chronicle. • It is not the best technology that wins. • Winds of change blowing everything harder. • In the digital world, you never feel safe.
Three axioms that make the future Spotify is extremely uncertain. The same applies, incidentally, to a wide range of our today’s most widely used services: Google Search, Facebook and Youtube.
Just Spotify’s future has recently become an increasingly hot topic of debate. The reason is a high valuation, combined with increased competition in the streaming music market with Jay Z’s Tidal and Apple’s new version of the acquired Beats, which will soon be launched.
A number of reasons why there is a much more serious threat.
The importance of being right, relevant and where the action is in many cases more important than being big. Apple is a tired and gubbig giant who try to keep up with the kids. It risks becoming very wrong.
Spotify has had its heyday, but now feels the service as a place where one goes to hear old favorites, a sort of gigantic Absolute Music. When did you last an Absolute disc?
A look back: In the late 90s, the music industry extremely prosperous and pocketed large money on CD sales.
However, the peer-to-peer, or file sharing, meant the large death knell for the CD format. Napster, launched in 1999, is the most famous example, and made it super easy to share MP3 files with each other. It was the great cause of Winamp version two reached the 25 million copies downloaded in 2000 and was then one of the very popular programs for Windows.
The music industry fought back and soon forced Napster to shut down, but new services are constantly popped up – Audiogalaxy, Kazaa, DirectConnect, Pirate Bay …
Det all ended much when Spotify launched in 2006: a timely and user-friendly way to stream music without violating copyright rules. Which is also more and more have proven willing to pay for.
While it is easy to conclude that a variety of very large programs – as Winamp and Napster – had only a short time in the spotlight. What decided when people switched from one service to another?
There are many parallels. When finished MySpace being the world’s largest social network and why? When finished Firefox to be the cool alternative to Internet Explorer, and when the people went instead to Chrome? What happened to Lunarstorm, once the largest online community?
Some would say that the transitions depend on technology breakthrough, intelligent business models and major funders . There is a lot in there.
Yet. When I listen to initiate podcasts, read blogs or talk with music fans, few people mention Spotify as a place to discover new music. It is far more hipstertätt on Soundcloud. In Love Makkonen is an example. He is a headstrong and very interesting rap artist. His last mixtape – which in essence is a new album – available on SoundCloud but not on Spotify.
SoundCloud is therefore entitled, relevant and where it happens. Is it therefore end on Spotify’s heyday we see?
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