TECHTONIC SHIFTS

Music For Free, And It’s Legal

The music service has caught on so quickly in Britain that some analysts are hailing it as a possible rival to Apple's iTunes.

By William Underhill | NEWSWEEK
Published Mar 21, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Mar 30, 2009

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  • Posted By: rpearlston @ 03/28/2009 3:27:37 PM

    It may be free and legal, but the music isn't downloadable and it's not available everywhere, including Canada. Give me a site that's free, and legal, with downloable music and available anywhere, please. And by free, I don't mean a trial offer and I don't mean a monthly subscription fee that then allows me unlimited downloads. I mean a site that doesn't cost me anything except the time to download the music and perhaps their softwear as well.

    Not everyone has money to spend, on such services, nor plastic with which to pay such fees, particularly in these trying economic times, and "music hath charms to sooth the savage beast". AKA, find me a legitimate substitue for the now-dead Spiralfrog (RIP), and I'll tell you you've shown me a winner.

    • Posted By: The Maddest Hatter @ 03/29/2009 5:01:39 PM

      "Give me a site that's free, and legal, with downloable music and available anywhere, please. And by free, I don't mean a trial offer and I don't mean a monthly subscription fee that then allows me unlimited download"

      "Not everyone has money to spend, on such services, nor plastic with which to pay such fees, particularly in these trying economic times, and "music hath charms to sooth the savage beast"

      so you expect the producers, engineers, assistant engineers, studio tech's, studio managers, a&r reps, studio managers etc. to work for free so you dont have to pay for music? well you know what, i happen to be an engineer at a commercial studio, and statements like yours really pi$$ me off.. i work long hard hours, not for the money (i make minimum wage) , but fgr the love of music. your right these are tough times right now, FOR EVERYONE.. i guarantee your doing alot better than me, you only have to deal with a bad economy. i have to deal with the economy, AND, people like you who STEAL my work by downloading illegally. ill give you free and legal music when you do your job for free.. until then, quit complaining that you want a better way to steal from me.

      • Posted By: rpearlston @ 03/30/2009 3:15:28 PM

        You'd lose your bet on how "well" I'm doing. I'm on disability, which means a very, very small and fixed income. If I could buy music, I'd do so, but I shouldn't be punished for being disabled.

        I have never downloaded illegally, and I nevedr would, which is why I emphasized a LEGAL site. Such sites have a philosphy similar to that of web-based e-mail, in which the service is free and legal, because it's paid for by advertisers who have been courted by the service.

        I don't appreciate your insults, nor your presumptions about my intent. Next time, please comment on my actual words, and not the ones that you see fit to have put into my mouth.

    • Posted By: The Maddest Hatter @ 03/29/2009 5:01:07 PM

      "Give me a site that's free, and legal, with downloable music and available anywhere, please. And by free, I don't mean a trial offer and I don't mean a monthly subscription fee that then allows me unlimited download"

      "Not everyone has money to spend, on such services, nor plastic with which to pay such fees, particularly in these trying economic times, and "music hath charms to sooth the savage beast"

      so you expect the producers, engineers, assistant engineers, studio tech's, studio managers, a&r reps, studio managers etc. to work for free so you dont have to pay for music? well you know what, i happen to be an engineer at a commercial studio, and statements like yours really pi$$ me off.. i work long hard hours, not for the money (i make minimum wage) , but fgr the love of music. your right these are tough times right now, FOR EVERYONE.. i guarantee your doing alot better than me, you only have to deal with a bad economy. i have to deal with the economy, AND, people like you who STEAL my work by downloading illegally. ill give you free and legal music when you do your job for free.. until then, quit complaining that you want a better way to steal from me.

    • Posted By: The Maddest Hatter @ 03/29/2009 4:58:55 PM

      "Give me a site that's free, and legal, with downloable music and available anywhere, please. And by free, I don't mean a trial offer and I don't mean a monthly subscription fee that then allows me unlimited download"

      "Not everyone has money to spend, on such services, nor plastic with which to pay such fees, particularly in these trying economic times, and "music hath charms to sooth the savage beast"

      so you expect the producers, engineers, assistant engineers, studio tech's, studio managers, a&r reps, studio managers etc. to work for free so you dont have to pay for music? well you know what, i happen to be an engineer at a commercial studio, and statements like yours really pi$$ me off.. i work long hard hours, not for the money (i make minimum wage) , but fgr the love of music. your right these are tough times right now, FOR EVERYONE.. i guarantee your doing alot better than me, you only have to deal with a bad economy. i have to deal with the economy, AND, people like you who STEAL my work by downloading illegally. ill give you free and legal music when you do your job for free.. until then, quit complaining that you want a better way to steal from me.

  • Posted By: kcwookie @ 03/29/2009 7:30:10 AM

    The market is looking for anything that can compete with Apple. If a dog could hum U2 and a crowd gathers, the event will be published as something that might steal iTunes thunder.

    If I can't take my music with me and lose it if I unsubscribe, then it's nothing I want.

  • Posted By: jameskatt @ 03/29/2009 1:38:01 AM

    How is this different from internet radio?

    Should they pay higher royalties to record companies than internet radio companies in the U.S., they will have an enormously difficult time making surviving in the U.S. Internet radio companies already have a difficult time surviving in the U.S. given the royalties owed to record companies.



  • Posted By: jbelkin @ 03/28/2009 2:34:46 PM

    This will fail. Sign up users for FREE, sure ... but when it comes time to monetize this, they will fail. There are FREE alternatives to this like Pandora or something called the radio that doesn't require you to be chained to a PC ... of course, the labels are happy to sign up - they pay lower royalties when it's streamed - that's why they are big on launching streamed music versus selling you a track outright. They will burn through that $18 MM like butter.

  • Posted By: bmovie @ 03/28/2009 2:01:48 PM

    So how is this better than a radio?

  • Posted By: habes56@hotmail.com @ 03/27/2009 5:07:37 PM

    I can't believe it's taken this long for the music industry to realize this can work for everyone. How long has it been? 10 years?

  • Posted By: rdcastan @ 03/27/2009 3:14:42 PM

    Pandora on the iphone is pretty much the same thing isn't it? I think it's also available for PC and even some Blu Ray Players for free.

    • Posted By: notherdude @ 03/27/2009 3:25:57 PM

      Correct me if I am wrong but with Pandora you can't choose exactly what song you want and play it on demand, correct? At present there are some services that do this, Deezer comes to mind, but they don't do it very well. If you had basically a fantastic streaming service with all the bells and whistles - like Zune or Rhapsody or Napaster - which you didn't have to pay $15 a month for but got for free and all you had to do was listed to an occasional add (Hulu for music basically) this is what I think Spoify is or is becoming. Though I can't use it here in the US it seems.

      • Posted By: fgdad @ 03/27/2009 3:37:06 PM

        what do you mean - Deezer comes to mind, but they don't do it very well - ?

        • Posted By: notherdude @ 03/27/2009 3:57:03 PM

          Deezer is OK but not very polished, since I last checked. Searching and queuing are spotty and the selection is somewhat limited. Polish Deezer up more and it could be great.

        • Posted By: notherdude @ 03/27/2009 3:54:10 PM

  • Posted By: fgdad @ 03/27/2009 3:31:35 PM

    Have you heard of DEEZER ?
    The site offers many services and functionalities, with no ads
    and It's free

  • Posted By: notherdude @ 03/27/2009 3:12:17 PM

    Here is how MS could win the mobile business and the music business from Apple - turn Zune into Spotify and make it easy as heck to use it on a WM smartphone. Apple will probably be slow to respond. Their current model is too profitable and they won't give it up without a fight - time enough for some other deep pocket company to make a Spotify type service viable for the masses. Steaming music from the web is already popular, hence internet radio, the bandwidth required is only about 128k, quite doable on 3g if you have a reasonable connection and even possible at 1x. Of course the phone companies may need to get a piece of the action or they make block it or else charge too much for the bandwidth. Google probably won't do this because they rub Apple's back in some kind of odd alliance but MS could.

  • Posted By: notherdude @ 03/27/2009 2:36:52 PM

    Rhapsody and Napster are pay subscriptions. This is free if you can tolerate occasional ads. That's why this could work. The real question is how will you EASILY get the songs onto a portable music player which has no internet connection without resorting to complicated rippers/converters? Once we are all connected to the cloud with all our portable devices pay music services WILL die. What we need is a Spotify enabled smartphone/PMP.

  • Posted By: chrisnyc75 @ 03/27/2009 1:08:14 PM

    Napster has offered an "all-you-can-stream" music service in the U.S. for years, but it just hasn't caught on the way iTunes has. The industry model will never successfully change until the consumer's notion of having to "own" (or at least "possess") a song in order to hear it is changed. Napster's streaming music service is infinitely better than iTunes, but their marketing that isn't even in the same league.

    As for portable streaming from Spotify, I'd like to hear how they propse to power mobile devices with enough bandwidth and speed to stream music in real-time for sufficiently long periods of time to even propose to replace an MP3 player on any kind of regular basis.

  • Posted By: Bil94134 @ 03/27/2009 12:12:44 PM

    And what about Rhapsody, which has been around for ages?

  • Posted By: musicneutral @ 03/22/2009 9:52:41 PM

    There is a contradiction in Hobbins statement "Why would anyone pirate content or steal if they can get it as they want it for free?" and the hope that "Spotify will even boost conventional sales".

    Also, I think both of those statements have faulty thinking:
    1) People will want to "own" the content and not just stream it. They want portability to carry it on multiple devices, and if Spotify (in this case) goes down people want to know they have a local backup of their favorite music.
    2) Spotify won't substantially boost anyone's album sales. There are already a plethora of outlets to find free legal music (YouTube, Songza, Imeem) and so far there has been more of a correlation in boosting live concert sales rather than album sales

    *also as of this comment, Spotify is not available in Europe (and probably only in the US)

    my music blog: www.musicneutral.com

  • Posted By: Phreakyz @ 03/27/2009 11:51:35 AM

    The "New" Napster has been doing this same thing for years now. Why does it go unmentioned?

  • Posted By: The_Unpolite_European @ 03/24/2009 6:53:45 PM

    musicneutral:"also as of this comment, Spotify is not available in Europe (and probably only in the US)"

    Wikipedia: "Spotify Premium is available in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and the UK. The free version is only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain, and in some of those countries an invitation is required."

    "The service is not currently available in the United States or Canada."

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