Last week, SpiralFrog, the allegedly pioneering ad-supported music service closed down. The New York-based company which started up in August 2006 managed to survive longer than I expected. Apparently its demise was due to “compression of the ad markets” and the oft-used global economic slowdown. Obviously, therefore, nothing to do with its restrictive DRM policy or that it failed to get two of the four major record companies to license music to its service.
Maybe it just failed to predict the future of the music industry: Apple’s iTunes Store, the most successful online service now sells music without DRM - I think exclusively, as of this month - which means little possibility of losing playback capability if it closes down. Then there’s the subscription aspect.
Until recently, I strongly felt that the subscription model was flawed. Speaking as one who wants to own music because I can choose to play what I want, where and when I want, the idea of renting (or borrowing) music seemed wrong. Especially given there’s always a risk of my musical companions being taken away from me. Now that I’m using Spotify (a music streaming service based in Sweden) I can see a benefit for me: it allows me to listen to or try music by new artists or those I wouldn’t usually buy, and in turn it benefits artists by increasing their exposure.
It doesn’t however give me any way to download music for off-line listening, but that doesn’t matter to me because there are other stores which already do it proficiently (as indeed they did back in 2006). SpiralFrog failed precisely because it overreached its ambitions, trying to corner the subscription market whilst holding onto the download market, just in case. It failed to do a single thing well.
Spotify still has a way to go before it becomes indispensable: firstly it needs to expand to more countries (particularly the US and Canada) and it needs to be more consistent across borders as to what music is offered. Ironically, both of these obstacles remain due to archaic music licensing issues and the fragmented way in which major labels are managed. It’s up to the labels to change their ways. The technology, and probably the audience, is already here.
