Why Spotify? Why?

There was a time, not so long ago, when a slightly younger me was very excited to learn about a new, FREE online music streaming service. Good quality music, with a huge catalogue of artists and with the only price being the occasional advert. Spotify, as it was, seemed to be the dog's bollocks.

You are probably aware of the conundrum most music addicts like myself face. I am not a rich man, I'm a student rapidly racking up debt and with food to buy and bills to pay. Money for CDs I have not, yet I refuse to download illegally. How then, shall I get my fix?

Spotify was the answer to this. I could listen to new albums almost as soon as they hit the shelves, check out support bands before gigs and delve into the murky world of the back catalogue and discover new artists. And I didn't have to pay. It was the equivalent of setting Charlie Sheen loose on a free bar with added seven gram rocks to bang and finish all night. I was a happy man. The situation was, you might say, bi-winning.

Ok, so debatable Charlie Sheen puns aside, it was a good deal. Yet as the cynics among you will point out, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Spotify wasn’t making money, and it failed pretty dismally when it tried to launch into America. The ads increased, and then, slowly, more and more limits started creeping into the service. Suddenly, new free users were limited in the amount of time they could stream tracks per month. More and more albums became 'Spotify Premium exclusives' and a baffling array of different price tariffs arrived. The whole thing became a little uncool as, for the fifth time in half an hour, your beautifully constructed playlist was interrupted by a stream of adverts for cars, Tinne Temph and pleas for you to join Premium...

I however, wasn’t affected so badly. I was one of the first people to sign up to Spotify, and my hours of streaming weren't affected. I got the adverts, but no limits, which I could put up with.

https://www.spotify.com/se/blog/archives/2011/04/14/upcoming-changes-to-spotify-free-open/
Then, this happened. Spotify have just announced a huge curbing of the free service. Unless you pay at least some money you'll now not be able to stream a track more than five times and will have a twenty hour limit per month. This is for everyone, new users on the free service and also the older accounts such as mine. The whole thing was accompanied by a pretty pathetic statement about how they were still committed to giving people music for free. Yeah right.

Now you'll probably think I'm just throwing my toys out of the pram because I'm finally being hit by limits to my endless streaming powers. Well no, because this is excessive. If the company were really dedicated to giving everyone free streamed music they wouldn't have effectively made the service toothless. Five chances to listen to a song? You must pity whoever has made that decision, they’ve obviously never fallen in love with a record and wanted to keep it on repeat for weeks at a time.

As well as this, it's a pretty big kick in the teeth for all the people who initially signed up. Without all those who made accounts, streamed music and spread the word, Spotify would never (in my opinion) have got so big.

Of course it is a very smart business move in a way. Many free users (myself included) will probably need musical crack so much they sign up to a paying service anyway. And those who don't? Well they weren't paying anything anyway, and they'll still have to listen to the adverts...but music shouldn't be about good business moves really should it?

Pointless, ill constructed rant over. I'm off to sign up to Spotify Unlimited, I hope I can sleep tonight...