Joining the buzz by Jonas

I’ve been able to try out Spotify now for a while. As many of the other testers already stated, the app itself is pretty damn sweet. Very easy and intuitive to use and even if the music library could have a couple of more artists and records it still is perfect enough.

I have a couple of issues that also have been raised by Peter. How will the social functions be implemented and the ever so interesting million dollar question: how will Spotify implement and serve advertisers?

I expect the ads to be Google style, i.e. relevant to the listener. This could be by pulling data from each user manually, by having users filling out certain information about their demographic profile. The other way is Last.FM style, by detecting the behavioural pattern of each user and serving relevant ads based on that behaviour.

The problem regarding ads in spotify would be what is relevant? From the top of my head I would guess concert tickets, records, merchandise, lifestyle clothing and so on. I’m currently listening to N.E.R.D and before that I was nodding my head to Bob Hund. Two very separate music styles and what ad would be relevant to me based on that behaviour?

This is the same problem YouTube is currently facing trying to implement video ads. As Techcrunch noted, showing a Cingular ad when watching a My Chemical Romance video has no context nor connection to the content of the video.

I would guess that both YouTube and Spotify is focusing on the short tail of advertisers, hence only being able to provide a relatively small number of ads. Whereas Google, going for the long tail of advertisers, has such huge range of ads to serve and thereby being able to actually provide relevant ads.

Listening to What’s next interview with Spotify (swedish only), they’re quite silent on their future plans, however they mention special radio channels as one example. Choosing a musical mix that is targeting a special demographic and then selling ads based on that demographic. But how is that different from traditional radio?

Spotify has an impressive platform to build something very special on. I’m really hoping for their success, but for me it’s too early to make that call. A totally free iTunes always rocks but in the end it’s all about revenue and I’m not totally convinced that they can they get that without loosing the attractiveness of the service.

(thanks to Henrik for providing me with an invite)

[tags]Spotify, music, itunes killer, beta [/tags]

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May 13, 2007 / 2 Comments.

2 Comments

  1. Jonas replied:

    Damn, this sounds so exciting from all blog posts I’ve seen so far. Can’t wait to try it out, anyone have an idea when the public release might be so I can?

    May 21st, 2007 at 4:13 pm. Permalink.

  2. HUNCH » Archive » We have let Spotify out of it's cage replied:

    […] Euro - Former Tradedoublers Create Spotify Anek.com - Spotify, nästan lika bra som Freestyle lk9 - Joining the buzz Dyngan - Bolånsrock vs. bloggpop Lillbra - Spotify mäkta populär Emerge - Spotify: Sveriges nya […]

    January 14th, 2008 at 11:16 am. Permalink.

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