New service offers music in quantity, not by song

new service offers music in quantity, not of Song

Daniel Ek, 28, co-founder and public face of Spotify, the European Service of digital music, rhythm, the company holds around loftlike Manhattan office on the afternoon of Tuesday, two cell phones constantly buzzing.

After nearly two years of start-stop negotiations with record companies, was finally Spotify is preparing to open in the United States. With less than 48 hours before its scheduled start, but the company had not his last big contract with Warner Music Group closed.

However, Mr. Ek said he was confident that there will be no delay, and that Americans soon be able to try Spotify, which has the world’s most celebrated new digital music service. He was right. On Wednesday afternoon Spotify deal was signed with Warner, and Thursday, as expected, are in the United States.

“We have made it easy to hear, and we made it easier for people to share,” said Ek. “So people tend to have more experience, and tend to find new music and to build large collections who want to bring. And then, but also more money for music.”

If Apple’s iTunes has opened the first phase of digital music as a big business, then other Spotify service and how it could be his future. Instead of selling the sale of individual songs for download, monthly subscription services, access to large catalogs of music, with what a listener wants to listen to streaming songs directly to your computer or mobile phone.

Spotify is in the same three-step plan that will be offered in Europe: a free, ad-supported version, a free ad-Basic version for a month and a premium service for a month, that “adds phone access , higher audio quality and other incentives.

At first, the Spotify free version is available by invitation only, since the current user or company, the thousands who have requested the service on Twitter and on his Web site seen. (Subscriptions are available to pay immediately.)

Speed ​​

Spotify, the company offers a distinct advantage over their American competitors. (the rate can be partially achieved through the use of peer-to-peer with which you play a song almost immediately.) But its core competence has its open access, the company believes may have for new users who attach it to his playlist and social networking features and are attracted to participate to attract.

about the use of open-access, but also worried about record companies and some American analysts, it could, revenue from other sources, such as iTunes cannibalize fear.

“seems to do what , Spotify is to consolidate the perception that the music should be free, “said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at the independent media in the UK.” It’s one thing to download from BitTorrent and chat with their backs to make sure that no virtual They sent a cease-and-warnings. And ‘another to be free streaming music from a service that you know also support labels. “

These concerns Spotify supports negotiations with the labels, and in April, the company has concessions to the concerns of the label” could be made by spending restrictions for the amount of leisure time of European users of the service. For the first six months, a free user account is now limited to 20 hours of music listening to one month, after six months, the limit is 10 hours, and no song can be heard in a month to more than five times. American users subject to the same restrictions.

“At the moment you can only purchase music DRM for 99 cents,” he said in his slight Swedish accent, which is on digital rights management, the system of restrictions imposed by iTunes and other digital storage.

“At the same time I did a file whose cost has no restrictions and had to steal a better sound quality,” he said. “The illegal, pirated product was actually better than what you bought, so our vision is:”.? How to create a better product than piracy, “

A further problem for labels was the size of the royalties Spotify, which in a fraction of a penny per stream, an order of magnitude less calculated than the fees charged for downloading and CD sales will be. ( Download License fees vary, but generally the record labels and artists to around 70 percent of the retail cost of a download that is typical to collect.)

This means that the song streaming will be many times for them more money to to do download, but say the labels that, like Spotify has grown, these flows have started to add up.

In recent years millions of royalties on Spotify, who made the second largestsource the digital inputs in the European record labels after iTunes paid, “Spotify is currently one of our most important partners worldwide digital revenues, and that is to be opened only in seven regions of Europe with them,” according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry

.

said Simon Wheeler , Director of Digital Beggars Group, a group of artists whose independent label is Adele and Vampire Weekend. “I expect them to second or third place this year for us.”

Many music managers and analysts say that they believe is the biggest advantage of Spotify the United States Facebook. The service is already tightly integrated with Facebook, allowing users to easily share songs with friends and play with features such as drag-and-drop playlist .

Spotify is also one of the many digital music service, which declined in talks with Facebook to be a media platform that could instantly raise its profile has been here.

Spotify

from it comment on these talks. But Mr. Ek said that he was not concerned about the ability to build a large scale in the United States.

“We want to make it easier for people,” he said. “If you want to take your music should not be synchronized to 15 different programs or anything else to worry about. It should be as simple as the pressure to play and work. And at the end when you reach this point is if people are willing to pay. People are willing to pay for convenience. “

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