First person to make it happen wins everything

Posted on September 6th, 2009 by Russ. Filed under Uncategorized.

Lots of people ask me what the goal is.

The goal is for you to be able to play any song, anywhere you are, in CD quality, for less per month than the price of a cd. If you’re too cheap to pony up, then you can listen to ads instead, but no more than 10m worth for every hour you listen. A light DRM in place is fine provided the technology exists to stream this anyplace you are. Who wants or needs downloads if you can just stream it whenever you want. Disks are so overrated. If the tech isn’t there do make that happen, then screw the DRM and let those that will pirate pirate and those that will pay pay. You’ll never get them to behave otherwise anyway.

That’s the goal. First person to make it happen wins everything.

This quote was written by Tom Pepper at Nullsoft about a decade ago. Today it became a reality (give or take the ads part, in certain territories, terms and conditions apply…).

Now let’s see if they do actually win everything. They’ve got my tenner a month.

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3 Responses to “First person to make it happen wins everything”

  1. Max Howell Says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 02:08

    Quite honestly I stopped using Spotify because too many times out of ten they didn’t have the content. So I’m still waiting for the provided quote to become reality.

    Of course in theory they will overcome this. But I’m not convinced they will because 95% of people aren’t looking for the more obscure bands like I am. And honestly, I am not that obscure in my tastes.

  2. Russ Says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 09:16

    Yeah, I have the same problems some of the time. But I think if they get enough traction they should be able to drag the rest of the labels with them.

    They certainly seem to be light years ahead of Last.fm in terms of catalogue coverage, but the real test will be the big artists who own their own rights: Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Eagles. But if iTunes can get the Beatles I don’t see why Spotify can’t.

  3. Rob McDougall Says:
    September 15th, 2009 at 22:48

    wow. that is remarkable insight for ten years ago. I thought the quote was recent till I read through…1

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About Me

I build infrastructure.

I currently work for Smarkets as Head of Tech Operations. Before that I worked at Last.fm. I also co-founded the London Hackspace.

I live in London and sometimes moonlight as a freelance photographer.

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