What is Spotify?

Its been over a week since my last post, I've been reading lots of blogs and listening to some great music and learning songs for my up coming debut with Big W,which I'm looking forward to very much.
Anyway my point. Thanks to my eldest son Jamie, I've been reintroduced to a music site called Spotify. I don't know how long its been around, quite a while I would think because I'd registered as a user at some point in the past, but never downloaded it.

Quite simply its brilliant, it allows you to search for an artist or band and then stream their music immediately from the interface (no buffering involved and the songs aren't using up valuable space on your harddrive). Amazingly its free with the occasional advert, by my reckoning about every 20 minutes. There's also options for day and monthly passes for relatively small fees which allows you to stream ad free. Its all legal and artists are compensated for the use of their work

I would agree that this will probably be the way forward. Okay at the moment you need a PC to stream the music, but with the increases in technology (3G wireless and 4G coming) you will soon be able to stream music anywhere. If thats the case why would you want to own or even pay for a CD, when you can already hear it on the net. Everybody's album sales are in decline, even top artist like U2 can consider their album sales a flop for their latest release. Also why do you need to make an album anymore, songs can be released individually, instead of the same old format. Its more important to let people listen to your music and engage in what you do, hopefully then they will come and see you play live and buy your merchandise.

Music is now free and the new dilemma we face as independent artists is - how are we going to get people to listen to our music, because thats the way we'll be paid in the future, not by selling our CD's but by how many streams we have over the internet. I would rather have people listen to my music than not and if thats the case I will let it be streamed for free.

The good news is - our destiny is our own hands, its up to us how we address the problems we face, there are no constraints imposed by record companies and I can create what I want..

Some of my creations are at chrispicton.bandcamp.com/ with new ones coming soon.