SPOTIFYBy Joseph Shepherd

A brief over view Spotify is a Swedish music, podcast, and video streaming service that provides copyright protected content from record labels and media companies. It is available in most of the Americas, Europe, and some countries in Asia and Oceania. Music can be browsed or searched by artist, album, genre, playlist, and record label. Spotify was launched in September 2008 by Swedish start-up Spotify AB. As of June 2016, Spotify had more than 100 million active users and about half a billion registered users. As of August 2016, Spotify had 39 million paying subscribers worldwide, up from 30 million paying subscribers in March 2016.

How it worksAs of August 2016, Spotify provides access to over 30 million songs, with more music being added approximately every day including albums, EPs, and singles. Users can search for artists, albums, titles, labels and genres, and access songs from both major and independent labels. Some artists decided to opt out of Spotify. Additionally, some artists withdrew from specific regions because of licensing restrictions. The desktop app allows music to be imported from iTunes as well. While the main three apps (iOS, Android, and Desktop) allows downloading songs to listen too offline. Spotify can also be used on a tablet, phone or your pc

Issues with the siteSpotify, together with the music streaming industry in general, faces some criticism from artists claiming they are not being fairly compensated for their work as downloaded music sales decline and music streaming increases. Unlike physical or download sales, which pay a fixed price per song or album, Spotify pays artists based on their "market share" (the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service). They distribute approximately 70% to rights-holders, who will then pay artists based on their individual agreements. The variable, and some say inadequate, nature of this compensation, has led to criticism. Spotify reports paying on average US$0.006 to US$0.008 per stream. In response, Spotify claims that they are benefiting the music business by migrating "them away from piracy and less monetised platforms and allowing them to generate far greater royalties than before"

My own experience I use Spotify myself to listen to music, as someone who use’s the sight on a day to day basis I can say that I am a fan of the site its easy to use, easy to navigate and has many different features such as a “recommended” playlist which suggests songs that you may like from what you’ve been listening to.

Spotify offers many different pay packages such as a premium account which is £9.99 a month and features no adds and high quality audio for example, another account is a family account £14.99 for up to six different premium accounts. This is a good business model and is affordable for most people with disposable income.

TASpotify is similar to other music site’s when it comes to its TA, it want’s to make itself appealing to everyone possible, so from the design and features on the site it appeals to both genders equally and all ages as it has everything from kid’s songs to death metal. Spotify has now moved into doing podcast’s recently as well meaning they can now appear to even more people as podcast’s are now becoming more and more popular increasing their TA.