Spotify, an amazing music service with much room for improvement

Spotify is finishing what Napster started, except in a much more legal and non-sketchy way. For the most part, Spotify is doing it better. And what makes it exciting also makes it just as scary, though mostly for artists and the music industry.

Though there are similar services, Spotify got it right by lowering the barrier with its U.S. launch. Yes, you needed an invitation to get in, but it didn’t have to cost anything. And getting an invite became easier with the abundance of corporate sponsorships Spotify set up. Giving something away for free and then teasing the premium features is a great way to generate interest. As I was in the middle of converting all of my CDs into FLAC files, declaring allegiance to high quality, I was suddenly taken by Spotify’s launch. Hundreds of thousands of songs available with a click or tap? For a musicphile like myself, this was the answer to uninhibited music discovery.

I became an avid user from the very start. I assembled playlists of bands I already like and others with bands I wanted to check out. Because I spend so much time at my computer, it wasn’t a problem that my listening time was confined to that area. But obviously the confinement was only enjoyable to a certain extent: I also listen to music in my car, on walks, while at the beach, you name it. And it just so happened that I was losing the motivation to keep my iPod actively synced. Dealing with duplicate and random files was also becoming a nuisance. So I dived in head first and signed up for a premium Spotify account, and now that I’ve used it for about a week, I have some fairly solid impressions:

1. Instant access is awesome. There are always bands I’ve been meaning to check out, but as a full-time college student who pays his fair share of monthly bills, the budget for buying CD’s has become almost nil. I’m also trying to reduce the amount of things my apartment accumulates, so being able to listen to Liars’ entire discography on my computer or phone has been incredibly beneficial to my listening aspirations. I can also discover other genres that weren’t usually on my radar like electronica an classical. I’ve listened to more Schubert, Glass, and Deadmau5 than I would have in any other situation.
2. The desktop and mobile interfaces need more organization. Spotify’s mobile app is hurting more in this department. I can’t even organize my playlists or libraries by artist, album, or song. The library is listed alphabetically by song, and the playlists are sorted by whatever organization it last had on the computer. This makes finding the right band, album, or song a little frustrating. An option for organization of music should be one of the basic features of any music service or playback software. While you can sort the songs accordingly on the desktop application, you still don’t have any option to just view the list of artists. I suggest the developers take a look at the organization modes on Winamp or any other popular music player, because organization is key!
3. Offline mode is great for those with data limits. As most smartphone providers are starting to enforce bandwidth limits, it’s becoming important for users to budget their data use. With a premium subscription to Spotify, you can sync any of your playlists to your phone or desktop’s memory over a Wi-Fi connection, so you can play songs anywhere without worrying about hitting the data threshold. The offline songs play at 160 kbit/s, which isn’t the best quality, but it’s far from being awful.
4. Facebook integration is also awesome. I’m not stranger to sharing what I’m listening to with the Internet. I’ve been a Last.fm user since 2006. Though I love the stats Last.fm provides (Nearly 6,000 plays of They Might Be Giants? That’s incredible! And freakish!), Spotify’s partnership with Facebook makes the Swedish service an immediate winner. Everyone’s already on Facebook. This was a no-brainer, and it’s a great way to connect musical tastes between friends. When music I’m listening to gets posted on Facebook, friends leaves fun and useful comments more often than not (“Have you listened to this album yet?”).

Sean Parker, creator of Napster and a board member/investor of Spotify, said Spotify is “the answer to piracy,” and it’s fairly obvious as to why with its legality, ease-of-use, and massive database of music. But unfortunately, from what’s been reported, the revenue that trickles down to artists isn’t that much.

To me, it’s evident that Spotify’s model for music delivery is the future, and I can’t really see older methods reaching their prime again. So there’s an important question to ask: how do we support this model that also supports musicians in a fair and adequate way? Because music is becoming so much easier to distribute and promote on the Internet, it only makes sense that the big labels will either cease to exist or shrink to a much more economical size. As more musicians embrace entrepreneurship, the need for middlemen decline. Will the needs of musicians ever meet the needs of listeners? The next few years will provide some interesting insights.