Spotify Launches Global Streaming Chart. But Not in Canada.
Spotify is probably the world’s best-known streaming music service. It’s in many, many countries–but still not in Canada.
Still, it’s worth monitoring what the company is doing. Take, for example, their launch of a weekly chart based on what users in given countries are listening to. From Engadget:
Taking a page out of Billboard’s playbook, Spotify is using its listener data to determine the most popular music in a particular country. Available on the website or as embeddable widgets, the weekly updated charts will reveal which tracks are most listened to for the Spotify 50. The Social 50 list will contain the tracks most often actively shared by the service’s users, including via Facebook and Twitter. Another new addition is the ability to see play counts for an artist’s top tracks, tracking global plays since October 2008.
Sounds cool, right? Too bad that Canadians are still being shut out. The Next Web has more, too.
Do we really need Spotify in Canada at this point in time? There's plenty of streaming services alreayd available here isn't there? Rdio and HMV's The Vault come to mind. Everyone pretty m,uch charges the same price and provides the same quality and probably the same content, so why is it necessary to have more, more, more?
Haveing too many players in the market will only dilute the market share of others to the point it's not profitable for them to evolve, bringing future enhancements (whatever they might be – there's really only so much that a business such as this can provide.). I mean really, the market couldn't even sustain two satellite radio companies so they ended up merging and now we have only 1, which is really all you need – yes it creates a monopoly, and yes it doesn't provide choice in providers but who cares?
If all the players in the game would get their shit together and play the same game, ou wouldn't have to worry about spending money supporting one company's product/service only to see them go down in flames and you be left with something unusable/defunct (I'm looking at you HDDVD, and Sony ATRAC3, Betamax…)
I've started using Deezer. I'm pretty happy with its selection and its offline mode is great (download songs to your phone for subway rides.) Happy to spend $10 a month for tons of 320kbps streaming
Grooveshark is free (ad supported) and you can go mobile for a small fee. I use it all the time. And there's a lot of indie stuff too, not just mainstream!
The audio quality of various services is vastly different, as evidenced by the listening experience and differing bitrates. For me the only acceptable bitrate is 320. That rules out all services now available in Canada. So I use a workaround to access and pay for MOG.
@Jay Stupid post. What is wrong with competition? Spotify is far superior to RDIO. It is silly that Canadians try to justify lack of selection compared to offer countries. Canadians should be mad that organizations like Slocan is reducing choice for music streaming. They make it hard for new companies to come here with very restrictive licensing and expensive fees.