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A Look at Spotify – With My Music Industry Hat On

Spotify on a Snowy Day in Wales

Have you tried Spotify yet?

Tucked away in today’s post on Spotify’s own blog is a file listing newly included recordings by some of my favourite labels and artists.

Labels represented on the list today include: Rough Trade, Poker Flat, XL, Rhino/Elektra, ECM, Universal, Pressure Sounds and more…

Artists on the list from today include: Stereolab, Antony & The Johnsons, Evan Parker, Basement Jaxx, Ray Charles, Si Begg, Elvis Presley, Henry Mancini, Ozzy Osbourne and loads more…

While I write this, I’m listening to a very timely collaborative playlist of snow-related songs. Thanks to @radioedit for that tip-off. I just added “Winter Sadness” by Kool and the Gang for anyone else who’s listening to it.

OK, so what’s Spotify? Rather than rehash what stacks of articles and blog posts are saying, I can recommend Chris Salmon’s introduction to the music streaming service from the Guardian and Rhodri Marsden’s early peek last year from the Independent.

My angle on Spotify? I used to run a label fulltime. It was my business to find revenue streams for recordings and artists. Spotify should be tremendously exciting for anyone in that position now. I still have good ties with the music industry. (I help people with blogging, social media and how to promote on the web without being annoying or spammy.)

The music business is very often criticised – sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly – for being slow to take advantage of new distribution methods. Of course, when people say “music business” here they really mean the “record business”, which is a subset of it. Now, let it not be said that any of these labels has been backward in signing up for Spotify. It feels like we’re reaching a zone of mutual agreement where everyone’s happy – not only the people running the service and the fans, but the artists and labels as well. Merlin (which represents digital rights for many, many independent labels, often slightly overlooked by online music services) were happy to sign their deal with Spotify in September 2008.

If you are a band, record label or otherwise involved in the record business or music business in any way, make sure you try it. It’s all legal, licensed and legitimate. If you’re in the USA or one of the territories not currently covered by Spotify, you have the right to feel left out.

You should be able to create a free account here. (It doesn’t appear that you need an invitation at the moment. As far as I can see, that was clever marketing – creating an impression of scarcity and bestowing users with a limited number to pass on to their friends.)

Barring any mishaps, this is a future of music distribution. Notice I said “a future” – it may not be the sole future, but if you’re a label you need to consider it and put as much time and energy into researching it as you would into being stocked on iTunes and other services. You’ll reach people who wouldn’t normally listen to your music. You’ll get money from Spotify as a direct result, as well as drawing attention to your other music activities, like your gigs and merchandise. Ask your digital distributor or aggregator about it.

People are comparing it with other music streaming services like Pandora and Last.FM. While Pandora was groundbreaking in popularising the track play rather than the track purchase, it had licensing problems leading it to withdraw from the UK. So that’s clearly no good. Last.FM has been well adopted by music aficionados and the tech savvy, but in my opinion needs to work to grow its user base beyond the “heads” and keep all the labels happy, not just the major labels. Its distinctives are music discovery and tagging. (In fact you can scrobble your Spotify listening to Last.FM.)

Even YouTube is a fairly good celestial jukebox for many. Whether YouTube are actually paying rights owners or not is another question. My strawpoll of independent labels says ‘no’. YouTube are busy enough trying to get revenue for themselves.

That’s three examples of music streaming. On a technical level, to casual observers I’ve spoken with, Spotify doesn’t appear to be doing anything dramatically new. But I disagree. The streaming is flawless and uninterrupted. It’s as good as iTunes for sound quality. Importantly for me, the bass is rich and heavy. Hardcore audiophiles may grumble about the bitrate, but they always do – and they still have their cherished music formats.

The main technical reason why Spotify will explode is its SIMPLICITY. People thought iTunes or eMusic was instant gratification, but now you don’t even need a credit card. You just start streaming. The barriers to enjoyment are just non-existent. It’s actually easier to play your favourite album than to grab the CD from your shelf and load it into a drive! It feels somewhat indulgent. That simplicity is why it will win. That’s why it can compete with unlicensed peer-to-peer filesharing services. Take music on tap and make it even easier.

Later, you can delve into collaborative playlists and the like when you feel the need. You can deep link to a chosen lyric or favourite guitar solo, which will change music criticism and other writing for the better. In a music education or academic research context, your citation can include a hyperlink to the moment in the recording to which you’re referring. In turn this availability will continue to open up influences on people creating music. (Although this process did begin with the first version of Napster.)

For now people will continue to acquire music files by other means, often unlicensed and illegal. The Spotify catalogue is huge with many surprising inclusions from the majors, like U2, Madonna, Prince and Coldplay all represented. But there are gaps because of various rights issues relating to other artists. After a recent cull, The Beatles are only represented in cover versions. The same goes for Metallica and others. The precise catalogue listings vary depending on which country you are in, again due to contractual rights.

For their iPods and other portable players, fans will acquire music files because you also need internet access to stream music on Spotify.

But if Spotify can succeed in expanding the catalogue and porting the application to smaller devices, in tandem with public expansion of free wifi access, it will render the arguments about filesharer penalties totally irrelevant. Why would fans expose themselves to the malware risks and badly named or encoded files? Even the time-rich, money poor kids will agree with that.

The advertising seems very infrequent which is good for the user experience. I would say it’s roughly every 20 to 30 minutes. It feels odd to hear the advert transition into a track, which is an association I have with commercial radio – yet I’m listening to genres I like that are almost never played on commercial radio e.g. proper ambient, Welsh language music and dub.

A recurring advert which amuses me is the Energy Saving Trust because it’s a campaign part-funded by the UK government. This is surely the best use of public money for fun and culture since the Soviet Union’s nationalised record label Melodiya.

That said, there is a very small pool of ads so they’re not very targetted at the moment. I’m getting UK ads (which is relevant to me) but they include an ad for Lady GaGa’s new album – when I haven’t been listening to anything resembling that kind of music. That can be improved when more advertisers are on board. Besides, I can imagine music fans in their hordes falling in love with Spotify and opting to escape the advertising completely by signing up to the paid service. It’s a very reasonable 99p for one day or £9.99 for a month.

Last Friday I was invited to talk on a discussion panel in Cardiff hosted by Welsh Music Foundation. (Incidentally, thanks to them and to the other panel members, Dai Lloyd, Simon Rugg (Indie Mobile) and Mark Mitchell (King Harvest)). We had a very insightful discussion with a diverse audience of smaller and newer labels and bands. Not too many of them had heard of Spotify, which leads me to think it hasn’t quite tipped yet. But that will change.

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Loads and Loads and Loads of Unsold Cars

Here’s a Guardian gallery with fleet upon fleet of unsold cars.

If you like

  • big pictures
  • of large numbers
  • of small things

you’ll LOVE it. Unless you’re a car manufacturer.

There’s a huge one of these car facilities on the M5 motorway in England, going south-west towards Clevedon or other Somerset towns. I used to see it when driving to LOUD Mastering studio in Taunton or friends’ houses. Avon and Somerset is a part of the world which fascinates me. For a start you have Portishead town which spawned a rather good band. I would say there is a slight difference in pronunciation emphasis between the town name and band name. The area of Avon is named directly after the River Avon, derived from something like “afon” in Brythonic, which in modern Welsh just means “river”. Then in Somerset, I’ve never been to Nailsea but the town of Clevedon is an ultra-quiet coastal town with a pier. Then deep into Somerset (by my reckoning) you have those peculiar village names like Curry Mallet, Curry Rivel and Temple Cloud. Of which the latter has a signpost saying “canine hydrotherapy centre”. Which to me was a new concept but apparently not entirely as mystical foo-foo as it sounds. Speaking of which, there’s also Glastonbury town which of course lends its name to the festival – known by locals by the quaintly modest name of “Pilton Pop Festival”. Back to the cars, you see them on the right-hand side while driving due south-west over a bridge. On a map it would be here. It looks very spectacular down at Avonmouth Docks and I wouldn’t do it justice by attempting my own photograph. If you’re driving, don’t take your eyes off the road. These thoughts all occurred to me within seconds of seeing those Guardian car pictures. Serious.

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People of the UK! Let’s Show we Care about Government Openness

[ UPDATE 16/02/09: I’ve had a letter from my MP, Kevin Brennan, in reply to my email. It’s dated 12th February 2009 and reads “Thank you for contacting me regarding Freedom of Information and MPs expenses. I believe it is essential that elected representatives should have the support necessary to perform their functions, including the requirement to represent their constituency at Westminster in parliament. In addition I believe that the public are entitled to see how any expenses paid for from the public purse are spent, and following the debate which took place in the Commons there will be full publication in the near future.” ]

[ UPDATE: Gordon Brown has now backed down and withdrawn this proposal. Although I’ve had no reply as yet from my MP (Labour party), it’s still rather excellent news. ]

Whatever your political persuasion, if you live in the UK and value government openness then this may trouble you.

Ministers are about to conceal MPs’ expenses, even though the public has just paid £1m to get them all ready for publication, and even though the tax man expects citizens to do what MPs don’t have to. They buried the news on the day of the Heathrow runway announcement. This is heading in the diametric wrong direction from government openness.

The above quote is taken from mySociety where you can find more info on how to complain. You have until Thursday 22nd January 2009 to do this.

If you’re on Facebook, there’s a group to spread the word.

I’ve written to my MP. If he responds, I’ll post it here.

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I am also writing at Native blog

Quick intro to my working situation.

Native is a business that helps you with online media, based in Cardiff, Wales. It’s a two-headed partnership, of which the heads are me and Tom Beardshaw.

At the moment we are meeting loads of people for coffee: old friends, new friends, clients, potential clients, people who create stuff, suppliers, “competitors”…

Never did I drink so much coffee as these past few weeks.

During our chats it has emerged that we’d like to have somewhere to round up interesting articles – for our clients, people we’re training and people who’d like to find out what we’re thinking. These are often curious yet busy people who want inspiration but don’t have time to subscribe to an imperial tonne of blogs.

So as well as the personal blog you’re currently reading, I am also writing regular posts at the Native blog.

I’m covering online media and how it affects business, particularly creative business and business based in Wales.

It has a different tone to Quixotic Quisling. The Native blog has fewer ramblings and more news. It is more frequent and more linky. Actually often it will be a set of recommended links with assorted commentary, open-ended questioning and provocation. I’m following Jeff Jarvis’ guideline – cover what you do best and link to the rest.

We’ll also be posting info on Native web projects. Tom and I are retaining our autonomy as freelancers but have set up Native for bigger projects where we complement each other.

Recently we have been working out what we do and don’t do. “Cover what you do best and link to the rest” may apply to more than just URLs.

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Penrose’s Patent and the Battle of the Tissue Tiles (Contains Mathematics)

Penrose bar 2

This drama has got it all – art, law, maths, a genius professor/knight, a multi-national company, a courtroom…

I was reading about Roger Penrose and I realised that today is the 30th anniversary of his success in applying for a patent on Penrose tiling. So this isn’t exactly news, but the anniversary is my excuse to post up some cool links.

Penrose tiling was discovered in 1974. You can pick up the idea behind it pretty quickly.

We’re familiar with bathroom tiles and similar types of designs that have translational symmetry. In other words, they repeat after a while. Penrose tilings don’t repeat. They are non-periodic. But they also have five-fold rotational-symmetry.

This combination of properties had never been seen before. People assumed it was impossible until Penrose came along and drew one. Awesome scenes, no?

If you want to investigate this for yourself, you can start with some pretty pictures and then delve into the actual maths.

Penrose successfully got the patent through on 9th January 1979. And that’s where it gets contentious as there are people who would take issue with this. It was undeniably an innovative step and in this instance a patent can incentivise further discovery and get some pay-off for a mathematicians’s hard work. But is it right to award patents to mathematicians who discover stuff that’s lying around in the Universe? I’m not at all sure it is right, but that’s what happened. Happy birthday patent!

Much later on, in 1997, Mrs Penrose came home with some Kleenex toilet roll from the supermarket. Her husband, the prof, was shocked to discover that the pattern on the roll of tissue was based on his tiling. There’s a good summary of the beginning of the story here. It couldn’t have been an exact copy because the original is non-repeating. Apparently the design prevents bunching of the roll because it’s non-periodic. Penrose sued the company and later won.

I think I’m right in saying the patent will have expired by now, if you want to make anything with the design.

I first heard this story in a mathematics lecture in 2002, my final year at Cardiff University. It was during a module called Non-Commutative Geometry. I won’t try and pretend otherwise – in truth that module was an absolute beast, every bit as difficult as it sounds.

I’m not totally sure why I find myself continually revisiting school and university in this blog. Maybe I have unfinished mental tidying to do.

Anyway, my lecturer at the time showed us Penrose tiling and related the Kleenex story. In a flourish (and this was a flourish by maths undergrad standards, yours may differ), he ended the story by saying “Of course, the company had to withdraw the item from the shelves… BUT NOT before I had a chance to snap up THIS!”. At which point he reached under the desk and produced a bog roll. “And what is more, the top 3 scorers in the exam will each get a free sheet – with my compliments”.

This was, comparatively, one of my highlights of that year.

I was actually mildly disappointed not to win a sheet. If I ever manage to catch one on eBay it’s going to feel like cheating.

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My New Year’s Resolution – White Inbox Every Night

I’m setting myself a few New Year’s Resolutions for 2009.

They’ll also be New Years’ Resolutions. Note the apostrophe placement because some of these things are just too good for only one year.

One of them relates to email.

Email is a blessing and a curse for me. Recently – OK, for the last few years actually – I’ve been trying to reform my approach to it in order to get more and better stuff done in a working day.

Some of this includes

  • Not “living” in email (because it takes me away from project domain into message domain)
  • Processing it all in one big batch, two or three times a day where possible
  • Then while I am looking at it, deleting junk and spam on sight
  • Ditching fiddly folders and just using one archive folder because search is all you need
  • Transferring stuff to a paper to-do list or some more appropriate medium
  • Phoning people instead

Additionally

  • I use Thunderbird so to speed things up I’ve got Quicktext (for quick fire templates of readymade “cheat” replies) and Buttons so I can have a lovely massive “Archive this!” button (like the one in Gmail).

So aptly enough, I just spotted this tweet on Twitter from @billt and @suw linking to a new pledge on Pledgebank (built by mySociety who are doing several rather neat things with the web).

I had no problem with the spirit of the pledge. Email was designed for sending and receiving messages. It is not a to-do list – it wasn’t designed for that.

Now and again though there could be a day when I’d need the freedom NOT to check email, so I was initially reluctant to sign.

Then I realised, with some prompting, that this was about inbox rather than pop box. The distinction is important. In other words, if I don’t want to look at email for one day (which is possible and desirable once in a while!), then I can keep to the pledge by not downloading any email at all.

Here we go.

Between you and me I’ll be keeping the pledge whether or not they hit the target number of signatures. But if you fancy joining me – or rather, us, because in this wired world you might as well take full advantage of sincere encouragement on offer from absolute strangers – then you can sign up.

I’ll probably be spending less time on email now, somewhat freeing me to make curries and also visit new places. Incidentally, both of these plans form the essence of a couple of other resolutions.

The Pledgebank system just sent me an email – to confirm my signature on the pledge. Which is a rather apt but not entirely helpful start…

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Thoughts on Attempting a “Review of the Year”

The Joy Collective is a rather splendid blog about music.

It tends to focus on Cardiff, Newport and Bristol, which makes a lot of sense because all three are close enough to share their gig-going crowds. Plus, truly, they are among the UK’s best cities for gigs.

Recently Will at The Joy Collective sent me some questions about my experiences of 2008. So I dashed off some answers, knowing they could never be comprehensive or definitive.

Some thoughts:

  • It’s fun to take stock of cultural things. Counting off years is a great opportunity to do that.
  • Old stuff can be good too. In fact there is much more good old stuff – because there’s more. Compare past millennia of culture to 2008, which is only one year. Of course, the old also has much more rubbish too.
  • Time CAN be a filter of quality because utter rubbish does get forgotten.
  • Old books, old films, old music can be worth the effort. While a lot of it is rubbish or irrelevant, history is rich with things waiting to be rediscovered.
  • We often don’t try to discover the old. What proportion of the books on your shelf were written pre-1900? What about, say, black and white films? (What about your computer games? I don’t play much these days but are they an exception – disposable culture?)
  • Assumptions (often false): new is “better”, new is a “progression”. Even in our digital age, these assumptions lead to a market scarcity of old stuff, or a scarcity in popular archives like libraries or databases. This deprives us of the opportunity to check the old stuff out and thus we have a vicious circle. (Examples: even iTunes doesn’t have many recordings from 78rpm era. And you can’t watch, say, Casablanca at the cinema – usually.)
  • Newness governs demand and therefore the charts, even niche charts. (Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah is definitive and better than Leonard Cohen’s original. (Discuss!) But more people bought Alexandra Burke’s new version.)
  • Over time, the significance of a particular album (or film/piece/work) can go down as well as up.
  • Annoyingly, we now have to pay huge amounts of money for originals of great things which were ignored or neglected at the time of release. This observation was annoying for the creators at the time, as they struggled to get sales. Any artform has examples of this. (Examples: Vincent Van Gogh paintings, Sun Ra or Main Source albums)
  • The cultural impact (or any other consequences) of things in a particular year will become clearer in time.
  • Just to prove a point, maybe I should post a review of the year 1988 at a totally arbitary time. Or the year 88AD. Either review could only ever be subjective and incomplete.

So there you go. Feel free to comment. You can also read other people’s 2008 reviews on The Joy Collective.