[patrickaljord]

Spotify is not a fantastic alternative. They keep on losing money in spite of growing revenues: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/31/4575506/spotify-doubled-re...

The only reason Spotify doesn't have too much competition is because few are those willing to waste so much money on such a low margin business, not because they have a ground breaking technology or business model. The fact that they now have to compete with rdio, pandora, apple and google streaming will probably deepen their losses.

A fantastic company in this field will be one that will print money like it streams music.

[citricsquid]

The CEO of Spotify has stated that they are choosing to forego profits at present so that they can invest in the long term success of the service, however they could be profitable if they needed to be. The comments on that article you linked to provide a valuable example of the value of what Spotify are doing: Amazon.

http://allthingsd.com/20121206/spotifys-daniel-ek-on-profits...

[revelation]

Amazon isn't faced with a non-rational business conglomerate with complete control over every product.

Spotify is simply hoping to grow so big so fast that labels can no longer afford to bleed them to death. They are not exactly building warehouses.