Rhapsody has announced their music streaming service is now available in Germany and the UK via their Napster deal. A few months ago it was announced that Rhapsody acquired Napster, but that was for the US assets, thus they needed to signed a deal with the remaining Napster service in Europe.
Spotify is yet to launch in Germany to compete with Napster and Simfy, but this is expected to change very soon!
Spotify has just announced that Arcade Fire has released all of their albums on Spotify.
To celebrate, Spotify compiled our top Arcade Fire tracks. Take a listen here and be sure to add these talented Canadians to your playlists today!
NME has released their 50 best tracks of 2011 playlist via Spotify. It has been an amazing year in music and there are a huge amount of great tracks on this playlist.
Spotify has just launched their upgraded Spotify Radio service that takes a direct shot at Pandora. Spotify Radio offers unlimited stations and unlimited skips, so it is a mile ahead of the competition (potentially makes Pandora and We7 pointless).
Features:
A unique radio experience
Thanks to our all-new intelligent recommendation engine and multi-million track library, Spotify Radio is a music discovery experience without equal.
Unlimited skips
Don’t like a track? Skip it. You can skip as many times as you like. It’s your radio station.
The new Spotify Radio is being rolled out as we speak but you can also get the preview now! The preview version available for you here.
I have been noticing around the net that a lot of artists have been trying to find a quality solution to get their music added to Spotify for Free. RouteNote is the leading digital music distributor in the UK and we allow artists to add their music to the worlds largest music stores and streaming services for Fre (no upfront fees) and the artist keeps 85% of the royalties. Spotify is one of the services we have partnered with and they are providing some great promotion and revenues for artists.
If you want to get your music onto Spotify for free just check out RouteNote.
AIM (Association of Independent Music) has released their latest digital sales figures for indie labels and bands and it claims that 94.4% of all indie digital revenues is via iTunes, Amazon and Spotify. Everything else is fighting over just 5.6% of the market.
Alison Wenham, head of the UK-based consortium, pointed to a lopsided logjam. ”There are now a series of monopolies and it is jolly hard for anyone else to get a slice of the market”.
In the US there is still no Spotify presence and it seems as though eMusic is the third largest player, but Im sure they will change when Spotify finally enter the US this year.
Yesterday Digital Music News published an article about the state of Spotify royalty payments.
‘Viva Spotify’ isn’t quite the phrase being bandied about at Midem, and executives from both sides of the Atlantic are continuing to disparage. But this is a nuanced picture. Most European executives we’ve talked to recognized that Spotify has achieved ubiquity in many countries, and considerable progress on the premium front. And, this is an addictive product that’s playing by the rules.
But the money situation is problematic, and that has prompted a few independents to jump ship. But also on the major label side, the royalties are a royal problem. In fact, one major label executive close to the numbers pointed to a bizarre problem: there aren’t enough zeros in the royalty program to calculate the fractions being paid by Spotify.
So, think .00000000000005 euros and you get the idea. ”It’s laughable, if it wasn’t so sad really,” the executive told Digital Music News after a few beers.
It seems as though executives and even Digital Music News don’t understand why Spotify is a great service for artists. Having your music on a specific service isn’t always about the revenue generated by that single activity. Spotify allows artists to showcase their music with the aim of growing their fan base even further. I would much rather have 1 million listeners on Spotify and get some of them to see us in concert, instead of just selling a few downloads on another store.
Spotify also aims to provide a service that will attract users away from bittorrent and other p2p services. More music is being consumed that ever before and from a larger diversity of artists. However, legal music only makes up a less than 7% of the entire online music market. Executives should be focused on helping to grow these new services that will attract users from illegal alternatives, instead of trying to pick holes in the legal service of Spotify!
Spotify has received a huge amount of press since launch and it seems that the hype has been completely justified. Spotify is now about to pass 10 million users.
The company is holding a party in London later this month “to celebrate reaching 10 million users across Europe”, according to an invite sent out to press and partners.
It’s impressive growth, with Spotify still only available in seven countries: the UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Spain.
Disclosure: Spotify is partnered with RouteNote.
There are millions of users all over the world who are already using Spotify. If you dont already know, Spotify is a music streaming service, which allows users to create playlists and listen to tracks from millions of artists worldwide. Previously, it hasnt been very easy to get your music on Spotify and as they are about to launch in the USA it is now very important to join the leading music service.
RouteNote allows artists to get their music onto Spotify and other streaming music services for FREE. All artists need to do is head to RouteNote.com and signup for an account. Once you have signed up, you are able to upload your music and choose the partners you would like to send your music to. Its that easy!
There are so many other music distributors out there that charge artsits a lot of money for this service, plus most also charge per store. RouteNote is the ONLY distributor that doesnt charge any upfront fees!
Spotify and other streaming services are very important for artists. These services dont currently make artists huge amounts of revenues (unless you have millions of plays). These services are used more for promotion and as the internet progresses these service will make a lot more money and it will become the main revenue stream for artists (just my opinion).
Anyways, make sure you head to RouteNote.com and signup! Its that easy!
Spotify have just announced that their iPhone application will soon be able to multitask on the new iOS4 software for the iPhone. Users will now be able to listen to their music and use the other applications at the same time (no need for the iPod feature anymore!).
However, the company has just provided an answer in a blog post:
“We know that many of you have been waiting for an update to our iPhone app that supports the latest iOS 4 and background listening. We’re happy to say that an updated app has been submitted to Apple for review. Hopefully we’ll get a speedy approval and to make up for the extra little wait time we’ve added a nice little surprise to make Spotify mobile even more exciting for you, stay tuned!”
