Tag Archives: spotify

Study Shows File Sharing and Music Buying Go Together

by

Are you familiar with Spotify? Well, for the benefit of those who do not know, Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. Spotify will allow you to enjoy the following:

- Search, browse & play millions of tracks.

- Explore & play your friends’ playlists, top artists and tracks.

- Stream over WiFi or 2.5/3G – all your existing playlists are available.

- Offline playlists – play your music without an internet connection.

- On-the-fly sync – every track you add to a playlist appears on mobile and computer.

- What’s New view.

- Receive music from friends via the inbox.

- Starred tracks – tag all your favourites into a special list.

For music lovers out there, this surely isn’t new to you. Perhaps, you have already enjoyed all the above mentioned features. As one writer puts it,  “Spotify’s enormous market share no doubt is related to it being a truly “native” application, and while it is definitely more popular with the under-25 crowd, it still is popular enough to supplant other internet activities including “use of community sites, IM, blog reading and game playing.”

However, Spotify could be a real threat to those music companies or the so called Big Three Labels and other major studios who provides original (yet expensive music CD’s/ DVD’s). This issue hasn’t gone unnoticed in the world of music. It is undeniable that our younger generations now prefer to acquire music by downloading or signing up to a certain music site rather than getting a collection of CD’s that will later on just add clutter to their room.

On the other hand, a keen observer who made a thorough study about this issue showed that file sharing and music buying goes together. According to them  “If we compare file-sharers with those who do not share files, we find that there is no difference in how often they buy CDs. However, a larger percentage of file sharers pay to download individual songs than those who do not share files.” And this is exactly how Spotify operated.

Spotify Experiences An American Tradition

by

After much delay, European music streaming company, Spotify, has finally come to America! It is just in time, too. The streaming music landscape in this country leaves a lot to be desired. They are going to be providing an enormous catalog of music to stream to your computer and mobile devices. They have been in business successfully for 3 years in Europe. With the record labels on board, how could there possibly be any trouble?

Apparently, they have now run into an American tradition: getting sued. PacketVideo, a hold over from the dot com bust of the late ’90′s – early 2000′s, is suing Spotify for infringing on their patents for streaming music. At first blush, it looks like a reasonable claim. They were an early pioneer in the realm of streaming music. However, you must look into the details to see it is a sham. The patent claim is for a “Device for the distribution of music information in digital form.” That sounds a bit broad to me. You can read the rest of the claim over at Techdirt to get the full details of the patent filing.

You know how it goes in this country. The patent laws overwhelmingly support vague, over-broad patents that could potentially cover just about anything. The biggest problem with this is how it affects innovation. People tend to have a problem with getting sued every time they come up with a good idea. Patents that are vague tend to cause problems for everyone. It is as if I came up with the idea for rising dough, so I go out and sue anyone who makes bread. This just proves the old axiom that states: “If you can’t innovate, then litigate.” I wish Spotify good luck, and to be sure to stay out of the U.S. court in the Eastern District of Texas.