What Spotify represents is a continuation in the changing of the guard in how we get content. Music because of mp3′s was a natural fit for peer to peer technologies back in the late 1990′s and more recently through services like Apple’s iTunes.
Spotify takes streaming to mobile devices a step further. While similar services exist their’ success with a 10 million song list and growing user base has made in one of the music services of note.
At South by Southwest the next generation spotify mobile app was shown running on a device running the Android OS. I bet you Apple and all the major recording labels want this client app to stay far away from the American shores for as long as possible.
The company launched Spotify in 2008 and is now available legally in 6 countries in Europe including France, Norway, Spain and the UK among others. They use peer to peer tech vilified by the music to help improve performance for the people limiting the calls to the main server.
This is becoming more representative of how the Internet has become a soup where all media gets plugged into regardless of whether companies want it to or not. It can’t be stopped or slowed and nimble firms like Spotify are moving faster in these spaces than many others with the ease of development of new mobile platforms increasing their ability to innovate.
Will Spotify make it our of Europe and into the rest of the world is yet to be seen but judging by a membership of 7 million in the 6 countries where it is available with about 325,000 willing to pay a premium for enhanced services there are enough who would at least give it a try.
March 17th, 2010 → 4:12 pm @ Eric Floresca
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