Spotify

Type	Private
Founded	2006
Founder(s)	Daniel Ek, Martin Lorentzon
Industry	Music
Website	www.spotify.com
Alexa rank	1,502 (February 2012[update])[1]
Registration	Optional
Available in	Multilingual

Spotify is a Swedish music streaming service offering digitally restricted streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal.^[2][3] Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had approximately ten million users as of 15 September 2010 (2010 -09-15)^[update],^[4] about 2.5 million of whom were paying members.^[5][6] As of May 2012^[update], the service is available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The system is currently accessible using Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Telia Digital-tv, and mobile devices running iOS (iPod/iPhone/iPad), Android, BlackBerry (limited beta release), Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, S60 (Symbian), webOS, Squeezebox, Boxee, Sonos, WD TV, and MeeGo.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]}

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.^[13]

A six month free trial period is activated upon initial login with a Facebook account, where a user can listen to an unlimited amount of music supported by visual and radio-style advertising. After the trial, Spotify will have a listening limit of ten hours per month.^[14] An "Unlimited" subscription removes advertisements and time limits and a "Premium" subscription introduces extra features such as higher bitrate streaming, offline access to music and mobile app access.^[15] An active Facebook account is required to use Spotify, unless the user registered for a Spotify-only account before 22 September 2011. Subscriptions are restricted to people with credit/debit cards or PayPal accounts registered in certain countries.^[16][17]

History[link]

Daniel Ek addressing Spotify staff

Spotify has been developed since 2006 by a team at Spotify AB, Stockholm, Sweden. The company was founded there by Daniel Ek, former CTO of Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of TradeDoubler. The parent company is now Spotify Ltd in London, while research and development remains carried out by Spotify AB in Stockholm.

Spotify in Stockholm

The Spotify application 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 AB also announced licensing deals with many major music labels.^[18] The company reported a $4.4 million loss for the year of 2008.^{[19][clarification needed]}

The first step towards offering free accounts to the public without an invitation was taken on 10 February 2009, when Spotify opened for free registration in the UK.^[20] Due to a surge in registrations following the release of the Spotify mobile service, Spotify closed its open registrations in the UK for part of 2009, and went back to an invitation-only policy.^[21]

In February 2010, Spotify received a small investment from Founders Fund where Sean Parker sits on the board and was recruited to assist Spotify with "winning the labels over in the world's largest music market".^[22]

On 4 March 2009, Spotify announced that there had been a security flaw in the Spotify service, by which private account information (including email addresses and hashed salted passwords) of members registered prior to 19 December 2008 were potentially exposed.^{[23][24][25][26]}

On 28 January 2010, Symantec's antivirus software marked Spotify as a Trojan horse, disabling the software across millions of computers.^[27][28]

On 18 May 2010, Spotify announced that two more types of 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 allows users to listen to up to 20 hours of music each month.^[29] Spotify Free remains by invite only.

On 1 September 2010, the World Economic Forum announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.^[30]

Roberta Maley^[31] also known as "Roberta from Spotify" was the Premium Services Director of Spotify. She is known for her appearance in some Spotify advertisements.^[32][33]

On 25 March 2011, Spotify temporarily removed display advertising from external sources on its open and free accounts due to an attack which used an exploit in Java to place malicious code on the victim's computer.^[34]

On 15 April 2011, Spotify announced via a blog post that they would drastically cut the amount of music a free member could listen to starting on 1 May 2011. The post states that all "Spotify Open" and "Spotify Free" members would be moved onto a new product which limits the amount of streaming to 10 hours per month. In addition, a user can only listen to a track a maximum of five times. "Spotify Unlimited" and "Spotify Premium" members are not affected by this change. New users were exempt from these changes for six months.^[35]

On 17 June 2011, it was reported that Spotify had secured another $100 million of funding and planned to use this to support its US launch.^[36] The new round of funding saw the company valued at US$1 billion.

On 14 July 2011, Spotify launched its US service, which was a major milestone after delays and years of negotiation with the four major record companies.^[37]

On 30 November 2011, Spotify launched Spotify Apps and App Finder to "bring new and exciting music experiences built around your music tastes". App launch partners include Rolling Stone, We Are Hunted, Top10, Songkick, The Guardian, Soundrop and Last.FM

On 9 December 2011, Spotify completely overhauled its Radio service, adding unlimited stations, unlimited skips and a completely new recommendation engine.^[38]

On March 29, 2012, Spotify removed the restriction that limited some Finnish users to five plays for a song. This restriction applied to users with a free account who had this account for longer than six months.^[39] They also announced "continued unlimited free listening" for users in the US.^[40]

Features[link]

Catalog[link]

As of July 2011^[update], the catalog provides access to approximately 15 million songs^[41] 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.^[2][42] Additionally, some artists are missing in certain regions due to licensing restrictions imposed by the record labels. For example, The Beatles are not available because of a digital distribution agreement that is exclusive to iTunes.^[43] The Spotify desktop client allows music to be imported from iTunes,^[44] with the option of syncing with a mobile device.^[45] 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.^[46]

Playlists[link]

Users can set up playlists and share them,^[47] 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.^[48] There are a number of websites for sharing of Spotify playlists and songs where users can share, rate and discuss them.^[49]

Last.fm integration[link]

While Spotify does not automatically create preference-based playlists, it does integrate with Last.fm. This integration allows Spotify users to send songs from Spotify to their Last.fm account and "scrobble" them. Scrobbling via Last.fm integration allows Spotify users to learn which songs or artists they listen to the most. In turn, Spotify users can add a Spotify link to songs in their Last.fm library and send them to the Spotify client.^[50]

Radio[link]

Spotify also includes a Radio feature available to Spotify Free, 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.^[51] Artist Radio channels on Spotify provide background information on the selected artist, ranging from its history to a list of the artist's most famous singles. The Spotify radio function demonstrates distinct differences from its competitor, Pandora. With the Spotify radio function, users are allowed to skip as many tracks as desired, while Pandora places limits on the number of tracks that can be skipped. Additionally, Spotify does not allow users to lend "star ratings" to tracks, thus, limiting the ability to organize the radio function based on user preference.^[52]

Social media integration[link]

Spotify allows registered users to integrate their account with existing Facebook and Twitter accounts. Facebook integration is compulsory for new accounts. Once a user integrates their Spotify account with other social media profiles, they are able to access their friends' favorite music and or playlists.^[53] Additionally, Facebook compatibility allows Spotify users to share music with Facebook friends through the use of the service's inbox. Spotify users are able to send tracks or playlists to friends who, in return, are able to access this music through their Spotify account.^[54] On 26 September 2011, it was announced that all new accounts would require users to access via a Facebook login.^[55] Earlier that week, Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook and a major investor in Spotify, commemorated the integration at a f8 party at which Snoop Dogg, the Killers, and Jane's Addiction performed.^[56]

Applications[link]

Users can access applications integrated in the Spotify desktop client, written in HTML5. Third party software writers can offer features related to music listening such as live sharing of playlists, music reviews, lyrics, concerts. At the time of launch (30 November 2011 in beta mode), the supported applications were Billboard, Fuse, The Guardian, Last.fm, Moodagent, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Songkick, Soundrop, Tunewiki, and We Are Hunted.

Technical information[link]

The Spotify software is proprietary and uses digital rights management (DRM) to prevent unauthorized use of content. Users who agree to Spotify's Terms and Conditions agree to not reverse engineer the application.^[57]

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 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),^[58] or optional q9 (approx. 320kbit/s)^[59] for Premium subscribers. 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 using Wine because Spotify is "[...] blocking codecs with the identifier "WINE-MPEG3″ until the Wine system works satisfactorily."^[60] However, the native Linux version supports local files.

Cache size and location is configurable. 1 GB or more disk space is recommended.  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[link]

Spotify is funded by paid subscriptions, advertisements in the Spotify player for non-subscribers and music purchases from partner retailers. It offers a US$10 per month unlimited subscription, close to the Open Music Model (OMM) estimated economic equilibrium for the recording industry. However, the incorporation of DRM diverges from the OMM, as well as from competitors such as iTunes and Amazon MP3, which have dropped DRM.

In February 2009, the advertisements for non-paying users were reported as lasting 15 seconds^[61] though in May 2009, Neowin reported that the approximate length has increased to 30 seconds.^[62] The interval between advertisements is not constant.

A payment of a monthly fee removes advertisements, removes streaming limits and increases the bitrate to 320 kbit/s in some songs.^[63] It also allows usage of mobile clients for iOS, Android, Symbian, webOS, Windows Mobile 6.x, Windows Phone 7, and most BlackBerry devices (though currently in a limited beta release). On 2 December 2009, Spotify launched "Premium ecards" (premium codes), which upgrade an account to "Premium" status for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months.^[64]

In March 2009, Spotify began to offer music downloads at £0.99 per track in partnership with the 7digital music store.^[65] This feature was moved from a context menu to an explicit "Buy" link in mid-October 2009. For those users who buy large numbers of tracks, one can buy download packages which allow you to pay up front then download a number of tracks within a month.

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.^[66] Spotify reported a loss of €1 million for the year 2010.^{[citation needed]}

Spotify has not yet reported any profits.^{[citation needed]}

In October 2010, Wired reported that Spotify is making more money for labels in Sweden than any other retailer, "online or off".^[66]

During 2010, Spotify paid more than €45 million to their licensors.^[67]

In March 2011, Spotify announced that it has one million paying subscribers across Europe.^[6] In September the number of paying subscribers doubled to two million, or at least €10 million per month of revenue.^[68]

According to About.com, independent musicians can easily distribute their music to Spotify; pay for paid downloads is $.70 USD, pay for streamed songs is on a sliding scale basis determined by the total number of monthly plays an artist receives.^[69]

Clients[link]

Desktop versions[link]

Official desktop clients are available for Microsoft Windows (2000 or newer) and Mac OS X (10.5 or newer). Spotify was withdrawn from use on any Mac OS earlier than OS 10.5 in 2012.^[70]

A preview of a forthcoming native Linux version for Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" and Ubuntu 10.04 was made available on 12 July 2010, formerly restricted to Premium and Unlimited subscribers because of a problem with displaying ads; it is now available to all Spotify users.^[71] The preview release Linux version is unsupported. The Windows version can also be run on Linux and FreeBSD using Wine and the Spotify website has a section devoted to this topic.^[72]

Mobile versions[link]

A Spotify application for Android was demonstrated at Google I/O on 28 May 2009,^[73] and then an iPhone application was officially announced on 27 July 2009.^[74] Apple approved the iPhone app one month later on 27 August 2009.^[75] Spotify for WebOS was made available in the US via the App Catalog in mid July 2011 to coincide with Spotify's US launch. 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 premium users). The mobile versions of Spotify were released onto the iTunes App Store and Google's Android Market on Monday 7 September 2009,^[76] while a Symbian version was made available on Spotify's website on 23 November 2009.^[77] A version for Research in Motion's BlackBerry smartphones is in development,^[78] on the 19th of October 2011, a preview release of the BlackBerry client was released.^[79] On the 4th of October 2010, Spotify launched an official client for the Windows Mobile platform,^[80] 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.^[81] The Windows Phone 7 Spotify app was launched on the 07/11/2011 and is currently on version 1.1. The service is a competitor to the Zune functionality integrated within Windows Phone, both services offer wireless streaming and unlimited listening for a set monthly fee. The app requires a Spotify Premium account to use, although a free 48 hour trial is available.

Third-party clients and libraries[link]

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: [1]
• Jotify: a Java client.

Despotify[link]

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 POSIX-compliant operating systems 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.^[82]

Spotify has 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 would not attempt to circumvent the block. The code may however be forked by others to attempt to do this.^[83]

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

Geographic availability[link]

Map showing the availability of Spotify across Europe, as of March 2012^[update].

Spotify is currently available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In Estonia, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Romania, the Premium service was offered until July 2009, but never the free version. Currently only customers with credit cards issued or with Paypal account in one of the above-mentioned launch countries can buy a Premium account.^[84] Spotify is available in Ireland in a limited fashion via an expired Lucozade promotion: purchasing a bottle of Lucozade would give a chance to win exclusive unlimited access to Spotify for a select number of Irish citizens.

In 2011, Facebook and Spotify held discussions about integrating the music service into Facebook in a significant way once Spotify launched in the United States.^[85] Spotify was launched in the USA on July 14, 2011.^[86]

Spotify launched in Germany on 13 March 2012.^[87]

Spotify launched in Australia and New Zealand on 22 May 2012^[88]

Accounts and subscriptions[link]

As of 2011, there are three Spotify account types. Spotify Open and Spotify Unlimited were launched in 19 May 2010. Spotify Premium has been around since 2008.

1. ^ Available in United States for promotional launch period.
2. ^ Offline mode, mobile device support, enhanced sound quality, exclusive content.

User community[link]

A community of websites, blogs, and 3rd-party applications and tools exists to support Spotify.^[90] 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.^[91] In 2010, Spotify blog The Pansentient League held the first Spotify Community Site Awards, with categories such as Best Playlist Sharing Site, Best News & Music Finder Site and Best Playlist Generator.^[92]

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. 

Criticism[link]

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."^[93] 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".^[94] Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported in 2009 that record label Racing Junior had only earned NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times.^[95] According to an infographic by David McCandless, an independent artist on Spotify would need over four million streams per month to earn US$1,160 (equivalent to working full-time at a minimum wage job).^[96] 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".^[97]

In September 2011, Brooklyn-based independent label Projekt Records entered a public disagreement with Spotify, stating "In the world I want to live in, I envision artists fairly compensated for their creations, because we (the audience) believe in the value of what artists create. The artist's passion, dedication and expression is respected and rewarded. Spotify is NOT a service that does this. Projekt will not be part of this unprincipled concept." ^[98]

In May 2012, British Theatre vocalist and Biffy Clyro touring guitarist Mike Vennart noted, "I’d sooner people stole my work than stream it from [Spotify]. They pay the artists virtually nothing. Literally pennies per month. Yet they make a killing. They’ve forced the sales way down in certain territories, which wouldn’t be so bad if the bands actually got paid."^[99]

Spotify contains digital rights management and is therefore identified by Defective by Design, a Free Software Foundation campaign, as "defective by design." Moreover, for using the service, proprietary software needs to be installed on the user's computer.^[100]

Spotify uses peer to peer transfers to supplement their available bandwidth. This has led to it being banned on large networks where users are not responsible for bandwidth costs.^[101]

See also[link]

	Radio portal
	Software portal

• Rhapsody
• Rdio
• Streaming media
• List of online music databases
• Grooveshark
• WiMP
• fizy
• Playlistify
• MOG
• Last.fm
• Pandora
• Deezer

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

Media related to Spotify at Wikimedia Commons