[agaton]

I think illegal piracy downloading is the real competitor to Spotify, not CD:s or iTunes. This is the problem they're trying to solve http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/anatomy-of-a-pirate.html

As you might now The Pirate Bay and piracy have been huge in Sweden. Spotify have changed that when it comes to music. By making it _easier_ to listen to music via their application than via bittorrent/kazaa/napster/dc++ downloading, they're now the most used music player in Sweden. Just a few years ago the Pirate Bay top 100 list was full of music. Now there's two (2!) music albums on it, the rest is tv-series and movies.

If you look at it that way, that piracy is the competitor not cd sales, the music industry has a great opportunity in Spotify in the long run.

[furyg3]

100% correct, at least as it pertains to me. The concept of "owning" music has been dead to my generation since Napster. I'm not even sure what that concept means, nowadays. Music is like water, you can get it from a million sources, paid or not. Getting it isn't the problem.

My real problem is finding what I want to listen to at this very moment, and managing it. I don't want to spend forever finding my music, downloading it, arranging payment, organizing it, backing it up, copying it to my iPod or other computer, etc.

Spotify gets this: search -> listen -> add to playlists. At work, home, wherever... just login. Girlfriend's music? Switch user. Throw away my iPod, it was just a shipping container, anyway.

[seabee]

And the nice thing is it picks up your local files (and even syncs them to your mobile just like the other songs!)

It solves the organisation problem very neatly. Piracy will find it hard to compete.

[agaton]

Actually, you don't even need to switch users to listen to your girlfriends music. The social layer they've integrated via Facebook makes it possible for you to listen to her playlists as well, from your account ;) #win

[furyg3]

Very true, but I'm terrified of these Facebook features :)

[vilpponen]

I heard a talk by Andreas Ehn (Spotify's former CTO) last year and he actually mentioned in his talk that piracy was the benchmark they were trying to compete with Spotify.

Piracy still is the market leader in catalogue size and ease of use for consumers at large (just see the AVC post in another comment). This is actually a fantastic way to look at it - Spotify didn't set out to beat iTunes or any existing market player with a business model, they wanted to beat piracy.

Now that's an ambitious goal, even though many other services aim at doing the same indirectly (by beating existing market players).

[genieyclo]

The main reason music is gone from TBP is because everyone knows RIAA is watching the peers on public trackers like mofos.

Serious pirates are all on small, private trackers with exclusivity, speed, and quality as the main guidelines. You can't just join them either, most require relatively decent speeds tests, high ratios for seeding/sharing and have closed registrations, only invitations. Seedboxes are all the rage, and the hardcore pirates are probably using Usenet quite a bit now as well.

[JonnieCache]

>Usenet quite a bit now as well.

Get with the program granddad!

http://megashares.com/