THE SPOTIFY MODEL
Anything for Premium, right??
Well, music is unarguably a huge part of most people’s lives in one way or another. It could be classical, western, pop, rap or whatever but there is a need for some sort of music in everyone’s lives. It has become one of life’s necessities. You can add it to the food, water, shelter list. Nevertheless it’s high time they updated that ancient necessities list.
So music becoming an essential part of our lives , also turns it into a commodity or a very prized important service. People can go without watching movies or radio for a long time, but no music in a day and it just doesn’t feel right. Well, in a situation like this you know the businessmen with their suits waiting on the sidelines waiting for just the right moment to milk the cash cow. That cash cow is our beloved Spotify.
When it started out people flocked to it. I mean, you cant blame them, I was one of them too, ha! It seemed a win-win situation on all fronts. We get to have all our desired music albums and playlists and whatnot under one roof without paying a single penny. Maybe had to sit through a few ads, but it was worth it back then. Especially considering Spotify’s competitors like Apple Music or Sound cloud had major drawbacks.
For example: You need to have an I phone to use Apple music and as for Sound cloud and other apps, all types of music aren’t available. It’s good for underground rappers or indie artists or artists in general with a niche audience but it doesn’t really appeal to the larger audience.
So Spotify stays number one, but we got a few(more than a few)problems now. For starters, it’s policy of forcing users to get the premium plan by cutting down their free services. Like, not giving a download option or something like that would be acceptable but they’ve gone way farther that that. Limited replays, no shuffle option, no option to forward or go backward, now downloads and to top it off, a load of really long ads with a voice at the end which says “enjoy your free service for another 30 mins”. Then barely 5 mins in another ad pops up, basically making it extremely difficult and annoying to use the app without the premium plan.
To make matters worse, news has been out for sometime that Spotify barely pays the artists revenue from all these massive streams. The artists are comparatively paid peanuts while the company takes the Lion’s share of the massive revenue they generate every year. Who must earn majority share for their work if not the artists themselves? It just adds on to Spotify’s demerits.
To escape the premium plan strategy people are now installing modded versions of the app more than ever. Many are even mulling a move to alternatives like Wynk or YouTube Music.
