Posts tagged:

joost

Spotify Opened For Public

by Ville Vesterinen, October 14, 2008 — 2 Comments

Spotify, a Swedish startup offering a lightweight software application enabling on demand streaming of music, has opened up its service for public.

Earlier on we wrote about rumor that Spotify had raised €15m round from various investors. Last week I received a confirmation that Creandum and Northzone Ventures has invested undisclosed sum to the Swedish startup (more bout this here).

It’s no wonder the startup is investors’ latest darling as it just recently signed significant licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Music, Warner Music Group, Merlin, The Orchard and Bonnier Amigo.

The service launched on October 7th 2008 in UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Throughout the remainder of this year and into 2009 Spotify will be rolled out to further markets.

Spotify offers three different subscription models: Free, Day Pass and Premium accounts. Day pass cost you just under one pound sterling for 24 hours whereas the Premium account costs you 9.99 pound sterling a month. Free account is advertising funded, but if you have received your free account via an invitation already earlier on as I did, chances are you don’t need to deal with any advertising yet. Advertisers that have signed up to be included from the launch include Ford, T-Mobile and Xbox.


Spotify – the story from Spotify on Vimeo.

In comparison, the service is better than any other music service I have seen so far. Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists. It will also recommend music you might like based on what you’ve listened so far. To my delight it also seems to do the recommendation very accurately to match my taste. Martin Varsavsky used a fitting analogies for the service.

[...] Spotify is like iTunes but with on-demand. It’s like Joost, but for music!  It´s like Pandora without the need to vote and with your ability to listen to music anytime you want.  It´s like Last FM without the community.

The only downside was that some of the current users saw many of the songs on their playlists disappear as Spotify cleaned their playlist to reflect the current copyright agreements that they have been able to push through. Regardless, I think this is a minor disappointment and the users will possible see many of the songs reappear as Spotify tries to get more record labels behind them.

You can also post and vote on your favorite playlist Digg-style at Spotylist. Spotylist also allows you to find new playlists that others have posted via simple links. I already found two good ones just from the blog comments.

The fact that another service has already build its own offering on Spotify’s core product is a solid example that there is something very special about this service. Forget Last.fm, go Spotify!

Apply to Seedcamp and get a guaranteed interview

by Ville Vesterinen, August 1, 2008 — 4 Comments

Seedcamp, an intensive week long event held in September in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA, is one of the biggest opportunities to entrepreneurs on this side of Atlantic and it’s open for applications (here). Seedcamp’s whole raison d’etre is to provide seed funding and world-class connections for startups in exchange of a relatively small equity stake.

I recommend applying well before the August 10th deadline, as this might be one of the best decision you do as a entrepreneur that can set the pace for the years to come. To make a great opportunity absolutely unbeatable, we at ArcticStartup want to sweeten the deal for all the Nordic & Baltic startups: This is a huge break for any start-up, and thus I will single handedly interview your start-up, any Nordic or Baltic start-up really, that applies to Seedcamp. In fact you have two options. Here goes.

When you apply to Seedcamp before the August 10th deadline you will get a guaranteed 2 minute video interview by me or optionally you can submit a 60 second video pitch of your start-up/product/service, which ever you prefer. Naturally these will be posted on ArcticStartup. In addition, when you apply to Seedcamp you will automatically enter a draw in which we at ArcticStartup will randomly choose two start-ups that can have their logo (125×125px) on ArcticStartup front page for the whole month of September October. Additionally any start-up that will be chosen to take part in the actual Seedcamp week gets also their logo (125×125px) on the front page for the whole month of September October.

So regardless of whether you get to go to London, you’ll have a guaranteed way of getting a lot of visibility for your start-up just by applying (We are very flexible on what can be considered a start-up, but will use common sense to cut out any funny business and bad jokes if you try to intentionally game our generous offer). So, now only thing you need to do is apply(!) and write the following to the comments section after this blog post: ‘[your start-up's name here] has applied to Seedcamp and thus rocks!’ or if you prefer you can email me at ville [at] arcticstartup [dot] com. Start applying and I will contact you after I get the confirmation that your application has reached the organizers.


Seedcamp Week 2007 from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

To recap, the Seedcamp format in brief is this: You apply to be able to enter a Seedcamp week, where you learn the ropes and get to know all the people that matter in the European entrepreneur scene. The week will take place in September 15-18 2008 in Central London at UCL. Seedcamp will be holding an open application available online. Based on this, up to 20 companies will be selected to participate in the event. Seecamp can provide you with seed capital and a world class network of mentors that among others include Jyri Engeström (Jaiku / Google), Niklas Zennström (Skype / Joost) and Brent Hoberman (Lastminute.com) to only name a few. Read all about the format here.