Free, legal music, and social networking, sounds like MySpace, right? Think again. Now that we’re well into the twenty-first century, someone finally figured out a way to provide listeners with the one thing they have always longed for, free music. Originally, it seemed that the beauty of music was for free and broke cultural boundaries. Unlike art, clothing, homes, and food, music was something everyone could appreciate and make, regardless of economic status. Music was not a status symbol; instead it was available to everyone. Once records came along it was all pretty much downhill and listeners had to cough up. Finally the music industry has come full circle.
Spotify is just that. It’s a music streaming service that offers a diverse range of music from to Mac, PC and smartphone users alike. . All the user has to do, it to go to spotify.com and download the application, and with the click of button, you instantly have access to millions of song, the radio and your friends playlists. Listeners can then combine their iTunes library with their Spotify. Through this application, people can still listen to all of the music they purchased on iTunes and can continue to use iTunes without having to make any Spotify updates. Users can also stream their playlists in real time by connecting to Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live.
Although Spotify claims to be free, there is still one catch. Ads. Oh, and the convenience factor. If you want to access it offline and from your mobile device, you have to pay $9.99 a month. The downfall of the free version is those pesky advertisements interrupt your listening every few songs, and there’s no way to avoid them.
Spotify is Swedish founders, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon’s answer to a legal alternative to music piracy. The company came to life in 2008 and quickly garnered 10 million European users. Today, it is available in over eight countries and is the biggest sources of digital music revenue for record labels. Spotify is only growing. And according to Facebook co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, “Spotify is so good.” Clearly he’s a man of few words, regardless if he says it is good, it must be true.