OK, saying the music industry is going to die because of Spotify is going a little OTT (and a poor way of referencing American Pie lyrics in the title!) but I think the music industry is going to change beyond recognition from today onward.
I've mentioned Spotify before and I'm still loving it. Just so you know, Spotify is a music streaming service that allows you to listen to 4 million tracks, for free, on your PC or Mac. It pays for itself by inserting short ads every so often which can be a little annoying, but for £9.99 per month (or 99p for 24 hours) you can listen to all the music you like advert free.
Pretty cool, no?
Well, it gets better. For those of you with Android mobiles and iPhones there's a new app that streams over 3G or Wi-Fi meaning you essentially have 4 million tracks on your phone.
Wait, it gets better.
The app also allows playlist synchronisation. What this means is that your phone will download, legally and for free, music on a particular playlist to your handset for offline listening.
Pretty amazing if you ask me. Essentially, you have a scaled-down, streaming iTunes Store on your phone. This is only open to premium users (i.e. £9.99 a month) but is worth the monthly subscription for the offline playlists alone.
So, how will this affect the music industry? Well, I can imagine a time when, services like Spotify, dominate the music industry. Why pay for music you like now but, as your tastes change, may hate in a few years time? Artists are still being payed by these services and piracy will be reduced as everyone has access to all the music they want. In theory a least.
iTunes will have to update or face certain death - if the rumours are true, we should be seeing new iPods any day now and it has been said that many will include the iPhone OS. If every iPod has access to Spotify, why would anyone by music from iTunes? Maybe their own subscription service is in the offing?
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