No such thing as a free lunch
There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth today following the announcement from music streaming service Spotify that it's introducing restrictions to its ‘free' (ad-funded) model.
From now on, new Spotify users will only get access to the current unlimited free service for the first six months. After that they will only be able to play an individual track up to five times, ever, and the total listening time will be limited to ten hours per month. Existing users who signed up before 1 November 2010 will see these changes kick in on 1 May, for everyone else it's six months after joining.
"Spotify's aim from the very beginning was to make music on-demand available to all," said the blog announcing the move. "To give you the power to listen to, discover, share and manage your music the way you want to - simpler, faster, better - while making sure the artists whose music we all love continue to see the benefits as we grow.
"Above all, this means we can continue making Spotify available to all in the long-term. We'll be bringing out some awesome new features as well as significant improvements over the coming months, which will make the Spotify experience even better."
To what extent this change was brought about by the failure of the ad-funded business model, or pressure from rights-holders or whether it was always part of the plan is unclear. But opinion seems to be divided on whether it's a positive step.
The first comment on the blog post was: "So long Spotify. It was nice nowing you [sic]. Guess I'll go back to pirating music again then." But that was soon countered with: "Stop complaining. You can't get everything for free. Just dig down and pay those 49 SEK a month it costs to get rid of the limitations and commercials. It's worth it you know."
This typifies the debate over ‘free' stuff in general online. One school of thought feels entitled to free stuff and genuinely indignant that individuals and companies should charge for their work. The other acknowledges that everything has a price, and that it's down to the individual to decide whether they're willing to pay it.
Spotify, and rights-holders, will be hoping that the majority of heavy Spotify users will have been sufficiently convinced of the value of the service to decide it's worth paying for. Those who do decide to revert to illicit means of acquiring music will presumably be paying via a diminished user experience. Again, that's their choice, but they must also decide if the threat of legal action is a justifiable extra cost.
