Spotify plans to buy SoundCloud!

Spotify is a Swedish music, podcast, and video streaming service That Provides Digital Rights Management-protected [6] content from record labels and media companies. [7] It is available in Most of the Americas, Europe, and Some Countries in Asia and Oceania. [8] Music Can Be browsed or searched by artist, album, genre, playlist, and record label. Was Spotify Launched in September 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB. As of August 2016, Spotify hadd more than 100 million active users [9] and about half a billion registered users. [Citation needed] As of September 2016, Spotify has 40 million Paying Subscribers Worldwide, [10] up from 30 million Paying Subscribers in March 2016. [11] Spotify Technology S.A. Operates as the parent company, registered in Luxembourg, [12] While Spotify AB handles research and development in Stockholm. [13]

As of August 2016, Spotify Provides access to over 30 million songs, with more being added music Every day Including approximately Albums, EPs, and singles. [14] Can users search for Artists, Albums, titles, labels and genres, and access songs from Both Major and Independent labels. Some artists Decided to opt out of Spotify. [7] [15] Additionally, Some artists withdrew from specific regions Because of Licensing Restrictions. The desktop app to swear Allows Imported music from iTunes, [16] While the main three apps (iOS, Android, and Desktop) Allows downloading songs to listen to offline. [17] Can users download songs up to three devices with a song with a limit of 3,333 total limit of 9,999 f track the device on song limit is reached Each device. [18] [19] Can users create and share playlists, [20] or tell edit together with other users by Making That a collaborative playlist playlist.

Websites, blogs, and 3rd-party applications and tools support Spotify. [21] Community resources include Facebook, Twitter bots and user forums, and tools to display lyrics and services to list and notify users about new releases. [22] In 2010 Spotify’s blog, The Pansentient League, Held the first Community Site Spotify Awards, with categories Such as Best Playlist Sharing Site, Best News & Music Finder Site, and Best Playlist Generator. [23] Allows users to integrate Spotify Their Existing account with Facebook and Twitter accounts. Thereafter They are Able to Access Their friends’ / follower’s favorite music and playlists. [24]

Spotify, the music streaming together with industry in general, faces criticism from artists Some Claiming They are not being compensated for their work Fairly or downloaded music sales decline and music streaming increases. Unlikely physical or download sales, qual pay a fixed price per song or album, Spotify pays artists based on developer’s “market share” (the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service). They Distribute approximately 70% to Enquire-HOLDERS, said Who will pay artists based on individual developer’s Agreements. The variable, and some say inadequate, Compensation nature of this, [25] has led to criticism. Spotify reports Paying on average US $ 0006 to US $ 0008 per stream. In response, Spotify Claims That They are benefiting the music business by Migrating “them away from piracy and less say monetised platforms and allowing royalties to Generate Greater far than Before” by Encouraging users to use developer’s paid service.
Spotify Operates under a freemium model (basic services are free, the while additional features are Offered via paid subscriptions). Spotify Makes Its Revenues live by selling premium subscriptions to users and advertising placements to Third Parties. In December 2013, the company Launched a new website, “Spotify for Artists” Revealed That Its business model and Revenue data. HOLDERS copyright Spotify pays royalties for streamed music. The company pays 70% of Its Revenue to Enquire HOLDERS total. That Spotify for Artists states the company does not have a fixed per-play rate, considers Instead Factors Such as the user’s home country and the individual artist’s royalty rate. HOLDERS Rights Received an average per-play payout between $ .006 and .0084. [28] The company has lost $ 200 million allegedly SINCE It Was Founded, although the company has not confirmed or Denied this. [29]

A 2012 report Stated That Spotify posted a net loss of US $ 59 million in 2011 attributed to increased costs Staffing and Licensing fees and royalties to record companies. [30] A November 2012 report the predicted Spotify That Would Reach Revenues of US $ 500 million over the course of 2012, up from US $ 244 million in 2011. [31] As of 2013 Spotify Offered an unlimited subscription package, close to the Open Music Model (OMM) -estimated ‘economic equilibrium-for the recording industry. Howevera, the Incorporation of DRM diverges from the OMM and Competitors Such as iTunes and Amazon MP3 That have dropped DRM. Another source Income Was music purchases from within the app, soft Was this removed in January 2013. [32]

While Spotify does not automatically create playlists preference-based, it does integrate with Last.fm so people Can “scrobble” They listen to the tracks onto the platform. Includes a feature Spotify Radio for Spotify Free and Premium accounts. The radio feature Creates a random playlist of songs chosen based on the SPECIFIED decade genres and users Choose. Users Can Also listen to podcasts and videos via the Spotify mobile apps are available in f That broke the user’s’ country.
Spotify encourages people to pay for music, with subscriptions as Revenue Its main source. [28] The subscription removes advertisements and limits, and increases the bitrate to 320 kbit / s for Some songs. [35] The fee Also Allows unlimited usage mobile, as well as online and offline access to playlists. Spotify offers users free Trials of Premium features for 30 days. Users must enter payment information and subscription of developer must explicitly Terminate Before the trial period ends to Avoid Paying for Premium features. [36] Spotify for Artists Claims That “a Spotify Premium customer spends more per year compared to the average Spend of a US music consumer WHO buys music (not Including Those WHO Spend $ 0 on music)”, with the annual value of the average US Paying listener Identified or US $ 120. Also Claims That The website “a Spotify customer is 1.6x more financially than the average adult Valuable non-Spotify US music consumer.” [28] BBC Music Week editor Tim Ingham Wrote: “Unlikely buying a CD or download, streaming is not a one-off payment. Hundreds of Millions of streams of tracks are happening Each and Every Day, Which Quickly multiplies the Potential Revenues on offer – is a constant and long-term source of income are for artists. “[37]

Advertisements [edit]
Spotify offers advertisers seven Different types of ads, describedat in Their Ad Specs as: Audio Ads, Display Ads, Billboard Ads, Homepage takeovers, Branded Playlists, Lightbox and Advertiser Pages. [38] These advertisements vary in size, type and user engagement. [38] Audio Ads run for a maximum of 30 seconds as a commercial streamed in between tracks. [39] Display Ads, Billboard Ads, and Lightboxes Appear During active and inactive use. [38] In February 2009, ads for non-Paying users Were 15 seconds long. [40] In May 2009 Reported this hadd Neowin increased to approximately 30 seconds. [41]

Downloads [edit]
Offered Spotify music downloads in the UK to track purchase in partnership with the 7digital music store. [42] The feature was designed to Provide the option to download music. [43] In October 2010 Wired Was Reported That Spotify Making more money for labels in Sweden than any other retailer, “online or off”. [44] During 2010 Spotify paid more than € 45 million to its licensors. [45] In January 2013, music downloads of tracks from the app Was removed. [32]

Technical availability [edit]
As of May 2015, Spotify is available for Windows Phone, Android, BlackBerry, Boxee, iOS, Linux (now unsupported), MeeGo, Microsoft Windows desktop, Openpandora, OS X, Roku, S60 (Symbian), Samsung Smart TV, Sonos, HEOS by Denon, [46] [47] PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Squeezebox, Telia Digital-TV, TiVo, WD TV, webOS; [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54 ] It is not available as a Windows Store for Windows 8 app Rather soft as a full Windows desktop application. A third-party client, Spotlite, used to exist. [55] [56]

Technical information [edit]
Spotify is proprietary and uses Digital Rights Management (DRM). That Users agree to Spotify’s terms and conditions not agree to reverse-engineer the application. [57] Streams are in the Vorbis format at Q5 (ca. 160 kbit / s) for the free service Spotify, [58] or Q9 (ca. 320 kbit / s) [59] for Spotify Premium Subscribers. Spotify has a media playback latency of 265 ms or 390 ms without local cache. [60] Spotify does not offer CD quality (16 / 44.1 kHz) nor high-resolution audio (Hi-res, 24/96 or 24/192 or similar) services. As of version 0.4.3, It is possible to play MP3 and AAC Locally stored files in addition to live. Spotify used to run Debian GNU / Linux on developer’s servers, nor They Mentioned When They Endorsed systemd in the Debian init / systemd debate, [61] but Decided to switch to Ubuntu in July 2014, due to Its more predictable release cycle. [62 ] Cache size and location are user configurable. 1 GB or more free disk space is recommended. [63] On OS X, a G4 processor or higher is required and users requir an account to use the software. Can Be The Same account on Several devices used simultaneously with Spotify Premium, or one at a time, with Spotify Free, Spotify using Connect. [64]

Desktop [edit]
Client software is available for Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10) and Mac OS X 10.5 or newer. On Linux, either the Windows version Can Be used, using Wine, [65] or an unsupported preview of a native Linux version packaged for Debian 6.0 ‘Squeeze’ and Ubuntu [66] and limited to AMD64 and i386 Architectures. Version 0.8.8 Received feedback poor. [67] Some features, playlist Such as filtering, sorting While Were Was removed broken. The interface changed from native C ++ to web-based. 0.8.8 and newer versions have slower memory performance and Greater use. [68] As of July 2013 Most Complaints hadn’t been resolved. [67] Spotify offers no option to turn off automatic updates; howevera, workarounds Allow the use of pre-0.8.8 versions. [69] [70] [71] In December 2013, released a Premium Spotify client called “Spotiamp” That Which used an interface resembles version 2 of the popular music player Winamp (AOL, the previous Owners of Winamp Before Radionomy, Were Planning to discontinue the player). The client contained an equalizer and support for Advanced Visualization System. [72] The client no longer swear Can howevera downloaded from the main website offline as It Was Taken.

Mobile versions [edit]
Mobile apps for Android, [73] iOS, [74] [75] [76] and Windows Phone 8.1 / 10 [77] are available and actively supported. As of 20 June 2012, Spotify radio streaming Was free on the iPad and iPhone in the US. [78] The Premium Subscribers Allow applications to access the full music catalog, stream music and listen to music When disconnected. As of May 2014, “extreme quality” mobile streaming (~ 320kbit / s) is available on the iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 versions of the Spotify app. As of December 2013, made Its Spotify mobile app free for Android and iOS devices for free with ads enabled users. Premium Subscribers do not get ads, or ads for premium Subscribers are disabled.

Spotify is available in Europe, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, limited Asian Countries and Territories That consis of Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan. The country list Includes Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Spain , Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay. [80] In Estonia, Greece and Romania, the Premium service Until July 2009 Was Offered, But the free version was never Offered. Only Customers with credit cards or PayPal accounts in one of the above-Mentioned Countries Can buy a Premium subscription. [81]

Went live Spotify (by invitation only) in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, France and Spain in October 2009. [82] On 10 February 2009 Was Spotify Launched in the United Kingdom. [83] On 18 May 2010, Spotify Was Launched in the Netherlands. [84] On 14 July 2011, Spotify Was Launched in the United States, [85] in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland on 16 November 2011, [86] in Germany on 13 March 2012 [87] and in Australia and New Zealand on 22 May 2012 . [88] From 13 November 2012, it became available in Ireland and Luxembourg. From 11 February 2013, said Spotify became available in Italy, Poland and Portugal. Was Spotify Launched in Mexico, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland on 15/16 April 2013. [89] [90]

On 24 September 2013, Spotify Was Launched in Argentina, Greece, Taiwan, and Turkey. [91] On 3 December 2013, Spotify Was Launched in Colombia as a pre-launch promo from Coca-Cola. [92] On 11 December 2013, Spotify Was Launched in Costa Rica. [93] On 12 December 2013, Spotify Was Launched in an additional 18 Markets: Bolivia, Bulgaria, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Malta, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Slovakia and Uruguay. [94] On 8 April 2014, Spotify Was Launched in the Philippines. [95] On 28 May 2014, Spotify Was Launched in Brazil. [96] On 30 September 2014, Spotify Was Launched in Canada. [97] On 30 March 2016 Was Spotify Launched in Indonesia. On the Same Day, They Also Announced Their partnership with Indonesian Indosat telecommunication and network provider Ooredoo.