Official Ares Free Download

p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P | Music:- The writing was on the wall  as soon as the news broke that Sony had bought into Swedish streaming site Spotify, scarfing up 6%  for a measly 30,000 kronor, around $C4,541.

“The Big 4 have since blown hundreds of millions of dollars on one scheme after another designed to provide a vehicle capable of carrying Big 4 product to the satisfaction of the Big 4,” said p2pnet, going on:

“Then along came Sweden’s Spotify, billed as a, proprietary peer-to-peer music streaming service that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with almost no buffering delay.”

A little more than a year ago, it seemed the music labels had “finally relented, and were willing to experiment with free streaming music to users,” says TechCrunch. “The future looked bright.

“2009 is the year of reckoning. The European launch of Spotify, which offers users free streaming music on demand, was an affirmation of the trend. Soon Spotify would launch in the U.S., too, the company said.”

And, “No wonder the majors speak so highly of Spotify,” said Helienne Lindvall in The Guardian, “they receive 18% of shares in the online streaming service. “It’s just a pity that artists won’t get to see any of this … ”

Well, there is that. But what else is new?

The major record labels and the bigger indies, “seemed unusually positive about Spotify, which made me think that they must have received a pretty hefty payment and/or equity in the company,” she said, and, “Sure enough, the other week some of my suspicions were confirmed when it was reported that the majors received 18% of Spotify shares.”

She went on »»»

One of the main reasons why majors have been hesitant to offer their music to start-ups is that they’ve seen companies like YouTube and Last.fm build businesses, only to sell them off for big bucks without sharing the money with the copyright owners whose music they used.

A source close to Spotify told me he has serious doubts that their business model will add up and that it’s a case of “spot the idiot”, ie “find somebody stupid enough to buy it before realising that it’s too costly to run and that the numbers don’t add up to making a profit”.

However, “There’s no firm evidence that people will ever be willing to pay to stream music in significant numbers” and this in turn, “exposes a fundamental flaw in the business model: the more people pay for a subscription (thus avoiding the ads) the less attractive the service becomes to potential advertisers. And the more ads it runs, the less music lovers will want to use the service,” reckoned Luke Lewis on NME.

“Indeed,” he stated, “I’m convinced the ‘free’ aspect of Spotify is unsustainable. Across the media, people’s faith in the ad-funded free content model is faltering”.

He pointed out Rupert Murdoch was already planning to charge for content, and that giant advertising company Google was developing a system of micropayments.”

Advertising, “will never cover Spotify’s costs: its only hope of success is in attracting subscribers in huge numbers,” said NME, going on »»»

You might say: who cares if it’s profitable? To its most devoted fans, Spotify represents the achievement of the elusive “celestial jukebox”: the limitless-music paradise that David Bowie predicted in 2002, when he said: “Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity.”

But while it might look like utopia for music fans, if Spotify is to have a future, it needs to be a viable business. For now, funding is still pouring in – the company employs 30 people, and has offices in London and Sweden. It was recently valued at over £200 million.

However this is, Lewis added, “an entirely theoretical, phantom value,” and, “There’s every possibility Spotify could go the way of Spiralfrog, or Pandora, or any number of music services which once looked promising, before fading away when the investment dried up.”

Now, Spotify is saying its much-touted US launch is “delayed”, says TechCrunch.  And in the background Qtrax is floundering, not that that’s anything new.

“They don’t want to launch here [the US'] with a paid-only model, and the big labels are signaling that they won’t have it,” it says, continuing »»»

From the NYTimes last month, quoting Sony Music: “We like Spotify as our partner in Europe, but we would like them to move more toward a paid subscription environment.”

And that isn’t the only bad news. MySpace Music is “almost certainly” going to severely restrict free streaming to users, say multiple sources, and move to a paid model. “They are spending $20 million/month on streaming royalties, and that just isn’t sustainable,” said one source with knowledge of MySpace’s relationships with the labels. Other sources have said that MySpace’s royalty payments are much lower, but don’t deny that the service is a cash hole.

MySpace won’t comment on this story, but they have a deadline to all this. The Google search deal is up next year, and $300 million/year in revenue will evaporate. Changes need to happen soon. The last payment of $75 million is due on June 20, 2010.

Stay tuned.

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p2pnet – What’s going on at Spotify?, September 14, 2009
TechCrunch – Free Streaming May Soon Be History: Spotify Delays U.S. Launch, MySpace May Move To Pay Model, November 11, 2001
The Guardian – Behind the music: The real reason why the major labels love Spotify, August 17, 2009
NME – The problem with Spotify, September 11, 2009have
charge for content – Google vs Murdoch, Twitter and Facebook, November 11, 200
system of micropayments – Google micro-payments system, September 11, 2009
Qtrax is floundering – Qtrax blows it again …, November 11, 200

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