Mr. Ek's concept of RPU (revenue per user) is spot on. If the music industry hopes to maintain any sort of positive relationship with their customers, they must maximize the lifetime value of fans rather than squeezing "as much as possible out of every single transaction."
Overall, its great that a company in Spotify's position is attempting to be so open. They're in a very crowded and high risk space--if they can embrace full disclosure, any business can.
If you’re saying that Spotify is ”open” because they openly share their thoughts than I would agree with you.
However, if you consider limiting a user’s access to music to simply an online flash player unless they pay a subscription fee “open” than I strongly disagree.
The subscription business model is very 20th century. It is already failing for magazines and newspapers, so where is the evidence that it will succeed for music?
Subscriptions are just not effective when there are free (legal or illegal) alternatives to be had.
The answer to piracy is even more openness, not less.
"Subscriptions are just not effective when there are free (legal or illegal) alternatives to be had."
Sky would argue with that, the decline of old broadcast mediums has little to do subscriptions, most of the most successful web applications around use a saas subscription model, I dont see whats 20th century about it, at all.
beats the hell out of trying get people to click on adverts.
i blame techcrunch and the rest of the media, they focus too much on hyping the companies they write about and let the PR firms push bullshit down their throat
Overall, its great that a company in Spotify's position is attempting to be so open. They're in a very crowded and high risk space--if they can embrace full disclosure, any business can.