Music has seen all sorts of developments since its invention in 1957 when Mark Irving stuck two pieces of string over a piece of cardboard, forming the basis for what we know as the guitar.
Originally, music lovers could only purchase their favourite tracks on an eight track or vinyl. But with evolving technology and the development of cassettes, the tapedeck meant that you could get music for free.
Obviously this has drawbacks unlike P2P networks used now. Most of the time, the audio would be terrible and you'd chop half the song off. ?Home taping is killing music? was the phrase that was thrown around. Users of services such as Limewire and Soulseek amassed a huge collection of music and it wasn?t until Spotify came around that users were encouraged to either listen to stuff for free or for a small fee each month. As it stands, one million users have agreed to pay for the service, though we can't understand why.
Once you break it down, Spotify is nothing more than a library, though there are a couple of obvious differences. Mainly being that in a real life library you get to deal with disgruntled pensioners that are employed to look after the books and the service is free and devoid of advertising.
For our American buddies who don't have the Spotify service yet, there are two versions of it. The first one is the one the majority of users go for: the ability to stream music of all kinds. From GaGa to rarer records. This is the free service which gives you access to the same amount of music as on the paid service, but with one subtle difference, adverts are played occasionally which can counter balance the flow of a record.
It's a small price to pay really, but record companies won't sign up to a service where nobody makes any money. So whilst listening to a list of classic Motown or early nineties acid house, the songs can be interrupted by the likes of Lenny Henry flogging us cheap hotels, or some insignificant nobody telling us about the benefit of eating turkey burgers. But for a fee of either ?9.99, these adverts can be eliminated.
For ?9.99 you're essentially paying for something that allows you to skip the adverts, kind of like PVRs do for TV. But the one fundamental thing you have to remember is that you simply don't own any of the music contained on the service.
Whilst we do see point and the convenience, buying MP3?s is an easier business than it was when iTunes dominated the market. Tracks can be purchased for under a ?1 and kept forever as your property. Then you have musical snobs like us who detest the faceless medium and go out looking for records released in limited quantities and only sold out of van at the end of a gig.
We won't lie and pretend that we don't have the service, but instead of wasting ?120 a year, we instead stick to the free service and use it as a quick way of checking out new artists or albums we're unsure of buying. The service gives some money back to labels that lose out money to illegal downloads but with this only being a service that helps artists who have a fan base, it can be a struggle for someone new to get themselves established.
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gilbert wham says
There’s a surprising amount of new artists releasing their stuff on P2P themselves, especially on the music-only trackers. Which, hopefully, gets more people to their gigs, and in some small way annoys people at Sony BMG et. al. And Simon Cowell obviously.