How I stopped being afraid and learned to love Spotify – A musicians confession

Posted March 11, 2012

Before I begin, What is Spotify? Here’s their ad.

Is the Swedish company Spotify an evil greedy entity, or does it represent the greatest progress in the music industry since the invention of the CD?

Here’s how I’ve learned to love it.

As a music producer making albums I’m part of this industry and I live off of it so I have a deep interest in this subject.

I grew up in the late 80’s and the golden age of the CDs in the 90’s. I spent most of my free time at the local record shop listening to albums and spent all the little money I had on original LP’s and CDs. When I moved to London in 2010 I couldn’t take my 1,500 CDs with me so I moved them all (or most) to a hard drive the size of about one CD and took that with me. I left all the plastic to my cousin who I knew would give them the love they deserve.
So, how come I’m advocating Spotify, as someone who knows what it means to own hundreds of original albums?
Please remember I’m not endorsed by Spotify (although my band’s music is on it) and if it was Pandora or any other service of that nature I would write the same thing about them.

Here’s why I stopped being afraid and embraced Spotify as my main music player.

1. Physical storage is ‘out’

Moving from physical storage of music (on CDs and LPs) was kind of weird for me at first. I used to DJ and carry around about 12 huge suitcases filled with CDs (so heavy). When I finally let go of the physical storage and moved to a hard drive it was actually a big relief. And so, moving from that little hard drive to streaming music from ‘the cloud’ wasn’t such a big leap. Instead of a hard drive containing thousands of files it’s now all on someone else’s hard drive. Why not then? Why should I care?

2. Bring on some new music
Almost every new album is being released to Spotify now. It’s just the way it is. I’m happy to see new albums added everyday and whenever I want to hear something new It’s already there waiting for me. No download, no need to pay for it to listen to a specific album.

What's new on Spotify

3. Educate yourself on some classics
I’m doing a lot of research now for an upcoming album I’m about to produce. It’s so easy to find all the music I need to hear. It’s all searchable, It’s all there. Saves so much time.

4. Return of the taste makers
I used to get all my recommendations from the guys at the record shop in Jerusalem where I grew up. Now, there are all these playlists and recommended albums by people I trust like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and many others. The amount of music to listen to is just insane.

5. The fee

Yes, it costs about £10 a month to get rid of the ads and listen to all that music without any hassles. I used to pay about £300 a month to buy CDs back in the day so there’s no comparison. It’s dead cheap compared to any other model.

6. The social stuff

If you don’t tweet it you didn’t do it..in Spotify all that sharing and tweeting facebooking etc. is built in. I don’t really use it because I don’t feel the need to, but I know everyone else are and a service that has that social integration is just that much more powerful.

6. User playlists and mobile

When I search for some theme like “The best guitar solos”, “Soul collections” or anything of that sort, I get search results of artists but also of users that made lists of their own. I could just get all that juice right away. If someone took the time to find all the greatest motown records and made a playlist out of them I could just listen to that straight away. Spotify is also available on the iphone and other mobile devices, though I never use that option, maybe because my data limit is so low (Damn O2)..Still it’s something a lot of people are using now.

7. New music, new talent exposed

One great example is the SXSW music conference happening right now in Texas (March 2012). I found huge playlists of all the bands that are attending and performing there. That’s brilliant. I could get updated and discover new music happening right now and I don’t see any easier way of getting it. Just hit play and take it in.

8. No dodgy downloads

I hate those weird download sites where you get more ads and porn than anything useful, plus it always feels like stealing and is never completely safe.

9. If your music is not on it you must have made no music

Fact is, if you’re a musician and want to get your music out there, you simply must be there. You can’t expect anyone these days to pay to listen to your music. They will pay to see you live, they might buy the album if they like it, but at the end of the day, if you’re not on Spotify with your music, you’re either blind, or you’re just too small or don’t have a professional album yet.

10. Move with the times

The future of the music industry is already here. Internet connections are getting faster and faster and it’s no big deal anymore to stream music to anywhere in the world. There’s no turning back from this. It’s not as romantic as digging for Vinyl’s in a record shop and coming home with the physical thing in your hand, but it’s the way forward and we have a chance to embrace and enjoy it.

Some concerns and question marks –

Musicians get paid?

My band’s music is on Spotify. We haven’t got paid for it as far as I know. How is a band supposed to make any money off their recorded music? Are Spotify compensating the artists as they promise? Is the story about Lady Gaga getting a check for £500 for her Paparazzi hit true? They would have to sort these issues out.

Quality

How good is the audio quality? If CDs had a higher audio quality (44.1Khz, 16Bit) than the new streamed audio formats, then what have we gained and how have we advanced as music fans? Aren’t we always looking to improve the quality? On the other hand, few people would probably notice the change between

No Physical has implications

I‘m glad I grew up in a different cultural environment, where the real thing was to hold the physical object in your hand, take it home and listen to it. It’s just a different experience, which would probably be lost for the younger generation. But this is the future generation, the digital age, as A.Dubber claims in his wonderful book, and who are we to argue with the future?

More music, less attention –

When you did buy a physical album, you had so much respect for it. You paid for it(!), you chose it, you carried it home, you had it in front of you and not in the cloud. Now with Spotify, you have tons of music, practically free and it could get confusing. It takes discipline to listen to a whole album nowadays without doing ten other things at the same time (that’s for a different post). So, clicking for your music could make you disregard it, not pay attention to the art of album making that takes so much effort and work and just be drowned in the information.

Licensing

Spotify is only available in a handful of countries right now. Yes, it recently launched in the US, but still most of the world is Spotifyless.

Album sales

When I can listen to a full album on Spotify, there is an option to buy it. Given the fact that it streams in full it may seem like a sort of ‘donation’ to actually buy the album. I mean, it will always be there on Spotify, So why buy it? Again, I’m a music maker myself and would love to sell thousands of albums, but from a consumer point of view, if internet is available like running water and albums remain on Spotify 24/7..why should I spend money on downloading those files to my hard drive? Is there something special about the files? or is it a donation to the artist like I sometimes do when I buy a CD in a live concert? If it’s a donation for the starving artist, then yeah, maybe. Starving musicians are everywhere. Otherwise there’s not much point. Maybe this marks the decline of Itunes as well?

Conclusion – Can’t stop the future

Spotify is the new model for music distribution and there’s not much point of fighting it. It’s a lot of fun if you choose to embrace it and it’s just about taking that leap into the cloud. but I guess we’re doing that leap in other fields, such as documents (Google docs) and email (Gmail, Yahoo). If we’re so online then why not have our music online? The only big question is how the artists are going to survive this shift in consumer’s behavior and how is it going to affect album sales and album productions in the future.