![]() ![]() However, one look at the finances and Apple is in a different league, undisputed king of the content-selling space. With Spotify's currently-in-beta web app also coming into play early next year, competition between the two will intensify. The latter's Ping messaging and recommendation system was a rare but emphatic Apple flop, proving that everything it does best is closed, and Spotify has shown them how to effortlessly update and socialise music. Its biggest triumph, however, is scoring points – and, it would hope, users – over Apple. In terms of audience, Spotify now equals the paying subscriber numbers of veteran service Rhapsody with 1 million each, though overall user numbers are still less than Pandora, which had 59.2 million users by the end of October 2012. Its losses increased last year and it is yet to make a profit, though Ek claims this is because the service needs to prioritise investment and expansion. Recommendation is broader, based around the now-essential follow mechanism which means users can subscribe to updates, including notifications, from their favourite bands.įinancially, Spotify has a struggle on its hands, treading a delicate line between having to pay enough to the music industry to keep labels and artists happy, while creating a sustainable business for itself. The new discovery feature is based on your listening history an algorithmic, Spotify version of Amazon's 'people who bought Björk also bought Florence'. A few promoted links notwithstanding, recommendation and personalisation is critical to opening up Spotify, and not a little overdue. More significantly for users, however, the service has always been better for users who knew what they wanted to listen to. ![]() Collections, Spotify's founder Daniel Ek says, will encourage album listening, which, if he's correct, reverses the trend for the unbundling that iTunes initiated with its pay-by-track model. The introduction of collections is overdue, supplementing the more publicly-orientated playlists, which are a good way of sharing clever selections but take a while for users to get comfortable with.
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