Spotify has 320,000 paying subscribers – and is making money

guardian.co.uk

8 points·whyleym··2 comments

I have been using Spotify for a while now, and generally think it's a great idea, and provides a great service. I was considering subscribing for the access to their mobile service, though one factor recently put me off.

I don't know how widespread this is within their library, but Spotify interests me in the niche music they serve. When I first got the beta, I loved that I could find a few of the more obscure albums of Irish music on there (don't laugh!) However, a few weeks ago, a large selection of these disappeared. I signed in one day, and many of my playlists were next to empty.

I presume that they encountered a rights issue which forced them to withdraw the music. But from an end users point of view, my quality of service was diminished, without prior warning.

Shame really, but the experience was enough to put me off subscribing.

I had that experience of songs disappearing a couple of times too. But it's actually the rights holders who are doing us (and themselves) the disservice here, not Spotify. So I don't think that you'd be rewarding bad service by subscribing; those rights holders who withdrew their music will miss out on the subscription revenue.

I've been using the S60 client for a couple of days now, and it's quite enjoyable. There's a lot that could be improved about the UI, but right now I'm happy for the company to focus on expanding the catalogue (at least judging from their blog, that seems to have been the focus for a while now). (Actually, they should just release a libspotify for ARM dev-package!)

It would be good to have a cheaper option for light users though - I'm considering canceling the subscription just because it's too much money.

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