Friday, October 22nd 2010
News: The Revolution
Spotify Will “Fix What Napster Broke”
Sean Parker has achieved nerd celeb status by co-founding Napster with Shawn Fanning in 1999 and having a key role in the creation of Facebook, portrayed in The Social Network by a smooth-talking Justin Timberlake.
His new project is Spotify, a streaming music service that has taken Europe by storm but is struggling to launch in the US with required cooperation from the major labels.
The Daily Beast posted this video today of Parker speaking at the Reboot America! Investors Summit, where, for the first time, he announces Spotify’s strategy in plain, candid English:
What I’m trying to do with Spotify is finish what I started with Napster. The distribution model for music remains broken… I’ve dedicated the rest of my career to trying to fix what I broke.
…You have to accept that the war on piracy is a failure.
While the plan is only half the battle, Spotify has a good one. Watch the video to get the big picture.
Parker is hoping for a US launch for Spotify by the end of the year, and he expects it to be a “very disruptive event.”
We can’t wait.
Spotify changed the way i care about music for sure. I (illegally) download much less now that I know I have a legal solution. Funny thing is, I’d gladly pay for Spotify Premium, but I can’t, as I’m not living in an officially supported Spotify country.
I’m using it for over a year now, I’m sure the US launch will be huge. Now if they could get some bands (Tool, Beatles, …) to finally get their songs in…
Streaming services come and go, servers go up and down, just like internet connections.
I’d much rather own my music and access it however I want, whenever I want. I really don’t see what is so cool about Spotify.
Why own everything? If there can be a system where you freely try anything you want, anytime, let’s have it. This is a streaming service that can actually work.
As that TopSpin guy said, it’s unreasonable to imagine that in the future we’ll still need to have all our songs on a hard drive. The Internet is becoming too fast not to take advantage of it. Streaming is the way to go – hard drives will be mere backup solutions. Honestly, if I have iTunes closed and I want to listen to a particular song, I don’t open the software, I go to YouTube and find the song, because it’s 10x faster, and I won’t have that elephant of a program taking up memory.
I’m so sorry you fail to realize how smart the streaming technology can be. Your close-minded view belongs in the past. Have fun living in it.
I’m inclined to agree with you on this. I don’t agree with you on much :)
At one time I had to have every tape…then it was every CD…then it was every song I could get from Napster…then every music video/song I could get from Kazaa…then every discography I could get from P2P. Now I collect Vinyl too.
I currently have almost 21,000 songs on my Itunes. Music hoarders will continue to do what they do. I can still make a playlist with anything I want on it and throw it on my iPod.
Another problem with this guys plan…what about iPhones. He thinks his hook is that when people want to listen to their music portably they will be forced to pay. Not when they can just stream anything on their iPhones.
I still don’t think this is going to work. The real problem that needs to be addressed is that the record companies still crank out abour 90% dogshit. Maybe people would be more willing to pay for stuff if it was better and had more longevity in its listenabilty.
He thinks he has a hook! “We’ve got them by the balls”.
Is he kidding!
Spotify makes it easier to decide if you want to bother downloading the music or not. It is useful for the consumer but the bands still aren’t going to make money off of it.
He actually thinks that is people stream on Spotify and find something they want to listen to on their Ipods that they won’t just go back to P2P sites?
I know he is trying to sell this idea…but he just comes off as a moron.
i disagree. the guy’s no moron. you got netflix? i do. sure, i can download any movie for free, but it’s way easier to just hit a play button and have it instantly streaming. i’m a hoarder and a collector, and i’ll continue to buy vinyl when an album means enough to make me want to physically hold it. and digitally, i’m sure i’ll stick to super high quality mp3 files or flacs in those cases. but there’s a ton of music that i don’t need to download. i would love a free service that allows me to stream them instantly anytime. and when it comes time to take them with me, i’d much prefer to just have a monthly subscription rate that gives me everything (through an interface i already use), rather than have to manually load my phone up with what files i can fit onto it. maybe itunes will compete with spotify on this front. but i ditched my iphone for a droid, and i bet apple’s offering will be ios only.
i’d like to see spotify launch in the us, and itunes/amazon drop the cost of albums down to $1 as rob dickins has suggested.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11547279
then piracy’s advantage of a slight difference in price point will be at the cost of convenience.
Ya I meant it only in reference to that point he made. He’s making it sound like Spotify would coerce people into paying instead of downloading for free. “We’ve got them by the balls”. I don’t see that.
Even if the labels got on side with selling the digital albums for $1…people would still have the choice of $1 and $0…
Shawn Parker even said “You have to accept that the war on piracy is a failure”…I guess I just see it as a war that is over and lost. I don’t know that their is another revolution to be had when it comes to album sales. I think music can still start a revolution though.
It really is tough to estimate the impact Spotify will have when it breaks in the US.
“What I’m trying to do with Spotify”.
Well I’m not really sure what Shawn’s involvement with Spotify, but as far as I know is absolutely none whatsoever.
Anyone got a chance to watch the full interview and understood what’s his actual link to the project?
I’ve been using Spotify from its early beta days and let me tell you that it does not compare to any other streaming service that I’ve used in the past, and believe me when I say that I’ve tried a lot of them.
I could go on and on about its virtues but I don’t think that it’s really worth it. Once you guys (as in US-based) get a chance to use it, you’ll see what it’s all about and make your own opinion.
All I’ll say is that Spotify has not only changed the way that I listen to music but the way I discover it.
he took a chunk of that facebook money and invested it in spotify. i believe he’s on their board of directors.
Oh I see, it does look like he actually invested a fair amount of cash last February.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/index.cfm?newsId=3235298
I wasn’t really finding stuff because his name is normally spelled “Sean” instead of “Shawn”. Not sure if that’s the usual case with that name or something along those lines, because after all English ain’t my first language…
oops, i had spelled his name wrong. parker spells it sean, fanning is shawn.
Bring it on baby! This can not come any sooner!