Se avecinan cambios en Spotify. Cambios importantes que considero van a cambiar sustancialmente el ¿éxito? de esta genial aplicaciĂłn que permite escuchar mĂșsica de manera gratuita a travĂ©s de streaming. Como dicen en su blog oficial, limitarĂĄn el uso de Spotify Free y Open bastante a partir de ahora.
- Starting May 1, any Spotify Free or Open user who has registered with Spotify before November 2, 2010 will be able to listen to each song in our catalog for free up to 5 times. Users who registered after November 2, 2010 will see this change reflected six months after creating their account.
- Additionally, any Spotify Free or Open user will be able to listen to music for free for a maximum of 10 hours a month from our catalogue. This is equivalent to 200 songs or 20 albums.
- All Free or Open users created after November 2, 2010 will enjoy our current service for six months. After six months they will have these two limitations.
Doing a quick calculation, we have that 10 hours are 600 minutes, which divided by the thirty days of the month gives us 20 minutes a day. Taking into account that the average length of a song is 3 minutes, it turns out that we can listen to an average of between 6 and 7 songs a day if we have a Free or Open Spotify subscription. I donât know about you, but it doesnât seem like much to me.
I have always defended that I prefer to listen to my own music, downloaded from the internet or purchased in the store through my favorite music player, which is iTunes, because it offers many more possibilities than Spotify offers right now in terms of features and list management. For me, for example, it is essential to create smart music lists in which songs I have recently listened to are not played, to provide myself with a bit of musical variety.
To improve that variety, I have been a Spotify Premium user for some time, so I can listen to even more varied music thanks to the lists created by other users and the radio. Therefore, I use Spotify as a complement to my regular music, not as a substitute.
The problem with depending on a âcloudâ service is that you depend on it, and that over time you will have no choice but to accept the changes they make to its conditions of use and features, and if you are not happy with it, you abandon it. But what happens if you had made the decision a long time ago to organize all your information (in this case music) in a service that you stopped using? Would you be willing to lose everything?
Donât get me wrong. I am a faithful defender of âthe cloudâ, but to a certain extent. We have to be aware that it is a way for companies to take us into their territory and generate increasing dependency, which is why we have to be careful with the level of dependency we have.
I am not very clear how this decision will affect Spotify and whether users will accept or reject it. It reminds me a little of the policy change that Yoigo made a long time ago in which it limited the time of free calls to 1 hour a day, although in the case of Spotify it seems even more limited if possible. It certainly raises doubts about the success of the company and its future. I donât know if it will have to do with its future landing on American soil or with its dubious profitability, because obviously what this movement seeks is to attract more paying subscribers.
We will see how the matter progresses in the coming months. Personally, I think it will mean a decrease in free users (and a decrease in costs for Spotify?) and paying users may increase a little, but they will know better than me. What do you think?
| Via | Spotify Blog |
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