Spotify Co-Founder "Overnight success takes a long time."
spotify.com
spotify.com
Overall, its great that a company in Spotify's position is attempting to be so open. They're in a very crowded and high risk space--if they can embrace full disclosure, any business can.
However, if you consider limiting a user’s access to music to simply an online flash player unless they pay a subscription fee “open” than I strongly disagree.
The subscription business model is very 20th century. It is already failing for magazines and newspapers, so where is the evidence that it will succeed for music?
Subscriptions are just not effective when there are free (legal or illegal) alternatives to be had.
The answer to piracy is even more openness, not less.
Sky would argue with that, the decline of old broadcast mediums has little to do subscriptions, most of the most successful web applications around use a saas subscription model, I dont see whats 20th century about it, at all.
beats the hell out of trying get people to click on adverts.