Spotify
Encyclopedia
Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM
-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record label
s, including Sony
, EMI
, Warner Music Group
, and Universal
. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup
Spotify AB, the service had approximately ten million users ; about 2.5 million of whom were paying members. The service is, , available in Austria
, Belgium
, Denmark
, Faroe Islands
, Finland
, France
, the Netherlands
, Norway
, Spain
, Sweden
, Switzerland
, the United Kingdom
and the United States
.
The system is currently accessible using Microsoft Windows
, Mac OS X
, Linux
, Telia Digital-tv
, and mobile devices running iOS (iPod
/iPhone
), Android, BlackBerry
(limited beta release), Windows Mobile
, Windows Phone
, S60 (Symbian)
, webOS, Squeezebox, Boxee
, Sonos
, WD TV
, and MeeGo
.
Music can be browsed by artist, album, record label, genre or playlist as well as by direct searches. On desktop clients, a link allows the listener to purchase selected material via partner retailers.
Users can register either for free accounts supported by visual and radio-style advertising or for paid subscriptions without ads and with a range of extra features such as higher bitrate
streams and offline access to music. A paid "Premium" subscription is required to use Spotify on mobile devices.
Subscriptions are restricted to people with credit/debit cards or PayPal
accounts registered in certain countries. A Facebook
account has been mandatory for all new users since 22 September 2011.
, Sweden
. The company was founded there by Daniel Ek
, former CTO of Stardoll
, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of TradeDoubler
. The parent company is now Spotify Ltd in London, while research and development remains carried out by Spotify AB in Stockholm.
The Spotify application was launched for public access on 7 October 2008. While free accounts still remained available by invitation only in order to manage the growth rate of the service, the launch meant that paid subscriptions were opened to everyone. At the same time, Spotify AB also announced licensing deals with many major music labels. The company reported a $
4.4 million loss for the year of 2008.
The first step towards offering free accounts to the public without an invitation was taken on 10 February 2009, when Spotify opened for free registration in the UK. Due to a surge in registrations following the release of the Spotify mobile service, Spotify closed its open registrations in the UK for part of 2009, and went back to an invitation-only policy.
In February 2010 Spotify received a small investment from Founders Fund where Sean Parker
sits on the board and was recruited to assist Spotify with "winning the labels over in the world's largest music market".
On 4 March 2009, Spotify announced that there had been a security flaw in the Spotify service, by which private account information (including email addresses and hashed
salted
passwords) of members registered prior to 19 December 2008 were potentially exposed.
On 28 January 2010, Symantec
's antivirus software
marked Spotify as a Trojan horse
, disabling the software across millions of computers.
On 18 May 2010, Spotify announced that two more types of accounts were available. Spotify Unlimited is the same as Spotify Premium but no mobile and other features. Spotify Open is a reduced feature version of Spotify Free which allows you to listen to up to 20 hours of music each month. Spotify Free remains by invite only.
On 1 September 2010, the World Economic Forum
announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.
Roberta Maley also known as "Roberta from Spotify" was the Premium Services Director of Spotify. She is known for her appearance in some Spotify advertisements.
On 25 March 2011, Spotify temporarily removed display advertising
from external sources on its open and free accounts due to an attack which used an exploit in Java
to place malicious code on the victim's computer.
On 14 April 2011, Spotify announced via a blog
post that they would drastically cut the amount of music a free member could listen to starting on 1 May 2011. The post states that all 'Spotify Open' and 'Spotify Free' members would be moved onto a new product which limits the amount of streaming to 10 hours per month. In addition, a user can only listen to a track a maximum of five times. 'Spotify Unlimited' and 'Spotify Premium' members are not affected by this change. New users were exempt from these changes for six months.
On 17 June 2011, it was reported that Spotify had secured another $100 million of funding and planned to use this to support its US launch. The new round of funding saw the company valued at US$1 billion.
On 14 July 2011, Spotify launched its US service, which was a major milestone after delays and years of negotiation with the four major record companies.
are not available because of a digital distribution agreement that is exclusive to iTunes
. The Spotify desktop client allows music to be imported from iTunes, with the option of syncing with a mobile device. Users from the UK, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands can also buy most tracks, if available, from Spotify's download partner 7digital
.
s and share them, or edit them together with other users (see collaborative software
). For this purpose the playlist link can directly be dragged into an email or an instant messaging
window. If the recipient follows the link, the playlist will be downloaded into the Spotify-client of the recipient. Downloaded playlists will then auto-update if the author adds or removes tracks. Like normal links, the playlist links can be used everywhere. The same principle also works for single tracks, which can be used via drag and drop on applications and websites at will. There are a number of websites for sharing of Spotify playlists and songs where users can share, rate and discuss them; for example www.spotifymusicsolutions.com , www.spotifylist.com or www.sharemyplaylists.com Also, you can create Spotify playlists based on Songkick
concerts at www.PlaylistHQ.com.
. This integration allows Spotify users to send songs from Spotify to their Last.fm account and "scrobble" them. Scrobbling via Last.fm integration allows Spotify users to learn which songs or artists they listen to the most. In turn, Spotify users can add a Spotify link to songs in their Last.fm library and send them to the Spotify client.
feature available to Spotify Free, Unlimited and Premium accounts, which creates a random playlist of songs chosen based on specified genres and decades. An Artist Radio feature creates a random playlist of songs by artists related to (and including) the selected artist. Artist Radio channels on Spotify provide background information on the selected artist, ranging from its history to a list of the artist’s most famous singles. The Spotify radio function demonstrates distinct differences from its competitor, Pandora. With the Spotify radio function, users are allowed to skip as many tracks as desired, while Pandora places limits on the number of tracks that can be skipped. Additionally, Spotify does not allow users to lend “star ratings” to tracks, thus, limiting the ability to organize the radio function based on user preference.
and Twitter accounts. Facebook integration is compulsory for new accounts. Once a user integrates their Spotify account with other social media profiles, they are able to access their friends’ favorite music and or playlists. Additionally, Facebook compatibility allows Spotify users to share music with Facebook friends through the use of the service's inbox. Spotify users are able to send tracks or playlists to friends who, in return, are able to access this music through their Spotify account.
On 26 September 2011, it was announced that all new accounts would require users to access via a Facebook login
. Earlier that week, Sean Parker
, the former president of Facebook and a major investor in Spotify, commemorated the integration at a f8 party at which Snoop Dogg
, the Killers, and Jane's Addiction
performed.
, Fuse
, The Guardian
, Last.fm
, Moodagent, Pitchfork
, Rolling Stone
, Songkick
, Soundrop, TuneWiki
and We Are Hunted
and uses digital rights management
(DRM) to prevent unauthorized use of content. Users who agree to Spotify's Terms and Conditions agree to not reverse engineer
the application.
The contents of each client's cache is summarized in an index which is sent to the Spotify stream hub upon connecting to the service. This index is then used to inform other clients about additional peers they can connect to for fetching streamed data for individual tracks being played. This is accommodated by each client, upon startup, acting as a server listening for incoming connections from other Spotify users, as well as connecting to other users to exchange cached data as appropriate. There are currently no official details from the developers about how many connections and how much of a user's upstream bandwidth the Spotify client will use when streaming to other users; the Spotify client offers no way for the user to configure this.
Audio streams are in the Vorbis
format at q5 (approx ~160 kbit/s), or optional q9 (approx ~320kbit/s) for Premium subscribers, the highest streaming rate for any online service. Spotify boasts having an almost buffer-free streaming service.
As of version 0.4.3, it is possible to also play back local MP3
and AAC
files, though this does not work in Linux using Wine
because Spotify is "[...] blocking codecs with the identifier “WINE-MPEG3″ until the Wine system works satisfactorily." In the native Linux version it works normally.
Cache size and location is configurable. 1 GB or more disk space is recommended. On Mac OS X, a G4 processor or higher is required. A user must set up an account in order to use the software. This account can be used on several computers, but music playback is limited to one computer at a time.
5 per month unlimited subscription, consistent with the Open Music Model
(OMM) estimated economic equilibrium
for the recording industry. However, the incorporation of DRM diverges from the OMM, as well as from competitors such as iTunes and Amazon MP3
, which have dropped DRM.
In February 2009, the advertisements for non-paying users were reported as lasting 15 seconds though in May 2009, Neowin
reported that the approximate length has increased to 30 seconds. The interval between advertisements is not constant.
A payment of a monthly fee upgrades an account to "Premium" status, which removes advertisements, can increase the bitrate
to 320 kbps in selected songs, removes streaming limits and allows usage of mobile clients for iOS, Android, Symbian
, webOS, Windows Mobile 6.x
, and most BlackBerry
devices (though currently in a limited beta release). On 2 December 2009, Spotify launched "Premium ecards" (premium codes), which upgrade an account to "Premium" status for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months.
In March 2009, Spotify began to offer music downloads at £0.99 per track in partnership with the 7digital
music store. This feature was moved from a context menu to an explicit "Buy" link in mid-October 2009.
In May 2010, Spotify introduced "Unlimited", which allows one month of unlimited, advert-free playback for half the price of Premium; however, it does not include any of Premium's other special features.
In October 2010, Wired reported that Spotify is making more money for labels in Sweden than any other retailer, "online or off".
During 2010 Spotify paid more than €45 million to their licensors.
In March 2011 Spotify announced that it has one million paying subscribers across Europe. In September the number of paying subscribers doubled to two million, or at least €10 million per month of revenue.
According to About.com, independent musicians can easily distribute their music to Spotify; pay for paid downloads is $.70 USD, pay for streamed songs is on a sliding scale basis determined by the total number of monthly plays an artist receives.
(2000 or newer) and Mac OS X
(10.4 or newer).
A preview of a forthcoming native Linux
version for Debian
6.0 "Squeeze" and Ubuntu
10.04 was made available on 12 July 2010, formerly restricted to Premium and Unlimited subscribers because of a problem with displaying ads; it is now available to all Spotify users. The preview release Linux version is unsupported and there are issues regarding decoding of local music on the Linux platform so there isn't included support for local files. (update: the latest Linux client 0.5.2.84 pushed in July 2011 can play local music files). The Windows version can also be run on Linux
and FreeBSD
using Wine
and the Spotify website has a section devoted to this topic.
on 28 May 2009, and then an iPhone
application was officially announced on 27 July 2009. Apple approved the iPhone app one month later on 27 August 2009. Spotify for WebOS was made available in the US via the App Catalog in mid July 2011 to coincide with Spotify's US launch. The applications allow Premium subscribers to access the full music catalogue, stream music and even listen to music when disconnected using the Offline Mode (which is also available on the desktop version for premium users). The mobile versions of Spotify were released onto the iTunes
App Store and Google
's Android Market on Monday 7 September 2009, while a Symbian
version was made available on Spotify's website on 23 November 2009. A version for Research in Motion
's BlackBerry
smartphones is in development, on the 19th of October 2011, a preview release of the BlackBerry client was released. On the 4th of October 2010, Spotify launched an official client for the Windows Mobile platform, supporting many devices running Windows Mobile 6.0 or higher. mySpot was a freeware client that supported Windows Mobile
. The mySpot 0.85b application provided access to the Spotify service on the Windows Mobile platform via an intermediate proxy. It required a QVGA, VGA
or WVGA device running Windows Mobile Professional (Pocket PC) 6.0 or higher. It was discontinued and the service disabled several months before the official client was launched by Spotify.
) projects have developed software to access Spotify services. The most prominent of these is Despotify, originally released as a ncurses
text-mode client for Linux
and Mac OS X
. All third-party applications and development libraries require a Spotify premium subscription to work.
client for Spotify. Its authors remain anonymous
, but write on their website that they are a group of Swedish computer science researchers and security professionals who "believe strongly in the right to tinker with technology".
The software can be run on most mainstream POSIX
-compliant operating systems for which there is an ANSI C
compiler. It also requires Core Audio
, GStreamer
, libao or PulseAudio
to be installed. There is also a Despotify-based client, Spot, for jailbroken iPhones.
Spotify has blocked usage of Despotify for 'Free' and 'Open' accounts, but those with a 'Premium' account can use Despotify if they wish. The Despotify team have said that they won't attempt to circumvent the block. The code may however be forked
by others to attempt to do this.
The Despotify library has language binding
s for Python
and Ruby
. It depends on the OpenSSL
, zlib and libvorbis libraries.
, Belgium
, Denmark
, Finland
, France
, the Netherlands
, Norway
, Spain
, Sweden
, Switzerland
, the United Kingdom
and the United States
. In Estonia, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Romania the Premium service was offered until July 2009, but never the free version. Currently only customers with credit cards issued in one of the above-mentioned launch countries can buy a Premium account.
In 2011, Facebook and Spotify held discussions about integrating the music service into Facebook in a significant way once Spotify launched in the United States. Spotify was launched in the USA on July 14, 2011.
and Last.fm
groups, Twitter
bots and user forums, tools to display lyrics and services to list and notify users about new releases. In 2010, Spotify blog The Pansentient League held the first Spotify Community Site Awards, with categories such as Best Playlist Sharing Site, Best News & Music Finder Site and Best Playlist Generator.
Spotify has also led to an array of editorial content integrating playlists into articles. Popular music website Drowned in Sound
is among the most notable examples, running every Friday as 'Spotifriday' which involves a playlist of the site's content during the week shared with readers.
reported that "indie labels... as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis." Swedish musician Magnus Uggla
wanted to pull his music from the service, stating that after six months he'd only earned "what a mediocre busker could earn in a day". Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet
reported in 2009 that record label Racing Junior had only earned NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times. According to an infographic
by David McCandless, an independent artist on Spotify would need over four million streams per month to earn US$1,160.
Luke Lewis of NME
points to problems with the Spotify business model, saying he was "convinced the 'free' aspect of Spotify is unsustainable" and that if "Spotify is to have a future, it needs to be a viable business".
In September of 2011, Brooklyn-based independent label Projekt Records
entered a public disagreement with Spotify, stating "In the world I want to live in, I envision artists fairly compensated for their creations, because we (the audience) believe in the value of what artists create. The artist's passion, dedication and expression is respected and rewarded. Spotify is NOT a service that does this. Projekt will not be part of this unprincipled concept."
A 2011 blog post alleged that the higher 320 kbps bitrate supposedly available to Premium subscribers was in reality only available on around 30% of tracks. A large majority of the content was actually streamed in 160 kbps.
The usefulness of Spotify for listening to classical music has been criticised, because playback is not gapless
(there is a slight pause between tracks), which affects much classical music, and searching is very poor. This is also a problem in other types of music, including popular music, where some albums are intended to be listened to without gaps.
Spotify has also been criticised for bugs in the Android version, which prevents the use of offline playlist functionality on Honeycomb-based devices.
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
s, including Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
, and Universal
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup
Startup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
Spotify AB, the service had approximately ten million users ; about 2.5 million of whom were paying members. The service is, , available in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Faroe Islands
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The system is currently accessible using Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, Telia Digital-tv
Telia Digital-tv
Telia Digital-tv is an IPTV distribution platform in Sweden owned by TeliaSonera. It was launched in January 2005 from a few locations, soon expanding into other locations.In September 2007, Telia announced that the platform had 200,000 subscribers....
, and mobile devices running iOS (iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
/iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
), Android, BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
(limited beta release), Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
, Windows Phone
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to its Windows Mobile platform, although incompatible with it. Unlike its predecessor, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market...
, S60 (Symbian)
S60 (software platform)
The S60 Platform is a software platform for mobile phones that runs on Symbian OS. It was created by Nokia, who made the platform open source and contributed it to the Symbian Foundation. S60 has been used by mobile device manufacturers including Siemens mobile, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Panasonic...
, webOS, Squeezebox, Boxee
BOXEE
Boxee is a cross-platform freeware HTPC software application with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV...
, Sonos
Sonos
Sonos is a consumer electronics company based in Santa Barbara, California. It was founded in 2002 by John MacFarlane, who previously founded Software.com. The company’s main product is the Sonos Multi-Room Music System.-History:...
, WD TV
WD TV
The WD TV is a consumer device produced by Western Digital that plays videos, images, and music from USB drives. It can play high-definition video through an HDMI port, and standard video through composite video cables. It can play most common video and audio formats.-WD TV :In November 2008...
, and MeeGo
MeeGo
MeeGo is a Linux-based open source mobile operating system project. Primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances in the consumer electronics market, MeeGo is designed to act as an operating system for hardware platforms such as netbooks, entry-level desktops, nettops, tablet...
.
Music can be browsed by artist, album, record label, genre or playlist as well as by direct searches. On desktop clients, a link allows the listener to purchase selected material via partner retailers.
Users can register either for free accounts supported by visual and radio-style advertising or for paid subscriptions without ads and with a range of extra features such as higher bitrate
Bitrate
In telecommunications and computing, bit rate is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time....
streams and offline access to music. A paid "Premium" subscription is required to use Spotify on mobile devices.
Subscriptions are restricted to people with credit/debit cards or PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
accounts registered in certain countries. A Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
account has been mandatory for all new users since 22 September 2011.
History
Spotify has been developed since 2006 by a team at Spotify AB, StockholmStockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. The company was founded there by Daniel Ek
Daniel Ek
Daniel Ek is a Swedish entrepreneur and a technologist who started the music streaming service Spotify.He founded his first company in 1997 at the age of 14...
, former CTO of Stardoll
Stardoll
Stardoll is a browser game for girls and boys based around the paper doll concept. Launched in 2004, the website was attracting a reported 200 thousand unique users a month ; as of September 2011 there were over 124 million users worldwide...
, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of TradeDoubler
TradeDoubler
TradeDoubler is an Internet marketing company based in Stockholm, Sweden. It was founded in 1999 by Felix Hagnö and Martin Lorentzon and was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 2005....
. The parent company is now Spotify Ltd in London, while research and development remains carried out by Spotify AB in Stockholm.
The Spotify application was launched for public access on 7 October 2008. While free accounts still remained available by invitation only in order to manage the growth rate of the service, the launch meant that paid subscriptions were opened to everyone. At the same time, Spotify AB also announced licensing deals with many major music labels. The company reported a $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
4.4 million loss for the year of 2008.
The first step towards offering free accounts to the public without an invitation was taken on 10 February 2009, when Spotify opened for free registration in the UK. Due to a surge in registrations following the release of the Spotify mobile service, Spotify closed its open registrations in the UK for part of 2009, and went back to an invitation-only policy.
In February 2010 Spotify received a small investment from Founders Fund where Sean Parker
Sean Parker
Sean Parker is an American technology businessman and entrepreneur. He co-founded Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and Airtime, and was Facebook's founding president. His net worth is estimated at $2.1 billion.-Early life:...
sits on the board and was recruited to assist Spotify with "winning the labels over in the world's largest music market".
On 4 March 2009, Spotify announced that there had been a security flaw in the Spotify service, by which private account information (including email addresses and hashed
Cryptographic hash function
A cryptographic hash function is a deterministic procedure that takes an arbitrary block of data and returns a fixed-size bit string, the hash value, such that an accidental or intentional change to the data will change the hash value...
salted
Salt (cryptography)
In cryptography, a salt consists of random bits, creating one of the inputs to a one-way function. The other input is usually a password or passphrase. The output of the one-way function can be stored rather than the password, and still be used for authenticating users. The one-way function...
passwords) of members registered prior to 19 December 2008 were potentially exposed.
On 28 January 2010, Symantec
Symantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
's antivirus software
Antivirus software
Antivirus or anti-virus software is used to prevent, detect, and remove malware, including but not limited to computer viruses, computer worm, trojan horses, spyware and adware...
marked Spotify as a Trojan horse
Trojan horse (computing)
A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but steals information or harms the system. The term is derived from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology.-Malware:A destructive program that masquerades as a benign...
, disabling the software across millions of computers.
On 18 May 2010, Spotify announced that two more types of accounts were available. Spotify Unlimited is the same as Spotify Premium but no mobile and other features. Spotify Open is a reduced feature version of Spotify Free which allows you to listen to up to 20 hours of music each month. Spotify Free remains by invite only.
On 1 September 2010, the World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.
Roberta Maley also known as "Roberta from Spotify" was the Premium Services Director of Spotify. She is known for her appearance in some Spotify advertisements.
On 25 March 2011, Spotify temporarily removed display advertising
Display advertising
Display advertising is a type of advertising that typically contains text , logos, photographs or other images, location maps, and similar items. In periodicals, display advertising can appear on the same page as, or on the page adjacent to, general editorial content...
from external sources on its open and free accounts due to an attack which used an exploit in Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
to place malicious code on the victim's computer.
On 14 April 2011, Spotify announced via a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
post that they would drastically cut the amount of music a free member could listen to starting on 1 May 2011. The post states that all 'Spotify Open' and 'Spotify Free' members would be moved onto a new product which limits the amount of streaming to 10 hours per month. In addition, a user can only listen to a track a maximum of five times. 'Spotify Unlimited' and 'Spotify Premium' members are not affected by this change. New users were exempt from these changes for six months.
On 17 June 2011, it was reported that Spotify had secured another $100 million of funding and planned to use this to support its US launch. The new round of funding saw the company valued at US$1 billion.
On 14 July 2011, Spotify launched its US service, which was a major milestone after delays and years of negotiation with the four major record companies.
Catalogue
As of July 2011 the catalog provides access to approximately 15 million songs via searching for artists, albums, titles, labels and genres, and gives users access to tracks from many major and independent labels. Some artists have opted not to be added to Spotify. Additionally, some artists are missing in certain regions due to licensing restrictions imposed by the record labels. For example, The BeatlesThe Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
are not available because of a digital distribution agreement that is exclusive to iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
. The Spotify desktop client allows music to be imported from iTunes, with the option of syncing with a mobile device. Users from the UK, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands can also buy most tracks, if available, from Spotify's download partner 7digital
7digital
7digital is a privately held digital media delivery company based in the United Kingdom, offering downloadable music, video and movies to customers primarily within major European markets...
.
Playlists
Users can set up playlistPlaylist
In its most general form, a playlist is simply a list of songs. They can be played in sequential or shuffled order. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of radio broadcasting and personal computers.-In radio:...
s and share them, or edit them together with other users (see collaborative software
Collaborative software
Collaborative software is computer software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve goals...
). For this purpose the playlist link can directly be dragged into an email or an instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
window. If the recipient follows the link, the playlist will be downloaded into the Spotify-client of the recipient. Downloaded playlists will then auto-update if the author adds or removes tracks. Like normal links, the playlist links can be used everywhere. The same principle also works for single tracks, which can be used via drag and drop on applications and websites at will. There are a number of websites for sharing of Spotify playlists and songs where users can share, rate and discuss them; for example www.spotifymusicsolutions.com , www.spotifylist.com or www.sharemyplaylists.com Also, you can create Spotify playlists based on Songkick
Songkick
Songkick is a website and service that provides personalized news about live music events. It allows users to track their favorite bands and receive email alerts when a tracked band plays a gig nearby. Songkick is one of the original high tech startups in London's Silicon Roundabout area.- Service...
concerts at www.PlaylistHQ.com.
Last.fm integration
While Spotify does not automatically create preference-based playlists, it does integrate with Last.fmLast.fm
Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....
. This integration allows Spotify users to send songs from Spotify to their Last.fm account and "scrobble" them. Scrobbling via Last.fm integration allows Spotify users to learn which songs or artists they listen to the most. In turn, Spotify users can add a Spotify link to songs in their Last.fm library and send them to the Spotify client.
Radios
Spotify also includes a RadioRadio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
feature available to Spotify Free, Unlimited and Premium accounts, which creates a random playlist of songs chosen based on specified genres and decades. An Artist Radio feature creates a random playlist of songs by artists related to (and including) the selected artist. Artist Radio channels on Spotify provide background information on the selected artist, ranging from its history to a list of the artist’s most famous singles. The Spotify radio function demonstrates distinct differences from its competitor, Pandora. With the Spotify radio function, users are allowed to skip as many tracks as desired, while Pandora places limits on the number of tracks that can be skipped. Additionally, Spotify does not allow users to lend “star ratings” to tracks, thus, limiting the ability to organize the radio function based on user preference.
Social media integration
Spotify allows registered users to integrate their account with existing FacebookFacebook Platform
The Facebook Platform provides a set of APIs and tools which enable third-party developers to integrate with the "open graph" — whether through applications on Facebook.com or external websites and devices...
and Twitter accounts. Facebook integration is compulsory for new accounts. Once a user integrates their Spotify account with other social media profiles, they are able to access their friends’ favorite music and or playlists. Additionally, Facebook compatibility allows Spotify users to share music with Facebook friends through the use of the service's inbox. Spotify users are able to send tracks or playlists to friends who, in return, are able to access this music through their Spotify account.
On 26 September 2011, it was announced that all new accounts would require users to access via a Facebook login
Facebook Platform
The Facebook Platform provides a set of APIs and tools which enable third-party developers to integrate with the "open graph" — whether through applications on Facebook.com or external websites and devices...
. Earlier that week, Sean Parker
Sean Parker
Sean Parker is an American technology businessman and entrepreneur. He co-founded Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and Airtime, and was Facebook's founding president. His net worth is estimated at $2.1 billion.-Early life:...
, the former president of Facebook and a major investor in Spotify, commemorated the integration at a f8 party at which Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg
Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. , better known by his stage name Snoop Dogg, is an American rapper, record producer, and actor. Snoop is best known as a rapper in the West Coast hip hop scene, and for being one of Dr. Dre's most notable protégés. Snoop Dogg was a Crip gang member while in high school...
, the Killers, and Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction is an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1985. The band's original line-up featured Perry Farrell , Dave Navarro , Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins . After breaking up in 1991, Jane's Addiction briefly reunited in 1997 and again in 2001, both times...
performed.
Applications
Users can access to applications integrated in the Spotify desktop client. Third party editors proposes application (based on HTML5) in the Spotify Platform that proposes features related to music listening such as playlist live sharing, music reviews, lyrics, concerts. At the launch of the functionnality (30th of november 2011 in beta mode), the supported applications were : BillboardBillboard
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
, Fuse
Fuse
The word fuse has several meanings:* Fuse , a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current....
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Last.fm
Last.fm
Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....
, Moodagent, Pitchfork
Pitchfork
A pitchfork is an agricultural tool with a long handle and long, thin, widely separated pointed tines used to lift and pitch loose material, such as hay, leaves, grapes, dung or other agricultural materials. Pitchforks typically have two or three tines...
, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, Songkick
Songkick
Songkick is a website and service that provides personalized news about live music events. It allows users to track their favorite bands and receive email alerts when a tracked band plays a gig nearby. Songkick is one of the original high tech startups in London's Silicon Roundabout area.- Service...
, Soundrop, TuneWiki
Tunewiki
Tunewiki is a music-centered startup that creates social media players for cellphones and handheld devices. TuneWiki currently has agreements with major music publishers,...
and We Are Hunted
We Are Hunted
' is a music aggregation website that launched in April 2009. It tracks the 99 most popular emerging songs online each day across blogs, social media platforms, forums, P2P networks and Spotify via an intuitive web interface...
Technical function
The Spotify software is proprietaryProprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
and uses digital rights management
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
(DRM) to prevent unauthorized use of content. Users who agree to Spotify's Terms and Conditions agree to not reverse engineer
Reverse engineering
Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
the application.
The contents of each client's cache is summarized in an index which is sent to the Spotify stream hub upon connecting to the service. This index is then used to inform other clients about additional peers they can connect to for fetching streamed data for individual tracks being played. This is accommodated by each client, upon startup, acting as a server listening for incoming connections from other Spotify users, as well as connecting to other users to exchange cached data as appropriate. There are currently no official details from the developers about how many connections and how much of a user's upstream bandwidth the Spotify client will use when streaming to other users; the Spotify client offers no way for the user to configure this.
Audio streams are in the Vorbis
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
format at q5 (approx ~160 kbit/s), or optional q9 (approx ~320kbit/s) for Premium subscribers, the highest streaming rate for any online service. Spotify boasts having an almost buffer-free streaming service.
As of version 0.4.3, it is possible to also play back local MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
and AAC
Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
files, though this does not work in Linux using Wine
Wine (software)
Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...
because Spotify is "[...] blocking codecs with the identifier “WINE-MPEG3″ until the Wine system works satisfactorily." In the native Linux version it works normally.
Cache size and location is configurable. 1 GB or more disk space is recommended. On Mac OS X, a G4 processor or higher is required. A user must set up an account in order to use the software. This account can be used on several computers, but music playback is limited to one computer at a time.
Revenue model
Spotify is funded by paid subscriptions, advertisements in the Spotify player for non-subscribers and music purchases from partner retailers. It offers a US$United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
5 per month unlimited subscription, consistent with the Open Music Model
Open Music Model
The Open Music Model is an economic and technological framework for the recording industry based on research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
(OMM) estimated economic equilibrium
Economic equilibrium
In economics, economic equilibrium is a state of the world where economic forces are balanced and in the absence of external influences the values of economic variables will not change. It is the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal...
for the recording industry. However, the incorporation of DRM diverges from the OMM, as well as from competitors such as iTunes and Amazon MP3
Amazon MP3
Amazon MP3 is an online music store owned and operated by Amazon.com. Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007, in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights management from the four major music labels , as well as many independents...
, which have dropped DRM.
In February 2009, the advertisements for non-paying users were reported as lasting 15 seconds though in May 2009, Neowin
Neowin
Neowin.net is a Microsoft enthusiast technology news website that actively focuses on Windows, Mac and Linux. Neowin runs under the slogan, "Where unprofessional journalism looks better."-History:...
reported that the approximate length has increased to 30 seconds. The interval between advertisements is not constant.
A payment of a monthly fee upgrades an account to "Premium" status, which removes advertisements, can increase the bitrate
Bitrate
In telecommunications and computing, bit rate is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time....
to 320 kbps in selected songs, removes streaming limits and allows usage of mobile clients for iOS, Android, Symbian
Symbian
Symbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
, webOS, Windows Mobile 6.x
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
, and most BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
devices (though currently in a limited beta release). On 2 December 2009, Spotify launched "Premium ecards" (premium codes), which upgrade an account to "Premium" status for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months.
In March 2009, Spotify began to offer music downloads at £0.99 per track in partnership with the 7digital
7digital
7digital is a privately held digital media delivery company based in the United Kingdom, offering downloadable music, video and movies to customers primarily within major European markets...
music store. This feature was moved from a context menu to an explicit "Buy" link in mid-October 2009.
In May 2010, Spotify introduced "Unlimited", which allows one month of unlimited, advert-free playback for half the price of Premium; however, it does not include any of Premium's other special features.
In October 2010, Wired reported that Spotify is making more money for labels in Sweden than any other retailer, "online or off".
During 2010 Spotify paid more than €45 million to their licensors.
In March 2011 Spotify announced that it has one million paying subscribers across Europe. In September the number of paying subscribers doubled to two million, or at least €10 million per month of revenue.
According to About.com, independent musicians can easily distribute their music to Spotify; pay for paid downloads is $.70 USD, pay for streamed songs is on a sliding scale basis determined by the total number of monthly plays an artist receives.
Desktop versions
Official desktop clients are available for Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
(2000 or newer) and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
(10.4 or newer).
A preview of a forthcoming native Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
version for Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
6.0 "Squeeze" and Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
10.04 was made available on 12 July 2010, formerly restricted to Premium and Unlimited subscribers because of a problem with displaying ads; it is now available to all Spotify users. The preview release Linux version is unsupported and there are issues regarding decoding of local music on the Linux platform so there isn't included support for local files. (update: the latest Linux client 0.5.2.84 pushed in July 2011 can play local music files). The Windows version can also be run on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
using Wine
Wine (software)
Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...
and the Spotify website has a section devoted to this topic.
Mobile versions
A Spotify application for Android was demonstrated at Google I/OGoogle I/O
Google I/O is an annual two-day developer-focused conference held by Google in San Francisco, California. Google I/O features highly technical, in-depth sessions focused on building web, mobile, and enterprise applications with Google and open web technologies such as Android, Chrome, Chrome OS,...
on 28 May 2009, and then an iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
application was officially announced on 27 July 2009. Apple approved the iPhone app one month later on 27 August 2009. Spotify for WebOS was made available in the US via the App Catalog in mid July 2011 to coincide with Spotify's US launch. The applications allow Premium subscribers to access the full music catalogue, stream music and even listen to music when disconnected using the Offline Mode (which is also available on the desktop version for premium users). The mobile versions of Spotify were released onto the iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
App Store and Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's Android Market on Monday 7 September 2009, while a Symbian
Symbian
Symbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
version was made available on Spotify's website on 23 November 2009. A version for Research in Motion
Research In Motion
Research In Motion Limited or RIM is a Canadian multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada that designs, manufactures and markets wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market...
's BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
smartphones is in development, on the 19th of October 2011, a preview release of the BlackBerry client was released. On the 4th of October 2010, Spotify launched an official client for the Windows Mobile platform, supporting many devices running Windows Mobile 6.0 or higher. mySpot was a freeware client that supported Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
. The mySpot 0.85b application provided access to the Spotify service on the Windows Mobile platform via an intermediate proxy. It required a QVGA, VGA
Video Graphics Array
Video Graphics Array refers specifically to the display hardware first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, but through its widespread adoption has also come to mean either an analog computer display standard, the 15-pin D-subminiature VGA connector or the 640×480 resolution...
or WVGA device running Windows Mobile Professional (Pocket PC) 6.0 or higher. It was discontinued and the service disabled several months before the official client was launched by Spotify.
Third-party clients and libraries
A number of third-party (and open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
) projects have developed software to access Spotify services. The most prominent of these is Despotify, originally released as a ncurses
Ncurses
ncurses is a programming library that provides an API which allows the programmer to write text user interfaces in a terminal-independent manner. It is a toolkit for developing "GUI-like" application software that runs under a terminal emulator...
text-mode client for Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
. All third-party applications and development libraries require a Spotify premium subscription to work.
- Despotify: http://despotify.se/
- Jotify: a Java client.
Despotify
Despotify is a free softwareFree software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
client for Spotify. Its authors remain anonymous
Anonymity
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a...
, but write on their website that they are a group of Swedish computer science researchers and security professionals who "believe strongly in the right to tinker with technology".
The software can be run on most mainstream POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...
-compliant operating systems for which there is an ANSI C
ANSI C
ANSI C refers to the family of successive standards published by the American National Standards Institute for the C programming language. Software developers writing in C are encouraged to conform to the standards, as doing so aids portability between compilers.-History and outlook:The first...
compiler. It also requires Core Audio
Core Audio
Core Audio is a low-level API for dealing with sound in Apple's Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. It includes an implementation of the cross-platform OpenAL library....
, GStreamer
GStreamer
GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework written in the C programming language with the type system based on GObject.GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing...
, libao or PulseAudio
PulseAudio
PulseAudio is a cross-platform, networked sound server commonly used on the Linux-based and FreeBSD operating systems.PulseAudio runs under Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and POSIX-compliant platforms, such as Linux and FreeBSD...
to be installed. There is also a Despotify-based client, Spot, for jailbroken iPhones.
Spotify has blocked usage of Despotify for 'Free' and 'Open' accounts, but those with a 'Premium' account can use Despotify if they wish. The Despotify team have said that they won't attempt to circumvent the block. The code may however be forked
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
by others to attempt to do this.
The Despotify library has language binding
Language binding
In computing, a binding from a programming language to a library or OS service is an API providing that service in the language.Many software libraries are written in systems programming languages such as C or C++...
s for Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
and Ruby
Ruby (programming language)
Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...
. It depends on the OpenSSL
OpenSSL
OpenSSL is an open source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. The core library implements the basic cryptographic functions and provides various utility functions...
, zlib and libvorbis libraries.
Geographic availability
Spotify is currently available in AustriaAustria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. In Estonia, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Romania the Premium service was offered until July 2009, but never the free version. Currently only customers with credit cards issued in one of the above-mentioned launch countries can buy a Premium account.
In 2011, Facebook and Spotify held discussions about integrating the music service into Facebook in a significant way once Spotify launched in the United States. Spotify was launched in the USA on July 14, 2011.
Accounts and subscriptions
As of 2011, there are three Spotify account types. Spotify Open and Spotify Unlimited were launched in 19 May 2010. Spotify Premium has been around since 2008.| Name | Price | Free of Ads | Listening time (First 6 months) | Listening time | Premium features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spotify FreeAvailable in United States for promotional launch period. | |||||
| Spotify Unlimited | $4.99, £4.99 or €4.99 per month | ||||
| Spotify Premium | $9.99, £9.99 or €9,99 per month | Offline mode, mobile device support, enhanced sound quality, exclusive content. |
User community
A community of websites, blogs, and 3rd-party applications and tools exists to support Spotify. Community resources include FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
and Last.fm
Last.fm
Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....
groups, Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
bots and user forums, tools to display lyrics and services to list and notify users about new releases. In 2010, Spotify blog The Pansentient League held the first Spotify Community Site Awards, with categories such as Best Playlist Sharing Site, Best News & Music Finder Site and Best Playlist Generator.
Spotify has also led to an array of editorial content integrating playlists into articles. Popular music website Drowned in Sound
Drowned in Sound
DrownedinSound.com or DiS is a UK based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway . The site is an editorially independent music website.-History:...
is among the most notable examples, running every Friday as 'Spotifriday' which involves a playlist of the site's content during the week shared with readers.
Criticism
The service has come under fire for failing to compensate independent artists fairly. Helienne Lindvall of The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
reported that "indie labels... as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis." Swedish musician Magnus Uggla
Magnus Uggla
Per Allan Magnus Claësson Uggla is a Swedish artist, composer, actor, and occasional radio host known for his satirical lyrics. He is a member of the Swedish nobility and a descendant of several European rulers, among which John III of Sweden and Gustav Vasa...
wanted to pull his music from the service, stating that after six months he'd only earned "what a mediocre busker could earn in a day". Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet
Dagbladet
Dagbladet is Norway's second largest tabloid newspaper, and the third largest newspaper overall with a circulation of 105,255 copies in 2009, 18,128 papers less than in 2008. The editor in chief is Lars Helle....
reported in 2009 that record label Racing Junior had only earned NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times. According to an infographic
Information graphics
Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education...
by David McCandless, an independent artist on Spotify would need over four million streams per month to earn US$1,160.
Luke Lewis of NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
points to problems with the Spotify business model, saying he was "convinced the 'free' aspect of Spotify is unsustainable" and that if "Spotify is to have a future, it needs to be a viable business".
In September of 2011, Brooklyn-based independent label Projekt Records
Projekt Records
This is the article for the record label. You might be looking for Pro-jekt, ProjeKct, Project Pitchfork, or Projekt RevolutionProjekt is a Brooklyn, New York-based independent record label specializing in gothic rock, ambient, ethereal, darkwave, shoegaze, dream-pop, and dark cabaret created by...
entered a public disagreement with Spotify, stating "In the world I want to live in, I envision artists fairly compensated for their creations, because we (the audience) believe in the value of what artists create. The artist's passion, dedication and expression is respected and rewarded. Spotify is NOT a service that does this. Projekt will not be part of this unprincipled concept."
A 2011 blog post alleged that the higher 320 kbps bitrate supposedly available to Premium subscribers was in reality only available on around 30% of tracks. A large majority of the content was actually streamed in 160 kbps.
The usefulness of Spotify for listening to classical music has been criticised, because playback is not gapless
Gapless playback
Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks without intervening silence or clicks at the point of the track change. Gapless playback is common with compact discs, gramophone records, or tapes, but is not always available with other formats that employ compressed...
(there is a slight pause between tracks), which affects much classical music, and searching is very poor. This is also a problem in other types of music, including popular music, where some albums are intended to be listened to without gaps.
Spotify has also been criticised for bugs in the Android version, which prevents the use of offline playlist functionality on Honeycomb-based devices.
See also
- RdioRdioRdio is an ad-free music subscription service available in the United States, Canada and Brazil. It is available as a website and also has clients for the iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone mobile devices, which can play streaming music or cache songs for offline...
- Streaming mediaStreaming mediaStreaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
- List of online music databases
- GroovesharkGroovesharkGrooveshark is an international online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application, allowing users to search for, stream, and upload music that can be played immediately or added to a playlist...
- WiMPWiMPWiMP is a Norwegian proprietary music streaming service, similar to Spotify, that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums, with virtually no buffering delay. Music can be browsed by artist, by album or by created playlists as well as by direct searches...
- fizyFizyfizy is an internationally available online music search engine based in Turkey. Containing both audio and video, fizy fetches files from other websites and immediately starts to stream them. Access to the website was banned in Turkey on 28 December 2010, due to alleged copyright violations. The...
- PlaylistifyPlaylistifyPlaylistify.org is a webservice based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands focusing on creating and sharing music playlists.-History:It was mid 2009 when Roeland Landegent started using the streaming music service Spotify...
- MOGMOG (online music)MOG is a paid subscription online music service and blog network, where users can listen to, read about, and discover music. Users can play any song in MOG's catalog on their computer through their web browser; on their mobile device through MOG's applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and...
- Last.fmLast.fmLast.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....
- Pandora