The Future Of Spotify And Its Competition
The guest post is written by Niko Nyman, a Finnish consultant and a flash developer, with former careers in graphic design, web strategy, and music production. He has also co-written a book about social media called Yhteisöllinen media ja muuttuva markkinointi 2.0 (In Finnish). As a former professional musician Niko has a unique perspective to observe and comment on the current state of digital music industry, its latest darling Spotify and the challenges it faces against established players like Apple. You can find our previous post on Spotify here, where Daniel Ek, Spotify's founder, discusses the rivalry with iTunes.
Spotify is growing strongly, and everybody seems to be talking about it. Spotify even made the news on Finnish national TV last week! It’s David Bowie’s music like water pouring down the internets, and if Mr. Bowie’s 2002 epiphany is to be believed, the aging 20th century music industry will exist no more after three years. Three years!
(See also music like water, as popularized by Gerd Leonhard.)
So what is the future of Spotify?
It is difficult to envision any other serious competitor for Spotify but Apple. I find it quite brave of the small Spotify to go against the big Apple in the music market — and they will go against each other, even if they do not yet compete directly. I’m not claiming to have any information on either company (I haven’t even done my research, really) so this is just speculation, mainly to entertain my tired brain after work.
Here are a couple of possible scenarios for what might lie in Spotify’s future:
