Spotify
I no longer collect CDs as I don’t have the space in my house and only ever play music from digital devices anyway. I usually get my music by downloading and justify it by paying to see bands whenever possible, putting money in the bands’ and live promoters’ pockets and not record labels’ (who get the bum deal out of that despite having paid for the costs of the recording). If I can’t get it for free or for some reason I would like to contribute to their download sales I will buy the download, but not frequently.
I can only see things improving by more people taking out subscriptions and the trend moving away from illegal downloading. (Having access on smart phones could be the turning point). People have become accustomed to having an unlimited choice of music by typing what they want into a torrent site instead of adding 3 or 12 tracks to their collection when they buy a record every few weeks. If illegal download sites shut down overnight, I’m sure more people would be swayed to hire unlimited music instead of paying the same price for one or two albums.
The current model is a lot of people paying artists nothing for music, some people paying very little to artists through subscriptions, and some people paying a lot more money to individial artists but nothing to the rest. I much prefer the sound of a lot of people (or everybody) each paying very little but collectively paying a fair amount.
I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I like the principal of this, and it’s the most realistic solution to legitimising and monetising digital music. The only concerns I still have are:
1) How well does the software work? (I can get a one-week free trial of Premium so that should tell me.)
2) Is it truly an unlimited selection of music or will I find a lot of music I want to play omitted from their library?
3) Is this my long-term music library solution or is a larger competitor like Apple going to come along and put it out of business?
