Manufacturology

Spotify makes CDs feel like 78 rpm records

Brows­ing through the online pages of my favourite Swedish news­pa­per Sven­ska Dag­bladet I came across an arti­cle (cit­ing this arti­cle that appeared in Forbes a few days ago) call­ing Spo­tify founder/entrepreneur Daniel Ek the most impor­tant man in music at the moment. I went on to read the much more exten­sive Forbes arti­cle with great inter­est. It is a fas­ci­nat­ing story how now 28 year old Ek has brought a rev­o­lu­tion to how music is dis­trib­uted and shared on the inter­net — and with a busi­ness model that returns a rev­enue to the artists.

Back in May 2010 I lis­tened to a radio pro­gram about the dimin­ish­ing num­ber of record stores in Swe­den [On-demand CD-production a future for the record store?]. I pon­dered whether “on-demand CD pro­duc­tion” could pro­vide some sort of future for the local record stores. The idea was that a dig­i­tal library could replace stores’ inven­tory. Shops would then be able to offer all the music avail­able on an inter­net to cus­tomers who could bring the music they liked freshly burnt on disc back home.

What the spe­cialised record store used to pro­vide was the oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten and share new music expe­ri­ences with friends. I remem­ber back in the late 1980’s how I used to stand with head­phones on by the counter and lis­ten to poten­tially inter­est­ing music, then fetch­ing another one, and another, before finally decid­ing on some­thing that felt new and interesting.

Since then I have, like so many oth­ers here in Swe­den, joined Spo­tify. I had in prac­tice stopped buy­ing CD’s alto­gether, and I didn’t like the idea of ille­gal down­loads — in fact I have long felt that the entire “Pirate Party” move­ment is highly unsym­pa­thetic. Instead I had in prac­tice quit buy­ing or oth­er­wise acquir­ing any new music. My old CD’s were feel­ing more and more dusty. I wanted to explore some fresh music and decided to try Spo­tify. Since then I’m one of those who pay about 10 euro per month to get unlim­ited ad-free mobile access to Spotify’s impres­sive music database.

An Spo­tify is good. So good in fact, that I take back my pre­vi­ous spec­u­la­tion about on-demand music and the poten­tial rebirth of the record store. Spo­tify pro­vides unlim­ited access to almost any music there is, and also the abil­ity to share playlists with friends. I have now come to fully agree with those who argue that the phys­i­cal CD is a totally unnec­es­sary arte­fact: Most of the ones I do own have now been put away in the garage for indef­i­nite final stor­age and I’m not miss­ing them.

Spo­tify makes CD’s feel about as mod­ern as old 78 rpm Bake­lite records while miss­ing the charm of antiq­uity pos­sessed by the latter.

What I would like is even bet­ter ways of explor­ing and find­ing new music through Spo­tify. Maybe they already exist? I know I’m  not tak­ing full ben­e­fit of the social func­tions that already built-in. Part of the rea­son is my reluc­tancy to log on to my Face­book account — I’m no great fan of the end­less stream of thumbs-up, uni­ver­sal broad­cast­ing of every­thing I do, and triv­ial com­ments about every­day life that I asso­ciate with Face­book. (Maybe I’m mis­taken?) But give me a way to pre­serve my integrity while I share and explore music with like minded peo­ple all over the world and I’m home.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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