See Spotify Run

On a Satuday afternoon in January I went out to lunch with a few of my closest friends while their wives and girlfriend were at a baby shower. In between sips of beer, we started talking about new music and I mentioned how much I liked Spotify. In fact, I said the following sentence that I instantly regretted; "If you don't have Spotify, then you don't truly like music." That statement was met with understandable disagreement but to be honest with you, I think it's true.

I realize Spotify is already quite popular and writing this almost feels like saying "I'm telling you guys, personal computers are the wave of the future!", but I feel so strongly about Spotify that I have to spread the word. If you're reading this, it's safe to say that you probably own a computer or use someone's computer on a regular basis. Good, because that's pretty much all you're going to need.

Now, I can really only speak to you as a premium Spotify subscriber because I only had the free version for about two days before realizing that I needed to have this on my iPhone and have it commercial-free (two perks of paying for the premium subscription). They've figured out the perfect price point for the premium subscription, which is currently $9.99 a month, because it feels like a bargain but if it were to increase I'm sure they'd lose some customers. Let's hope they learned from the mistake Netflix made with Qwikster.

The comedian Arj Barker had a very funny bit about why anyone would need an iPod with enough memory to store music that it would take 3 weeks to listen to every song. Well, according to a Spotify it would take over 100 years to listen to every song in their catalogue and I believe it. Every week there are probably a dozen or more new albums released that I get to check out to see if something jumps out at me.

My playlist for the best songs from 2011 has well over 200 songs by 200 different artists. My playlist I am currently building for my favorite songs from albums released this year already has songs from 120 different bands which is one of the reasons why whenever someone tells me "They just don't make good music anymore", I get unreasonably upset.




There has been a lot of debate about how to monetize music. It was again the topic of conversation this week because of an NPR blog post from a 21 year old intern who bragged about having 11,000 songs in her iTunes library while only having paid for 15 CDs in her lifetime. I won't get into a lengthy debate about the ethics of buying music but I believe an artist should be compensated for their work in a way no different from any other profession. I've spent thousands of dollars on iTunes, owned about 1,000 CDs, started a nice vinyl collection over the past couple years and paid for well over 100 concerts. I haven't procured any music in an illegal or unethical way since I started using Spotify.

I'll leave it to Sean Parker (founder of Napster and majority investor of Spotify) to say that Spotify is the future of music. However, a service that offers a both a desktop and mobile version as well as a pay subscription and plays advertisements for users who opt for the free version seems like it might be close. While the business model isn't perfect and there is still some controversy about whether all artists are compensated fairly, the artists are receiving money and are getting exposure to fans that might pay to see them, buy a t-shirt or get their album on vinyl.

If you still aren't using Spotify, I won't say you don't like music (not to your face anyway) but I will encourage you to give it a chance.