Microsoft Launching Spotify Alternative
Spotify is without a doubt, one fantastic service. But just as Microsoft has it out for Google Docs and ZoHo, it seems that they have their cross hairs set to Spotify as well. Microsoft has made it known that they want a piece of the streaming music business.
And who can blame them, what with the big talk of the town saying that streaming music is back in and downloading is less than it used to be. Thinking that a hybrid approach is the best bet, Microsoft is going to offer a competing service that allows users to stream music for free, while also being free to download a song for a fee if they choose to.
On the surface, this sounds rather familiar to other services that have come before it. And yes, most of those past services failed miserably. The ticket to success will mean going with no DRM for downloads (Amazon?) and making sure that the selection of music to be streamed is huge. After all, Microsoft is hardly new to this arena. They will need to provide something new and compelling for this to work.
2 Comments
Alfred
July 14th, 2009
at 3:17pm
I think this sounds great, really. I got a Spotify invite from a friend a few months ago and I love it. I really don’t see much of a reason to buy or download music unless it’s going straight to my Mp3 player. I suppose the biggest problem with Spotify is that it’s limited to only some countries, so people from America or Asia for example can’t use it.
It seems to me that Spotify is a success, a lot of people I know here in Sweden use it and it’s apparentely got over 1 million users. Now, the downside I guess is that there’s really no community at all, and you can’t buy the songs that you like from it.
It’ll be really intresting to see what Microsoft can do with the same concept, they usually know what they’re doing.
Andrew12
July 14th, 2009
at 5:04pm
FIRST!