wax&wires

Spotify: Legal P2P?

Though not yet available in the U.S., the new music player Spotify looks to have all the makings necessary to create a new paradigm in music acquisition.

Spotify is a music player that allows users to stream any songs they want, without downloading the songs onto their computer. In that regard, it functions much like Pandora, and the sound quality is comparable. Where it one-ups Pandora is in the fact that’s so much more than a music discovery tool. Spotify lets users select the specific songs they want to hear, create playlists from songs hosted on other users’ computers, and share their playlists with other users. The GUI looks a bit like Songbird, a mashup between iTunes and last.fm.

To keep the streaming efficient, but also allow users to discover new music, Spotify operates by hosting the most popular songs on its own server for fast streaming, and more obscure artists through a P2P streaming system. So essentially, users don’t have to purchase any music, but have access to all the music that any other users are willing to host on their computers. How is this legal?

Spotify users can select from two versions of the program. The first is a free, ad-supported version and the second is a subscription based, but advertisement free model. From that revenue generated, Spotify pays record labels the appropriate royalties. They already have emphatic support from major labels like Universal and EMI, and why not? Labels see this as the first time they can finally tap into some cash from the P2P nightmare that has been crippling them for the past decade.

As far as downsides, Spotify is currently restricted to computer-only use. You cannot load music onto your MP3 player or burn music onto CDs since there are no files actually held on your computer. As wi-fi becomes more readily available, I think Spotify has promise of becoming a strong network music player. We’ve seen leaps and bounds made in that direction since the advent of 3G. The Pandora application uses the same streaming music technology, and works great when I’m taking long drives all the way up California.

The other hindrance I see is bandwidth. As Spotify becomes more and more popular, how will they keep the streaming quality high without a superior net infrastructure? This might be why they have kept it restricted to particular countries for now.

All in all, I like the idea. Get the labels and artists paid, but keep the music accessible. You can check out a video from the Spotify site here.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 5:27 pm. It is filed under wax and tagged with file sharing, p2p, spotify, streaming, websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.