In Praise of Spotify | September 20th, 2011
When I was 18 and went off to Northwestern, I thought the newfound ability to centrally store, play and enlarge my music library through compressed MP3 files was the coolest thing ever. (Then-beloved Winamp also had those great skins: The purple theme and NU logo from Daniel’s Winamp Skins (still online since 1998!) went so well with Busch Light and DJ Kool’s “Let Me Clear My Throat” in a Bobb dorm room.)
When I was 23 and got around to an iTunes account and MP3 player, I thought being able to legally buy music for cheap and run the whole library on a handheld device was the coolest thing ever. (You gotta outgrow the college piracy at some point.)
Yet eventually my fascination with those two digital-music mediums wore out, and the poor interface and DRM annoyances, respectively, sank me into sonic complacence. But based on my experience, the newest (at least to the U.S.) digital-music wunderkind has the promise to stick around for a lifetime of ear-splitting goodness: Spotify.
I’ve had a Spotify paid account for almost two months now, and this fits into my “the bomb” pantheon of software. For $10 a month, I get access to unlimited plays of more than 15 million instantly retrieved songs, whenever and wherever I want. The Spotify Android app duplicates all of this functionality on my phone, including being able to play tracks without the Internet connection if I’ve created and synced the tunes to a playlist. Normally I’m a cheap bastard online, but hell yeah I’ll pay $10 for that type of music-fan elation and convenience.
Spotify has been an iTunes killer for me because its catalog has just one DRM gate. I have no idea how $10 per month makes enough money for Spotify to get access to the Universal, Warner, EMI, Sony and Merlin catalogs (UPDATE 10/11 – Seems they aren’t making enough money to do that) — according to The Guardian, it’s because the creative talent is getting screwed on their share (shocking) — but for us end users, the goal has always been to get in the door and gorge on as many songs as we want. Spotify chief Daniel Ek is completely correct in this article when he says that any music service needs to be more convenient than piracy to be successful, and Spotify miraculously does that with the companies’ cooperation.
Providing this single, convenient gate is where the main competitors fall short. iTunes’ single-track DRM means it would theoretically cost me $14 million to fully access the catalog, which is quite a bit more than the $12,000 I’d pay to access Spotify for 100 years. Spotify may tie me to its application for playing any Spotify-accessed music, and I have to add tracks to a playlist to take them with me offline, but so many iTunes downloads restrict playability to iTunes and Apple systems that this is basically a wash between the two. (I’ve lost several purchased albums by switching out of iTunes, the most anger-inducing being Meantime by Helmet, which was a great “time to kick ass at weights or PowerPoint” album.) On the unlimited-play side, Grooveshark ostensibly does a lot of the same stuff as Spotify for free, but it’s got huge shortcomings: Grooveshark’s catalog depends on user uploads, playing local files is a convoluted pain in the ass, the mobile app requires a paid subscription, and I have to be connected to the Internet to play anything.
The importance of playlists in Spotify means I’ve made some themed gems, including “Destroy All Workouts”, “Your Basic NYC Meat-Market Bar Circa 2004″, “Yes, I Sometimes Listen to Hipster/Indie Shit” and “Music For Baby Boomers in Powerboats at the Three Rivers Regatta”. I also use the Starred playlist to rotate songs in and out of music-binge mode, so that’s a pretty eclectic grouping that currently features Lil’ Wayne, The National, Megadeth, Nicki Minaj, Nirvana, The Kills and The Archies. (“Sugar Sugar” is still the shit after 40 years.) The best part? You too can subscribe to “Music For Baby Boomers in Powerboats at the Three Rivers Regatta”, because Spotify did a great job with playlist sharing across Facebook friends using the service.
To close, the executive summary of this post: Spotify is great.
Trent Reznor: Saw him at the Pittsburgh airport. (He grew up about an hour north, in Meadville.) He got his own bags. Short dude, but cool hair.
Jeremy Piven and Adrian Grenier: Driving an SUV and heading to a fried-seafood restaurant with a really skinny girlfriend, respectively. For some reason that trip to L.A. became the “see people from Entourage” trip. I also saw Mrs. Ari Gold on the trip before that one.
Whoopi Goldberg: She was walking up Sixth Avenue. That’s pretty much it.
Jim Lehrer: At a book-launch party in D.C. at Ben Bradlee‘s house. (I met him too, but that’s an interesting anecdote for another time.) Lehrer = super nice and introduced himself as if the rest of us would have no idea who he is. (“Hi, Jim Lehrer, nice to meet you.”)
L.L. Cool J: Walking through O’Hare airport. The woman ringing up my gum bailed in the middle of our transaction to go stare at him.
Dennis Kucinich: Strangely, in 2.5 years in D.C., and even having lived on Capitol Hill, Dennis Kucinich was the only recognizable politician I encountered. (Presidential motorcades don’t count.) I was out on a run and the Rep from Ohio was walking with some staff. Seriously short dude.
Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour: I met them at the CNN 25th anniversary party in Atlanta. Wolf is pretty short, and Christiane drinks Miller Lite.
Bill Cobbs: I didn’t know his name either, but I just now learned it when I looked up the guy from Night at the Museum that I saw waiting for a car in NYC.
Joey Porter: Saw him in NYC when the gate agent called for “Passenger Porter, Joey.” He flew coach. I told him “Nice game” and he said “Thanks.” It was craziness!
Joe Biden: Getting on a plane to D.C. in LaGuardia. Since I saw him in NYC, he doesn’t count for D.C. politician sightings. Tall, and mo old.
Chris Noth: Eating lunch with some homeless-looking guy in the same Hell’s Kitchen restaurant as me and two female friends. The two friends completely flipped out. Chicks.
Blair Underwood: He was waiting to cross the street in NYC, then I think he got on a bus. But why would Blair Underwood ride the bus? So I’m only 90 percent sure it was him, rather than 100 percent. But if it was Underwood, I would say he has, in fact, gotten on a bus.
Don Cheadle: On the five-hours-later-than-scheduled flight I finally caught to D.C. on the same day as the Biden sighting. A coworker on the flight, sitting directly behind Cheadle, completely missed him even with all the people mysteriously hanging around his seat. Short dude.
Michael Stipe, Christina Ricci, Mike Tyson and Heather Graham: All seen at a Guggenheim benefit party in NYC that I attended thanks to a helpful friend who worked there. Unfortunately I was a bit out of place: me and Mike Tyson were the only people not in suits, and I’m pretty sure that he’s the one of the two of us who could pull that off. Whoops. But I did make eye contact with Heather Graham. She and Mike Tyson later 
Michael Phelps: A recent addition; I was watching the first Presidential debate with some UMich sectionmates at The Blue Leprechaun bar, then Phelps rolled in with an entourage of 15 college-age party types and the bar owner kicked us out of our spot. When we left 10 minutes later, there was a line around the block to get in.
Ted Turner: He was down the hall at one of the TIME conferences. I also saw Bill Clinton and Bill Gates at this thing, but they were scheduled speakers, which would be cheating to include.
Bob Novak: I’m surprised I forgot him, since he just died yesterday. Saw him at the restaurant where I was eating dinner with some coworkers. No CIA secrets were revealed to me.