Spotify iPhone App - Worth £9.99 a month? Hell yes!
Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of Spotify, from when I first reviewed it in October last year right up until I reviewed the iPhone App a few weeks back. Since the iPhone and Google Android apps were released yesterday there has been some debate about the whole premium subscription model. I was chatting with a few people on Twitter about it this morning and decided to put down my thoughts and opinion in a blog post.
Before I start, for anybody who doesn’t know, the Spotify mobile apps will only work if you have a Spotify premium account which costs £9.99 per month. The main benefits of a premium account are that you don’t get any ads and of course you can use the Spotify mobile app.
The big benefit of the mobile app itself is it’s offline mode. This allows you to sync up to 3,333 tracks on your mobile device and listen to them when there is no wi-fo or 3G connection.
So why should I pay £9.99 per month to “rent” music that I’ll never own?
Well you pay a similar amount to rent DVD’s from LoveFilm etc don’t you? Frostie argued that people mainly rent DVD’s so they can watch them before they come on TV. Fair point but I also rent them so I don’t have to watch them on TV. I.e. no ad breaks, better quality (esp Blu Ray) and I can watch at my convenience. Don’t forget that Spotify also have premium music content such as albums available before they hit the shops and especially recorded sessions from artists. So why do people accept the DVD rental sector as a model but not music subscription? Possibly because it’s early days and Spotify are arguably the first and certainly most successful company to launch a real viable music subscription service.
The other argument could well be that Spotify was launched as essentially a free product and the shift from free to paid is just a bit too difficult for users to come to terms with. A few of the “customer reviews” - and I use that term loosely in the App store would suggest this is the case:
I’m not paying to rent music. App deleted.
Great idea but cost really puts me off
Rubbish that you need a premium account
And so on.
A fair few of the comments have been along the lines of “why not have the same model as the desktop app? I.e. a free version with ads and a premium version without the ads”. Now while I think this is a good idea in concept, in reality I think it would be almost impossible to run Spotify as a wholly ad-funded business. Let’s not forget that as well as the massive costs of running a streaming music service in numerous countries (I’m no expert here but Spotify’s server bills for streaming must run into millions monthly) there will also be huge R&D costs, staffing, marketing etc etc. Then there’s the royalties that Spotify have to pay to the record labels and artists. As a legal service they have to pay out every single time a track is played on Spotify. Once again, that’s a lot of money. So in my mind, I think it’s impossible to support such huge costs by advertising alone, they need the premium model.
Spotify versus radio
Another popular argument is why pay to “rent” music when you can have radio? Well I don’t think you can compare the two if I’m honest. With radio you either get ads or annoying DJ’s talking over songs. More importantly, you can’t choose the music you want to listen to, you’re stuck with the DJ’s choices. Sound quality is an issue too, and if you don’t have an internet connection or a radio signal then you can’t listen at all.
Why I’m happy to “rent” music from Spotify
Perhaps I’m old school but if I really like music then I go out and but it on CD to keep forever. I’ve never downloaded MP3’s either legally or illegally as I have never seen the point. I know that next time I change PC I’ll just lose them all and I’ve never been one to burn them onto a CD either, too much of a faff. It’s either the proper CD from the record shop or nothing for me.
However, I don’t buy all the music that I like. There’s a ton of music out there that I like, but just not enough to buy. Maybe it’s just 1 or 2 tracks from an album, or a remix of a particular track that I’ve found on Spotify. There are even a lot of tracks on Spotify that you can’t physically buy on CD any more, such as out of print CD singles etc. Maybe I have a short attention span but there’s been very few artists that I’ve come across lately that I’ve had the patience to listen to a whole album of their material. Which is why I create and listen to a lot of playlists. Right now for example, thanks to my site ShareMyPlaylists.com (had to get that in didn’t I?) I’m discovering loads of tracks in the electro genre. This has been a real education for me as I’ve discovered tons and tons of new music, all of which I’ve put into a kick-ass electro playlist (coming soon to ShareMyPlaylists.com, watch this space folks). Some of the tracks are so good that I’ve actually ordered the “real” versions on CD. However I’m very happy to have the rest of them sitting in my Spotify playlists, ready to play whenever I want. Let’s not forget that as long as I hold a free Spotify account I’ll have access to these songs on demand. They’re not going anywhere.
I understand that there will be a lot of people who simply won’t pay £9.99 a month to access music that they can’t own. If you don’t have the need for portable music then that’s fair enough. But to my mind there’s no viable alternative that has the features of Spotify or the depth of music available. I have the iPhone app and it rocks.
What I’m listening to right now: Cutters Feelgood Funk & the odd Beat (great example of some new music I’ve discovered, thanks to Spotify)
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 10:18 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other businesses. I thought it would be fun to blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
I don’t trust Spotify’s business model enough to buy in. It’s too fragile. Too many third parties can ruin the fun. Should the various factions in the music industry decide they don’t want to play any more then Spotify will die. Likewise if the government decide they want to tax music downloads. Or if Apple decide to make iTunes stream things for free (very likely as it happens). Etc etc. If any of those things were to happen after 4 years of subscribing I’d lose the better part of £1000 spent on music.
Even the argument that I’d have enjoyed 4 years of music for my £1000 is a little false … I’d have to buy all the ‘important’ things again. I’d be better off just buying them outright in the first place.
I agree 100% with Kieron’s assessment of the paid music model - I’m also old school and never really got into pirating music.
When I look how much I’ve spent on iTunes to “own” music the last couple of years I reckon £9.99 a month to rent music is good value.
Discovering new music via shared playlists and browsing artists is brilliant - you can do that from 30sec snips.
I also tired of the Spotify ads and the iPhone app was the perfect reason to take the plunge and upgrade to premium. It’s is a significant amount but compared to the cost of buying the music I’ve stashed away in playlists to listen to again is peanuts and nowhere near the amount I used to spend in record shops back in the day.
Go Spotify!
This is going to split people right down the middle I think.
Joe mentions that Spotify is a great tool for discovering new music and sharing playlists etc, and I, along with others, couldn’t agree more. However, no one is questioning this, as this functionality is available FREE without any monthly payments.
What people are questioning is renting music. My Spotify playlists pretty much a mirror my iTunes library. I do discover new music in Spotify, however if I like a track or album, let says Jason Mraz for example, I am more than happy to buy his album and listen to it for the rest of my life at no extra or ongoing cost.
Some may ask whether I’d want to listen to the same tunes years down the line… Prince - Purple Rain is now 25 years old!
I struggle to see the beneift of renting his album over 12 months, at the cost of £9.99 per month, at the end of which I can’t listen to it. However, I can play my purchased version in my car, on my yacht or even in my space capsule if I so wish, as it is on my iPod and therefore is portable and I can even choose to listen to it again in 25 years time at no extra cost.
The rental of DVDs is a completely different scenario. The average person will rent a DVD once, watch it (usually before it comes on TV), enjoy it, and move on to the next movie. Music is a very different experience. The average person will listen to different music at different times throughout their life, and have different memories associated with certain pieces. This isn’t the normal case when it comes to DVDs.
Everyone I work with, uses and loves the free version of spotify but no one has any plans on upgrading to a premium account for their iPhones. Everyone says “Thats what my iPod is for”.
I think Spotify face a stiff challenge ahead of them, not only against Torrents, but against legit puchased downloads too and this could be why Apple we’re not too concerned about releasing/authorising an application that could be seen as a challenge to iTunes.
Kieron I’m with you too. I’ve had Spotify Desktop free for a while, the moment I installed the iPhone app yesterday my card came out immediately, it works well.
It’s a tenner a month … for high quality music (almost) whatever you want, where you want it (desktop and mobile), it’s a no brainer. How many of the payment-objecters would readily splash twenty quid on a round of Europi** in the pub eh?
Like others, I too buy a CD of music (usually second hand via Amazon) I care about .. . Spotify is how I find that music.
I almost never buy downloads, I have some content in my iTunes that came from other “sources” - as I find it nowadays, I’m deleting it, and I’ll buy a CD (and rerip at high bit rate) if I want to keep it. I don’t want music I don’t care about in my library - life’s too short.
As for money - artists have to eat, and why shouldn’t someone creating art that touches thousands (or millions) of people be paid for it? I heard a saying once that I think about a lot - “a cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”.
ps Restricting the iPhone app to paid subscribers was a smart move, I suspect it smoothed the way through the app approval process, and will help convert a lot of people who were on the cusp of moving to paid from free. Hope it helps them build a great business (there maybe still some economic question marks there I think).
While I can see the merit in the various points out there, I don’t see Spotify Premium as simply “renting music”. If there is an album i want, I will go and buy it, either in store or as a download (i also have an emusic subscription).
However, if i just want to hear a particular song, or album, maybe only once - i can. Many times i think “huh, i havent heard that in years” and spotify fills that gap for me. If a song comes on the radio that you dont own, you might enjoy it, but not feel the need to buy it for repeated listens.I dont want to purchase all albums, i dont want to rent all of them for a while, i just want to hear the song, either on its own, or in a playlist with songs i actually do own.
If i could find a radio channel that plays only the music i want, when i want, in the order i want, where i want I would pay for it.
And this is the closest thing I have to that. Some people will always complain that they dont own the music, but some music doenst need to be owned.
(on a note that will only appeal to a smaller demographic, I buy a lot of stuff on vinyl, especially with more bands releasing records. Spotify allows me to listen to the same stuff, on the go, without having to convert it)
I can’t understand why you shouldn’t buy in “because of Spotify’s fragile business model”. You just pay every month. If Spotify dies, which it wont, then just stop paying the bill! Nokia, Sony, Universal and Apple loves Spotify, and they rule the music industry.
Very good point, there are no long term contracts involved you can pull out at anytime
If you bought those 3333 tracks on iTunes, it’d be the same price as 22 years’ worth of Spotify…
I agree with Elias on the business model front. I don’t thik it will end as they fill a gap (whether you like it or not) that isn’t, as of yet, tackled by any other alternative. Like any new business, questions will always be asked, and nothing is a given. It will have to prove its place in a very complex market.
Lets not forget that artists perform concerts and this is where the real money is made. We’re not arguing as to whether we should pay for music and feed the artist, but more of which model/method of hearing the music is prefered.
A no brainer to me - pay and own all the way. Thats my decision which best fits with my lifestyle. Spotify simply offers an alternative solution AFIC. It will certainly be an interesting one to watch over the coming months, thats for sure!
Other side benefits of coughing up
* no more ads for dreadful French rap music in the middle of my Motorhead or JJ Cale.
* save myself the cost of buying a new lappy due to throwing my old one through the window when that bloke comes on with his faux mid-Atlantic accent talking about “spoDify”
Ha.
I’ve been using Spotify on my desktop computer for a few months now and don’t really have an issue hearing the odd advert (and some of them are odd
) between songs, this meant I really had to look at how and when I listen to music at the prospect of using the Spotify iPhone app.
I just couldn’t justify it to myself as I mainly listen to music at my computer and when travelling usually listen to podcasts with my iPhone.
I like elements of the Spotify iPhone app, especially downloading playlists for offline play, however I think that certain limitations of the iPhone such as background play (and potentially the issue of battery usage) also put me off for the few times I may listen to music on the move, ie. when I run out of podcasts to listen to.
I wonder how different the uptake would have been if the app cost £5 to £10 and you could then listen to the standard ad-supported version as well as the premium version - as a casual music listener, I think I’d have bought it straight off knowing I could use it as and when needed.
But there’s the last.fm app for the iPhone that lets you “rent” music for free. I often listen to the music people have tagged with the search I want like “female singer songwriters” and then off it goes - great!
Bath time wouldn’t be the same without. I’ve found so much great music that I wouldn’t have found by following someone else’s playlist. The psuedo random nature of a non-playlist, in my mind, can not be beaten.
Just my 2p.
Great interview with Daniel Ek in the Telegraph today where he talks about the iPhone app and the premium business model: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6156975/Spotify-chief-mobile-music-is-the-future.html
Well I been a long time user of Spotify, actually cause of Kieron telling me about it but I will be honest, I was one of the skin flints who couldn’t give a monkeys about the adverts when listening to the music via my computer as to be honest it’s background working music for me
… However yesterday I blew the dust off the credit card and got it out for downloading music to my iPhone and my justification is simple, I found 20 albums I would have probably have bought and as long as I find 20 more in next 12 months I keep paying my monthly fee, otherwise I stop using it and just buy the albums I will listen to.
Main thing for me is I can find, listen and load it on my phone without the “worry” of paying for every single one and that’s a good thing, and I am doing it legally
Feels like stealing if you ask me but hey if that £10 gets me all these albums and many more each month then I am all for stealing them this way LOL.
I heard about the Spotify App being approved while I was out in Thailand and I immediately had to get to an internet cafe to download it… turns out it was just approved and not released and I looked like a diddy!
Anyways… the spotify pro membership is for me but I can understand why it wouldnt be for others. I’m not fussed about ownership of the songs… as long as I can hear what I want when I want I’m happy. As technology progresses I’m finding more and more I get my music from my phone. My CD Player has a docking station… my car cd player has bluetooth and so I stream from my phone. Therefore its a perfect app for me.
The only problem I have with the app is that it’s a bit barebones! I’m sure thats deliberate to make the updates seem extra special!
As Clarke says… its a legal way to listen to a lot of music. I’ll be honest, I’ve always illegally downloaded my music, so I guess this app has made me legal! (Which can only be a good thing!)
Regarding Spotify, obviously a big differentiator in VFM is how heavily one uses it. Those of us (like me) who work for ourselves in our own self-determined “office” environment can do what we like and play music (of our choosing) all day every day. That’s not so easy for people with proper jobs, working in someone else’s office (how quaint!).
small aside: if you haven’t tried the Genius function in iTunes give it a whizz, it does an excellent job of pulling out tunes I might usually overlook, and appreciating them in a new context. (ah as I type here’s Hendrix’ All Along The Watchtower, it don’t get much better than that…)
I don’t see it as renting music. I see it as paying for a service, or paying for access to a vast library. It’s a bit like paying for premium TV channels, except you have complete control over what you listen to, and when. (And it’s cheaper.)
Here’s my devil’s advocate post #1:
Here’s some shakey maths:
OK, so let’s say you manage to fill your 3,333 quota.
You’ve paid £9.99 per month for 12 months. That’s £120 near enough.
Divide that by 3,333 and you’re at £0.036. That’s the cost per track per year.
Purple Rain has 9 tracks, multiply that by 3.6p for a grand total of 33p. That’s the cost per year to rent the whole of Purple Rain on spotify.
Divide that by £9.99 to give you the total length of time you could rent Purple Rain on Spotify for a tenner: 30 years & 3 months.
Of course this is a false scenario, as any sensible listener would delete Darling Nikki (track 5) almost immediately, saving a massive £1.29 over the 30 year period.
(sorry for the messy formatting above - looks like ‘blockquote’ didn’t work on paragraph 2)
Here’s another quick devil’s advocate comment:
TV license is £142 a year. For that you get to watch a handful of channels with no advertising, and another few with advertising.
You can’t choose the time you watch a program, the inventory is limited, it’s totally unportable, and the quality is (largely) pretty crap.
Compare that to spotify, where you can choose from millions of songs. (afaik) you can swap them out whenever you like too. So for less than the TV license,you can listen to any song you like, any time, any where in the world.
There is no point in comparing the TV Licence to Spotify. It is illegal to own a TV without a TV licence (regardless of use) where you don’t have to buy a Spotify subscription. And yes, TV schedules are dictated by others, but your options are bin your TV or carry on. Spotify offers an additional service for those who want it. Personally I’m not getting involved in it. There are more reports of major labels pulling out of subscription services, and I tried the ad-supported service at a friends, only to find that most of the things I searched for I couldn’t find. A quick web-search turned up the albums for sale. Spotify may well be worth it in the future, but they would need the ENTIRE catelogue of EVERY label to make it worth renting music from.
Just my opinion
Kieron, shouldn’t you disclose within this post that you have close ties to the Spotify founders
Do I? News to me Rob. The Spotify founders are Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. I’ve never met or spoke to Martin and I’ve met Daniel once for 10 minutes. Does that count as “close ties”? If it does then guilty as charged.
BTW this post isn’t of a commercial nature, I’m not selling anything I’m simply sparking a debate as to whether the Spotify iPhone app is worth £9.99 a month. In my opinion, it is. And as this is my blog I’m presuming it’s still OK for me to air my opinions? If not and you work fo some kind of government agency that doesn’t like freedom of speech then please do let me know and I’ll delete 90% of my posts.
I agree with Chris Neale, below. However, Spotify has yet to reach its full potential. The Spotify app will encourage users to pay, this is something I think we all have debated because of the advertising.
Spotify and Spotify app is what we have been waiting for since the pirating boom. It doesn’t abolish the need to pirate because it is not free, but I think the majority of users will understand that the quality and dependability of Spotify is well worth £10 a month.
I fully understand that we will never stop people pirating, but we must understand that it is the majority that will prevail, and as far as I’m concerned everyone I know uses Spotify for free on the computer and the app will give that push towards a paid service.
Its great value and I appreciate the almost comprehensive library.
On another note, I’m a Music Technology graduate and have been trying to come up with a better solution for 6 years and have been beaten on quality of service and price by Spotify time and time again.
Just got this app and I have to say I’m loving it so far. I am new to Spotify and this app is what made me join in the first place.
This is a right step in making Spotify available for iPhone users. So, if it is worth buying for iPhone users it will serve the purpose otherwise not.
I’d have no problem paying £10.00 if I could get Led Zeppelin on Spotify. Alas, I can’t - at least not on the Free version. There are only tributes etc. and I daresay there are other artists whose music is not accessible on Spotify. Wonder if anyone has noticed?
I, like all other users enjoy spotify but it really does just come down to cost. I guess it’s Psychological. £4.99 even £5.99 a month and I would upgrade on the spot but a tenner! a whole tenner for just music it’s a real problem for me. Other comments rightly suggest just how little value you get from things like your TV licence and suggest Spotify is therefore good value. You forget that the £10 you pay to Spotify is in addition to all the regular outgoings we all endure. I think Spotify have missed te point. Surely a reduced monthly subscription would end this debate and give their product the funds to move forward and improve?
I don’t understand why people are complaining, and saying “renting” music is a waste of money, and the fact you will never own the song.
Firstly, why would you need to own the song? If you wanted to stop paying the £9.99 a month, fine. You could still listen to the song, with the only difference being you’d hear 3 minutes of ads per hour of music.
You go to a cinema to watch a film, but you don’t own it. You rent a DVD, but you don’t own it. You stream paid porn (probably some of you anyway…), you don’t own it. There are many other different forms of media that you pay for the service, and don’t actually own - so why should music be much different? In fact, I feel Spotify is ahead of other paid media subscriptions, in the fact that you can take it where you like, and still access it at zero cost.
For me, to have 3,333 tracks at high bitrate quality, on my PC and on my mobile (wherever I go), I think it’s fantastic value for money. The fact that I am also able to search a vast library of songs that is almost guaranteed to have the track I want, is exactly the kind of flexibility I’m after.
I have been using Spotify free pretty much since it came out, and as annoying as the ads were, the free service itself was brilliant. Didn’t jump onto premium until I got my iPhone, and it was the best thing I did. What’s more, I can store far more tracks on my iPhone than uploading music directly, as the offline mode files are smaller than uploading an MP3.
Now Spotify has brought social media to their desktop version, which was a major step forward for them I believe.
I am, and have always been a Spotify fan, and will certainly be using it in the future. I am looking forward (for their sake), to see the day this company starts pulling a well deserved profit.
At the end if the day if u buy songs of iTunes you have them forever and you can listern to them whenever you want. I often play music from a long time ago. Just cause it not new doesn’t mean it not good! So renting music at 9.99 a month is just silly especially as your paying to rent loads of songs that you don’t even want!!! I personaly look at songs on YouTube and then if I like them buy them on iTunes to keep forever to listern to whenever. The offline mode isn’t all that great either because if you buy the song on iTunes and put it on a iPod u can go anywhere and use it still anyway.
But everyone has their own opinions this is just mine
ive just bought the new sony ericsson vivaz mobile phone and only accepts premium spotify….all the music i have ever listened to is on my computer stored in my spotify account…..i dont use my cds anymore infact have not bought one in about 5 years…i hear a song..i get dtraight onto spotify and 9 times out of 10 its there…click…save to playlist and its there…forever (aslong as i have a computer) Paying 10 quid a month seems like a bargin to me……to replace all my spotify music with cd and then transfer to my mobile phone would (a) be a complete nightmare (b) cost me a years wage and (c) in this day and age be ridiculous! im sure something else will be around the corner…just like when people pay 400 quid for and playstation then 6 months later pay another 400 for the updated version….lets sta with the times and make life easier for ourselves. Spotify…i salute you for making my travel and social life easier!!!! im a very lazy person and allowing me to pay for music to listen to it whenever i want is my saviour….remember when we used to pay 20 quid for an album and put it into a portable cd player…goodness me!