Spotify seems to be turning the heat on to its competitors, who have an established name in the tech world. The competitor list now, even includes the search engine giant, nosing into the online-music service industry. Owing to the stiff competition, Spotify announced yesterday that they will begin offering Facebook-style apps, which would add various features and functions to its popular online-music service. This will give the company a stand in the market space, to feel differentiate and to stay competitive against the likes of Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc.
the announcement made yesterday noted at a press conference in New York, had an inclusion of presentations of apps from Rolling Stone magazine, CBS Corp.’s music-recommendation service Last.fm and Songkick. This would help the users stay informed about the upcoming concerts by artists they like.
Stockholm-based Spotify’s plans to open its app platform to any developer, shares a similarity with that of Apple which is made for its iPhone app store. One can surely expect more functions to arrive soon.
Interestingly, the apps would be created by third parties, but it would still be subject to approval from Spotify. This was noted by Chief Executive Daniel Ek in an interview, wherein he was eagerly detailing the different route Spotify adopts as compared to the approval process to the one used by Apple’s App Store. Mr. Ek said, “It’s going to be more like the Apple model.” He continued saying, “We want to make sure the quality of the apps we get in is really, really high.”
One can assume that the company has designed the features specifically to attract new users and at the same time to keep current ones using the service for longer periods of time.
Spotify has a big range song list, as the users can play any of the 15 million songs instantly. Users can find new music which they actually want to hear is a major focus of the new features.
Royalty thoughts were not disclosed as Mr. Ek declined to comment on the details of its music-licensing agreements. However, he acknowledged that “the vast majority” of the company’s revenue goes to royalty payments. He said, “We’re proud of that fact.” he continued, “We’re happy to pay out a good chunk of our revenue to the industry.” He even said, “We are the second-largest income generator for the major labels in Europe, after iTunes.” But its interesting to note that Spotify is fast becoming a major financial partner to the recorded-music industry.
The Spotify apps will be free and available to both paying subscribers and users of its free, ad-supported version. The working is even simple as the apps will play only within Spotify’s own software, and won’t export or “syndicate” songs to other programs or Web pages. Mr. Ek said, “You can’t pull music out of Spotify.”
Spotify carries noticeable success as it has become hugely popular in Europe and is earning reputation even in the U.S.
For the costs, for the first six months, users can listen to an unlimited amount of music on a computer, with occasional ads. But after the initial period, free listening is limited to 10 hours a month. A version that runs on iPhones and Android-based smartphones costs $10 a month.