
Spotify's huge ambitions to take down iTunes - ALee
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/02/spotify-music-streaming-itunes.html
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MrSartorial
I really think that Spotify is going to put Apple into a tough spot. iTunes is
fairly useful, but there are a lot of difficulties I have with it. A trend is
emerging where Apple is starting to be harped at for their closed policies by
more than just hackers. This could lead to a tipping point against them if the
issue builds traction. The more content they get their hands on, the more
regular users are noticing that they exert a lot of control over their
content. For some, this will never matter, but the number of people who it
does matter to appears to be increasing.

Aside from this, Spotify appears to be on the right tech trend: cloud
computing. With Google prepared to release a cloud computing operating system,
getting more and more info off of our computers and into a centrally located
space seems to be the way to go. Why not just run Spotify and have an app that
manages and streams my music from my phone? It means I don't really need a
huge hard drive anymore. It's convenient because rarely do we just listen to
the same limited playlist over and over again; people tend to enjoy a lot of
variety in their music.

I believe Spotify is on trend, and this will give them the advantage in the
future. More and more of our life content will keep moving to the internet I
think (I think this is a good thing as long as security is kept up).

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michael_dorfman
As a user, I have to say that Spotify is great. And here in Norway, at least,
it is really catching on-- they have 600,000 users (in a country of 4.6
million people).

I'm not so sure about their business model, though. I'm using the "free"
version, so they get no direct income from me-- and I'm skeptical that the ads
can support the license fees on the music.

I'd like to see them succeed, but I keep expecting them to disappear on me.

