Spotify: A Musical Revolution?

Virginia Albert
Alpha Phi

Spotify, a music application that allows users to stream their favorite music for free, has recently blown up in the world of social media. With one visit to spotify.com and a download of the application, users can be listening to any music they wish with very limited advertisements for free on the free version.

Spotify began in Sweden as a startup company in 2008 and expanded to the UK. Currently 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 innovative application takes music from major record labels and allows users to stream it for free via a downloadable application that connects to the Internet. Before September 2011, users were required to be invited to Spotify by friends who previously had the service. Since then, Spotify has been opened to the public who possess Facebook accounts. While Spotify provides free music to those who wish, the application has an unlimited and premium account feature where people can pay money in order to access the application without advertisements and on smart phones.

Spotify provides access to approximately 15 million songs. The catalog is seemingly endless. Spotify also allows users to import music from iTunes and listen to it through the application. Unfortunately, some artists like the Beatles are not available due to exclusive contracts with iTunes. Spotify also provides links that enable users to purchase any song through various online music retailers, including iTunes.

Users can also create playlists and share them among friends. Via the Facebook integration, users can see what playlists their friends have created and listen to them. Users can also send a playlist to friends and allow them to add songs.

Spotify has been heavily integrated with Facebook and other social media, such as Twitter. The integration with social media has led to greater success for Spotify and increased users. On the Facebook feed, users can see what their friends are listening to on Spotify and in turn choose to listen to the same tracks if they wish with simply a click of a button. If users choose to integrate their Facebook accounts with Spotify, they can send songs to their Facebook friends.

Spotify has also been integrated with the music site Last.fm, which allows users to keep track of which songs they have listened to and provides music recommendations based on previously listened to tracks. Last.fm records all tracks listened to on Spotify and iTunes and allows users to connect with friends and share music. In addition, Spotify also provides a radio feature, similar to Pandora’s services. It draws similar music together and creates a radio based on criteria, such as '80s or '90s music. Stations include everything from “Blues” to “Emo” and “Reggae.”

For many people, Spotify is beginning to replace iTunes as the primary form of music listening. The great thing about Spotify is that you can listen to music you already own and add music that you don’t to playlists for no additional charge. The only downside is that without a premium subscription, which costs 10 dollars a month, users are limited to using the desktop application for listening purposes. With a premium subscription, users can listen to any music they wish on their iPhones and smart phones.

Spotify is changing the digital music scene one legal listener at a time.

Virginia is a sophomore studying advertising. You may contact her at virginia.albert@comcast.net.