Spotify...?Follow

It's a good thing, especially for parties. Here you can pay 99p and get rid of the ads for 24hours.

Honestly, if I'm not having a house party or whatever I can tolerate the ads every 3-5 songs.

I have no idea why this thing is supposed to be a big deal. Isn't it just the same thing as Grooveshark?

I'm seriously asking. If there's some hook that I'm missing here, please fill me in.

Though grooveshark is still subject to legal battles over copyright and such. The fact is that most of their content is uploaded by people with no rights to it, and a DMCA violation gets it removed. They're skating by right now by using the fact that uploading copyrighted material is technically against their TOA, but they've clearly not been working at all to police it themselves.

Pink Floyd won a suit against them recently, demanding that all their material be taken down (without a DMCA complaint against each one). Considering that precedent, I wouldn't be surprised if labels started suing the company to have all their music removed. And there's still a standing suit from UMG against them right now.

Sites like YouTube manage to get by due to the fact that they have a massive amount of user-created content. I'd wager the vast majority of it isn't illegally uploaded. Grooveshark can't really make that claim.

Now, they do have some licensing deals (all of which started in lawsuits I think).

Spotify is different in that it has built in DRM and only the artists (or labels, etc.) can upload music to the system. These companies all have contracts with Spotify, so it's probably not going anywhere soon (at least for legal reasons).

I'm starting to get fed up with the music and video industries, tbh. I get that their profits are dropping, and that they hate it. I totally do. But the fact that it is taking third parties to come in and (illegally) force them to change their business models is kinda absurd. Something like spotify could have emerged 5-10 years ago, easily, had they not been thrashing and dumping massive amounts of money into lobbying campaigns.

And take anime, for example. Anime companies have spent ridiculous sums of money fighting fansubbers. But the fact remains that the fansubbers were, for a very, very long time, offering a service that industry simply wasn't. Scream about me downloading the latest <insert anime episode> all you want. The fact remains that my Japanese isn't good enough to watch the non-subbed version, I don't want to watch the dubbed version, and I don't want to wait a year (or more) to have to pay $40 for 12 episodes I only intend to watch once. [EDIT] Oh yeah, and we live in a digital age. It's so difficult to avoid spoilers for shows you are watching a year+ after they come out, like you would need to if you planned to watch an official dubbed anime. And god forbid it gets picked up by 4kids...[/EDIT]

It took anime companies so long to discover that, by streaming a subbed episode online with ads, they could make profit instead. I mean c'mon. And I can only imagine they are making way more off of these streams than they would have on DVD sales. Best part? The majority of fansubbing groups have dropped any anime that gets an official sub stream, as they always said they would.

Had these corporations really embraced the new format, and found creative solutions to funding (in ads, varying subscription levels for services, etc.) things would have gone so much smoother for everyone.

Instead, we now have people facing millions of dollars in damages fees for downloading 12 songs illegally.

>:(

Edited, Jul 20th 2011 7:08am by idiggory