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When Spotify launched four years ago in Sweden, it launched not as a direct competitor to massive musical monoliths like iTunes, but as a cheap, all-you-can-eat alternative to piracy. People who were previously cut off from music by the Man were re-introduced to their favourite songs on the cheap. Spotify found a way to compete with free by ingeniously appealing to music lover’s morals. Now, someone else is using their killer feature, and giving it away for free. Meet the new MySpace.
MySpace has lived on quietly in the background of the internet for some time now as an indie music network. It was overhauled with the help an Aussie design firm recently and now it’s gearing up for its official launch.
I have had a peek behind MySpace’s red curtain, and it’s possibly the most beautiful and simple way to stream music I have ever seen. It’s fluid, smooth and inherently social. Playlists can be built for certain events so that photos taken at that event can later be attached and browsed by friends. You can connect with artists and songs right out of the gate and it’s all web-based from the outset as opposed to Spotify’s downloadable client.
Chris and Tim Vanderhook — MySpace’s re-founders — recently told ABC’s Download This Show that MySpace would be offered for free to users, and both indie and mainstream artists will be paid by the revenue garnered from visual, on-site advertising. Spotify, meanwhile, has a freemium model where you’re subjected to audio ads before you pony up the £5 per month to subscribe.
Spotify is copping flak at the moment about how much it pays artists, which is thought to be as little as $US0.009 per stream. On top of that, it’s about to lose the moral high-ground of internet streaming to MySpace. You can’t compete with something that’s free and legal. MySpace is prettier, faster, more intuitive, more social, cheaper and ultimately nicer to use from my preliminary hands-on.
So what happens when a more beautiful, more usable platform emerges that usurps Spotify’s moral high-ground as the musical alternative to piracy? Revolution.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Now, Spotify has become “the Man”. It feels less like a music lover’s tool, and more of a business these days. It took the appearance of Something For Kate’s Paul Dempsey at a Spotify event this morning to show just how different Spotify is from its artists. Paul, like all great artists, entertains on the fly. Spotify at its heart is now an empire, with bills to pay and bad PR to manage. The original goal of entertaining now feels secondary.
Spotify is about rescuing people from piracy on a proprietary platform built to a budget. MySpace is a beautiful platform built by music lovers, for music lovers, with indie artists, social sharing and good discovery at its core. We don’t know how MySpace is funding its artists other than via visual advertising, but then again, can it be much worse than Spotify’s 0.009 cents per stream?
People are inspired by music, and there’s no greater buzzkill for someone who loves supporting indie artists than knowing you’re getting music from the Man. Spotify is well on the way to becoming the new Man, and it still can’t compete with free, especially when the new free is legal.
We’ll have to wait and see if MySpace can wrest control of the space from Spotify when it finally launches out of beta.
Gizmodo Australia is gobbling up the news in a different timezone, so check them out if you need another Giz fix.
design formally known as metrofied much?
I don’t think Spotify is the man. I use Spotify’s Beta Web client anyway. And the Spotify integration with Facebook is perfect – mySpace will force us to use their social network. And Spotify is totally worth £10 a month.
I was going to say something about “stop trying hard to be relevant, MySpace” but I’m genuinely interested and will reserve judgement until after the curtain is lifted.
The article itself doesn’t help, as we as mere peons have no way of comparing the two businesses when MySpace has not been properly unveiled yet, whereas Spotify is out there warts and all.
And will someone please make a noise about Soundcloud? They’ve just had a site redesign and it has been quite overhauled in some respects.
After years of migrating from one indie music hosting service to another as they inevitably went under or sold out, Soundcloud has been a bastion of stability for my tracks and I’d be reluctant to move them anywhere else without a serious incentive.
They do lack a “community” aspect at Soundcloud – they could certainly improve it at the very least. But with integration into Facebook and the ability to post tracks elsewhere on the web it does very well indeed.
I think Soundcloud is a service that has become so popular with indie musicians that maybe new or revamped IP’s like MySpace should probably offer integration for it.
MySpace will have a legacy of independent music from their golden years but they’ll need to encourage us to fill the 10 year gap when they sucked
https://soundcloud.com/gjindancer
Thanks for the Soundcloud link, took some time to comment and follow on your profile.
It’s nice to know that Soundcloud is reliable and while it lacks the social aspect I have found it perfect for posting on other sites and hooking a plugin to forum posts.
Thanks!
Well that article was pretty redundant, your argument for how Myspace is better, is completely and utterly flawed yes it may be excellent for Indie artists but its a whole different ball game when your talking about the major labels. Diva’s and ruthless business types are different to long haired, green tea drinking hippies.
I doubt Myspace has even a slight shot at supplanting Spotify as the audience is very different and if Myspace stays free then people will happily pay for Spotify while use a free version of Myspace
Yes, it assumes that music lovers will adopt an either / or approach for music consumption services. There is nothing to stop people from using both for different purposes.
I find it hard to imagine that MySpace will offer a comparable service to Spotify while charging nothing.
If something sounds too good to be true it’s probably because it isn’t true.
Unless the new myspace also has fully fledged mobile apps with offline caching it’s going to struggle to win over spotify premium subscribers and judging by the visual adds deal I’m guessing it wont be going that direction
I’ve been using it for a week now and the UI looks nice, but doesn’t feel intuitive in some parts.
But.
I do love the music streaming. I’ve been able to find some really old tracks as well as new ones and play them without ads playing in between like Spotify.
As a social platform, meh. I’m hooked on the music though.
Does this mean that a company backed by Justin Timberlake could be going up against a company backed by Sean Parker? How very meta.
Ok, but, and it’s a big but.
With Spotify, I have a mobile app, that lets me play my music in my car, through my car stereo.
I’m not seeing this with the new MySpace. It doesn’t look like it will be usable at all on mobiles, and a web app is not really an ideal way to play the music through the stereo, it needs proper controls and widgets etc.
So unless this will come with the ability to take my music anywhere – a massive part of the appeal of Spotify – then to me it’s useless and just another *yawn* streaming website.