The music industry has involved rapidly throughout the past century. Of course styles and genres have changed but many new genres have been created as well, especially with new technologies available. But technology has also been an enemy to the artists in the music industry. With sites such as Napster and Kazaa, music was acquired at no cost to consumers over the internet. This has made the industry have to change and adapt to this new environment. Today music is still shared at no cost but there are companies that have learned how to share music while still paying the artists for their work.
Companies such as Pandora and Spotify have learned to use commercials and memberships to earn money for their companies and for the artists that created the content. Pandora came out first and this is why I began using Pandora and still do. It functions as a radio that lets you choose which songs you like and then it crafts a station to your tastes. Although this system works well for replacing radio, it does not let you listen to songs you want over and over. Spotify does let customers do this, although not an unlimited number of times.
Spotify, like Pandora, has a membership that lets you skip commercials. Unlike Pandora it allows you to listen to certain songs as many times as you want as a member. Also, the song database is much larger than Pandora and this is the reason I began to use Spotify. As of now the company has over 10,000,000 subscribers. This is a fantastic feat! Its customers are all over the world and while we visited the office it was obvious the employees were very international as well. They’ve grown so much that it’s been hard to find talent from a small country such as Sweden. More importantly, it can be a challenge to relocate this talent. Either way, Spotify has taken the music market by storm and I don’t see them slowing down anytime soon. Rock on Spotify!
