Yesterday we reported that the streaming music store Spotify was finally expanding to the United States.
Spotify, once dubbed “the music piracy killer,” has a large selection of music, availablein Ogg Vorbis format (using q5, appx. 160kbps encoding for its free service and 320kbps for its premium service), with simple-to-use GUI and ad-supported monetization model. Spotify’s ads run less frequently than what you’d expect with commercial radio and you can get rid of the ads completely by signing up to their premium service (that costs €9.99 per month or €0.99 for 24 hour period).
Today, the service has announced a deal with the IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) that will make 2 million new tracks available including audio from Bob Marley, Prodigy and Stephen Fry.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek adds, via TechCrunch: “One of the challenges all music services face is providing a wide range of music for users of all conceivable tastes. We’ve worked hard to add classical, punk and indie content from different sources and this deal with IODA is another leap forward in our mission to provide users with the biggest, most diverse musical catalogue on the planet.”
“Spotify has created a compelling product that redefines the notion of user-friendly and clearly speaks to the desires of the music fan,” says IODA CEO Kevin Arnold.
Result for: commercial radio
It is so rare nowadays to see any cool web-based service to be first available in Europe rather than in the U.S. that Spotify is really worth mentioning even for just that (yes, we’d really, really like to get Hulu..). However, this music streaming service that has been dubbed as the “music piracy killer” and has received almost universal praise from its users, is finally planning to expand to the United States in Q3 or Q4 of this year.
Spotify is a music streaming service with quite massive selection of music, available in Ogg Vorbis format (using q5, appx. 160kbps encoding for its free service and 320kbps for its premium service), with simple-to-use GUI and ad-supported monetization model. Spotify’s ads run less frequently than what you’d expect with commercial radio and you can get rid of the ads completely by signing up to their premium service (that costs €9.99 per month or €0.99 for 24h period).
As the service provides very good quality, legal, audio streaming with rather massive music selection, it has already become extremely popular in the countries where it is available (Spotify is currently available in the UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, Italy and Spain) — partially cutting down the interest towards illegal music downloads. Our Finnish users have been praising the service for couple of months now and most of them seem to be extremely happy with the audio quality as well as with the usability of the product. Spotify has also announced that they’re developing client apps for various mobile platforms, expanding the service beyond PC desktop.
Result for: commercial radio
According to a government-commissioned report, the UK should be moving fully to digital radio beginning in 2017.
The Digital Radio Working Group (DRWG) noted however that the government must “ease current regulatory burdens before digital radio can be widely adopted.” The report found that by 2015 under 50 percent of all UK radio listeners will be using traditional analog radios to listen to FM and AM broadcasts.
The DRWG is made up of representatives from commercial radio, manufacturers, the BBC and the government.
“In the short term we believe the government should consider options for funding to support the reduction of carriage costs,” added the report.
