Since I find myself taking an interest with the ever-changing realm of how music is distributed, I figure it would be apt for my first post to explore the latest phenomenon, Spotify.

Spotify was started up in 2006 by two Swedish entrepreneurs Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, allowing you to stream music on demand anytime, anywhere. There are two options: a free service which has add once every so often, and the premium service which for a fee, allows 24 hour ad-free music streaming, from its massive catalogue.

Its important to note, that as of September, to qualify for the free service you need to be invited by a premium member to use Spotify, or purchase a premium license yourself.

What makes Spotify unlike p2p sharing is that its 100% legal, and the team have gone some length to secure deals with the 4 major labels and countless independent outlets to make one impressive library for its audience. There is some debate whether or not the artists are getting their fair share of royalties from their tracks, but I will leave that issue for another post at a later date and focus on my experiences with the software.

I’ve been using the program since it was made available to the UK back in February. It shares many similarities with the archetypal itunes/realplayer interface, so no need to mention how simple it is to use. The amount of music available is huge, and I am fond of the “similar artists” function. However, Spotify isn’t without its faults.

When it was first brought out the adverts on the free service were roughly once every 10 to 15 minutes, which is bearable. Now it seems to be after every other track and you’ve got to suffer at least a minute and a half of major-label-orientated artist promotion. I guess this was inevitable, and since I’m not a paying customer I can’t complain too much, but its nonetheless frustrating. Furthermore, whilst I approve of the “similar artists” function, it would be fair to say a few months back the lists were a healthy mix of mainstream and independent artists, whereas now it seems to be heavily weighted towards the mainstream artists instead, so its not the best source for discovering new music. Having said that, the radio function is relatively intuitive and fair, if a little ambiguous with its choices. For instance, I find it plays a lot of obscure album tracks which quite frankly, are not going to change the world.

There is no denying Spotify’s popularity, and for the moment it seems to be going from strength to strength. It's Facebook fan page alone has over 230,000 members. Coupled with the recent additions of sharing playlists and Spotify for mobile phones; its popularity is only going to increase. It is good seeing the music industry embracing the Internet as opposed to fighting it- I look forward to seeing if it lasts the test of time.