Spotify and the death of physical media: What this means for YOU.

By now, you probably use Spotify to listen to music, especially if you have a job that ties you to a computer for most of the day, like me. The model isn't exactly a new one. It's just like iTunes (or similar music libraries) except for the fact that all the music in the world is on it. Well, except for a few artists. 

At this point we're so removed from Lars vs. Napster, and Spotify is packaged so much like an application, it hardly feels criminal. However, there are many articles and blog posts that maintain Spotify is taking money right out of the artists' pockets, or paying them too little for each play their track gets. You can, of course, pay for Spotify Premium, 10 bucks a month, to get unlimited access. What this basically means is no commercials and you can listen on mobile devices. Thing is, half the commercials are for Spotify, so the advertising money sure doesn't seem to be there to pay artists properly. Apparently, Spotify has been footing this bill for a while. 

In addition to this, if you are one of the people who pays for Spotify Premium (I'm not), you're really only borrowing the music while you have a premium account. Once you cancel, you don't own those songs, so in addition to possibly robbing artists, Spotify is also sort of robbing you. After one year, you will have spent $120, but have no physical media to show for it. 

There it is. Physical media. I bought more compact discs and vinyl LP's in 2012 than I had in many years. Spotify was integral in these purchases. I listened to albums on Spotify for free. The albums I liked, I bought, simple as that. In fact, Spotify's founder uses this defense as well. While I certainly recognize that most people probably don't do this, at least I'm somewhat compensating for listening for free all day. When was the last time you were in an actual store to buy music? How about an honest-to-goodness record store?

So, the problem is two-fold. The internet has made it crazy easy to access the world's music for free, and now it's legal and encouraged. There's also less demand for physical versions of that music. This has been driving up the price of physical music, which really sucks.  Digital music is convenient, until that hard drive shits the bed. Of course, my basement could flood and ruin all my vinyl, so what do I know?

Something to consider whilst browsing the Spotify library, I suppose.