I know is that the money I spend on new music has plummeted and I can only hope that Spotify’s business model is built to last as a method of paying the musicians the royalties they deserve.

But spending less money on plastic discs and digital bits of fluff has also meant I can afford to go to more live shows. And that can only be a good thing, for artist and fan alike.

Spotify was inevitable. After the groundwork laid by the likes of Last.fm and Pandora, grooming out of touch record companies to realize the potential of ad-supported on-demand services, someone just needed to come along at the right time.

Others have tried with varying levels of success. But Spotify have somehow managed to get just about everything right. It’s not a verb just yet, but given how solid their solution already is, and how quickly it is being adopted by users, I’d like to think that it is here to stay.

I just can’t imagine what my record collection will look like in twenty years’ time.

Paul Capewell