Free, Legal, Seamless and Now in Asia

By Cat Yong

Spotify’s mantra, or at least that of its Head of New Markets in APAC, is that the way to tackle piracy is to basically offer a platform that is more convenient than piracy.

During the launch of the Swedish-based music streaming service in Asia, specifically Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, Sriram Krishnan said, “We know how much people consume music illegally in this part of the world.” In fact, all over the world, 95% of downloaded music comes from illegal sources.

In contrast, the music that Spotify offers is fair and legal. “We compensate rights owners in a fair way and by the end of 2013, we would have given back US$1 billion to the music industry. “ Half of that amount would be within this year alone.

Spotify has search, discovery and Facebook integration


“This billion dollars is money that rights owners wouldn’t have gotten, because of piracy. So they are very happy with the way we have progressed because of our 24 million active users, and 6 million paying users, we now provide a platform for artistes to reach out and actively engage with users.

“That’s access to users they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten access to. And compensation. So, rights owners are 100% behind us.”

The right to be the soundtrack to your life
In the five years, they have been around, Spotify can now can be found in about 20 countries.  That’s not many at all, especially when compared to rival Deezer’s presence in a total of 182 countries.

Spotify has an average growth rate of four countries every year, but would need to ramp up very fast not to only keep up with Deezer but also keep up with fan demand.

What would it take for this 20-million-and-adding-20,000-songs-everyday service, to achieve worldwide ‘domination’?

Rob Bratby, managing partner for law firm Olswang, took a stab at answering this, “When you have something creative like music, there are intellectual property rights and other neighbouring rights attached to it. When it’s created, you don’t get one right that exists globally. You get one in each different country.

“Laws that protect IP are passed in each country and they arise as a result of national legislation, and can be subtly different from one country to another, and are meant to protect that piece of creative work in that particular country.”

Bratby went on to explain that there isn’t just the rights of the person who writes the music, but also the other persons who perform, make arrangements, does mechanical reproductions and so on. “There is a whole series of neighbouring rights attached to it.

“And to launch it globally, you first have to find out what rights exists in each country, who owns it, and get the relevant permissions in place.

“And that is really, really hard to do, because you have to do all of these different things, in all of these different countries. Generally you get services like Spotify who roll out country by country or region by region,” Bratby pointed out.

Conclusion
Not only does the music streaming service, have over 20 million songs in their database and increasing by 20,000 everyday, but according to Sriram, “It is as if these songs are on your local devices. The experience is seamless.”

Not too long ago, Spotify had also announced in-car deals with Ford and Volvo, further expanding their value proposition of ‘seamlessness.’

Sriram explained, “Daniel Ek, our founder, is a musician and technologist. From his point of view, he wanted rights owners to be compensated. He wanted it to be legal and fair. As a technologist, he wanted the experience to be seamless and amazing.

“If users want us to be in toasters and fridges, we’ll do that. The point is we want to be seamless. We’re music on the cloud. We’re like electricity.”

He had meant that Spotify’s music service should be an accessible and available utility like electricity. But electrifying could work too.




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