When the iPhone version of Spotify hit the App Store last week, we were amazed by the reaction.
Instead of endless posts singing the praises of mobile music, the reviews were largely negative: at the time of writing, 5,985 reviews of 9,164 are one-star reviews.
The problem? Spotify expects people to pay for music.
Were the comments by people who believe that everything should be free, irrespective of what it costs to produce? Perhaps - but maybe some of the negative reviewers have a point. £9.99 per month for music sounds reasonable, but only when you don't compare it to anything else.
The average person buys six CDs a year, we're told, and at current prices that isn't even £50 per annum - and that's for music that can be ripped, transferred to other devices and played in anything that's got a CD slot.
Spotify doesn't limit you to six CDs a year, of course, but the songs are tied to the software - and there's only so much time anybody can spend listening to music.
Don't believe us? Three words: Napster To Go. Like Spotify it offered unlimited music for a fixed monthly fee, and while it wasn't available on mobile - Napster Mobile was a shopfront, not a music service - it did work with PlaysForSure MP3 players.
Essentially, then, it offered the same deal as Spotify. It stiffed. Napster was flogged to Best Buy at the end of 2008 with just over 700,000 paying subscribers. For a service that's available not just in Europe but across the entire US, those numbers are terrible.
And then there's the BBC. If you look at the Beeb's breakdown of where the licence fee goes, £2.01 per month gives you all the BBC's radio output - that's Radio 1, Radio 2, 40-odd regional stations, the specialist DAB-only channels, the Asian Network and the talk and sport channels - while a further £0.61 per month gives you online, which means podcasts, streaming and iPlayer.
£2.62 for the Beeb compared to £9.99 for Spotify? Suddenly Spotify doesn't look quite so attractive.
Part of the problem is that in order to exist, Spotify has to pay the bills - and you can be confident that it's paying rates that the BBC would laugh at. By all accounts the going royalty rate for streaming music is around 1p per stream, which doesn't sound like a lot until you start getting lots of users.
One user listening to ten streams per day is 10p a day, or £3.00 per month - which means Spotify's paying more than the BBC spends on its entire radio and online output.
Spotify may have a special deal - its investors include record companies - but it's unlikely to be so special that it'd turn the BBC green. In exchange for access to all of the recorded music in the world, the BBC pays £50 million a year.
You can be sure that Spotify - or any other streaming music service - doesn't get anywhere close to that kind of price.
Perhaps we're wrong and Spotify's mobile application is going to be an enormous success. But we're beginning to think that Apple's approval of the application suggests otherwise. Apple could have killed Spotify by refusing to approve it, or by bringing out a subscription-based iTunes.
It stuck an FM tuner into the iPod Nano instead. Anybody reckon Apple's made the wrong choice?
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Your comments (9) Click to add a new comment
cash
September 18th 2009
9. A. How come i aint ever used any of the other services you're naming? B. How come i am paying for Spotify Premium, yet you decide it's too expensive? C. Comparing to illegal/"free" is in no way constructive.
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jasonic8
September 18th 2009
8. This is the second poor review I've read on Tech Radar (from a small sample). You can't compare this with radio as it's on Demand. If the catalog on Spotify was comprehensive it would be worth it. As it is less that 50% of the tracks I've look for are there.
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craiggrannell
September 16th 2009
7. Given that Spotify for mobile can sync & cache up to 3,333 tracks for 30 days, it's perfectly usable on the Tube and any other place where you lack a network connection. (Of course, if 3,333 tracks aren't enough for you, you might disagree.) As for ten quid per month, I think that's perfectly reasonable when you consider what you get. Sadly, too many people are used to 'free' music, not realising that this model (whether done via legal means or not) is totally unsustainable.
Ultimately, Spotify itself is doomed if it can't get more subscribers, as I pointed out on my article "Spotify: what people still aren’t getting about the service" - http://is.gd/3l2tu
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phibo78
September 16th 2009
6. I honestly don't see the big deal about Spotify, desktop version fine no problem but there is also other sites like it that don't need software such as the excellent we7.
for Mobile however, you need to have a good signal CONSTANTLY to stream, which just isn't possible alot of the time, As I've learned with various apps for Streaming Radio to iphone, it's just not a good enough connection.
what use it when you in the car? on the Motorway or on a train or even on a flights.
£10 a month (£120 per year), don't be silly, not when sites like Amazon/Tesco/itunes have special offers regularly for £4 albums.
It's destined for failure.
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agentcool
September 16th 2009
5. It is over-the-top at £9.99 a month for what you get from the current service; £5 should be the absolute maximum.
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rasskass
September 16th 2009
4. i would pay that much if i could keep the music i downloaded. i don't like the fact that some songs are grayed out that not available to my country and i don't think they have all the music.
few years ago i bought the n800 when it first came out and it came with a trial service of Rhapsody which shouldn't of worked for in the UK but it did, found that experience much better than spotify.
i think most of the negative reviews for spotify is that they didnt expect to pay for the service.
if Itunes had a subscription service and i could keep the stuff i be willing to pay whatever they ask for.
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tech89
September 15th 2009
3. £2 for the beeb - yes, but you can't choose your music output from the bbc radio services thats why people use spotify and it's a luxury if its on a mobile so why not charge £9.99? Spotify should do what it must to keep in the game. If you can afford the going rate for an iphone and the large contract cost that goes with it then £9.99 a month is nothing!!!
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louis058
September 15th 2009
2. Because it's on mobile, they can't do it for free, so it's annoying, but the desktop Spotify is awesome, cos it's free AND legal!
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mcdragon
September 15th 2009
1. I liked the comparison to the Beeb. I think the Premium Spotify is way overpriced. This won't get people of piratesource.
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