In college about 5 years ago, I heard a presentation from some recording industry people who worked at a studio. They saw Spotify as the reason their industry would still exist in five years. I think at the time total recording revenues were still declining, but the streaming growth was really picking up. Spotify has brilliantly convinced many people to spend $120 per year on music. The average CD-buyer spent much le…
It has always been, and always will be, about convenience first. Pre-Spotify and pre-bandcamp, getting music you could play on multiple devices was hard . Piracy was the only reliable way you could have the same songs on your walkman, your mp3 player, your phone, and your computer. Bandcamp is nice, in that it offers DRM-free music in high quality, but Spotify offers raw, unadulterated convenience . And Convenience i…
I use Spotify to listen mostly to classical music, and I might want to hear something performed by 10 or 20 different performers. There is no way I could afford that by buying "songs" individually.
As a side note, Spotify treats classical listeners horribly, ignoring their requests (such as to show more of song titles, or search by label), which I do not understand, because these are the customers that would most likely pay a premium to get better features.