Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment.
There are a number of start-ups in Europe that are able to reach beyond their own country. Take Spotify - Spotify just in Sweden isn't that interesting compared to Spotify all over the world.
Ever since Apple Music, Spotify, and all of those things came around, we can choose whatever we want to listen to. Before then, it was all controlled, but now, everybody listens to everything.
I think an online presence is super important. I find new artists and songs I like on socials or Spotify. It's really how people find you. I don't take posting on socials very seriously though.
Music as a whole industry is growing exponentially, but in terms of the actual music file, when you look at the actual value there, to me, 'The Beatles' catalog should be worth more than Spotify.
2015 has been a crazy year for me, and Spotify have supported me right from the start. It's an honour to be their Breakout Artist of the year, and I'm super excited to see what we can do together in 2016!
Spotify favors hits. It's very much a meritocracy: It's not like radio, where whatever is being played is what you hear. We offer songs up, and from there, it's up to consumers to stream the music or not.
Kids are taking music for free all the time. They have Spotify, Pandora... The record companies aren't making the kind of music that they used to make. Artists make their money on tours, not from album sales.
SoundCloud took a community-first approach to building its business, prioritizing finding artists to post on its service over making deals with music labels to license their music, the approach taken by Spotify.
I think the next big thing in music, and it's kind of because I come from the tech industry, is actually, I think it's the platform... Spotify is incredibly interesting. I think the platform is becoming the star.
When Spotify launched in the U.S. in 2011, it relied on simple usage-based algorithms to connect users and music, a process known as 'collaborative filtering.' These algorithms were more often annoying than useful.
I'm not saying you can't be successful in the music industry without Spotify. But when I look at the future of music, I don't think scarcity is the model anymore. We have to embrace ubiquity - that music is everywhere.
I'm very excited about my new Spotify account, which gives me access to twenty gazillion songs any time, all the time. The day I opened my account, though, I sat there perplexed. How would I figure out what I wanted to hear?
Spotify, Tidal, and even YouTube, to a degree, are vast and rich troves of music, but they primarily function as search engines organized by algorithms. You typically have to know what you're looking for in order to find it.
When I look at my streams on Spotify, and I just see it's hundreds of millions of streams, I think, 'Wow, that's amazing.' But you don't really get it. Once you see people in front of you singing along to your songs, it's real.
My song 'Nevermind' was named after Nirvana's album, so when I had to choose a cover for my Spotify Singles session, choosing 'Like A Stone' by Audioslave was the natural next choice, as I grew up constantly listening to the song.
I feel like, as musicians, we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what's happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen.
The insomnia just perpetuates. I have one bad night, then I get it in my head that I can't sleep. I've been trying these meditation tapes - there are a couple on Spotify - and they're meant to calm you. But they don't seem to work.
My third hire when I came to Spotify was Tiffany Kumar, who came on as our global head of songwriter relations. The whole idea was to put our heads together and figure out how to build and contribute within the songwriting community.
I'm so thankful for 'Backseat' because it's doing so much. It's almost at two million listens on Spotify. It's changed my life. It was the song that Dreamville really pushed and they just really made it explode, and I'm just so thankful.
In order for a service to be social, you've really got to start from the ground up. The fact that almost a third of the U.S. population have even heard of Spotify is really because they've seen it on Facebook and friends have been sharing.
I had two passions growing up - one was music, one was technology. I tried to play in a band for a while, but I was never talented enough to make it. And I started companies. One day came along and I decided to combine the two - and there was Spotify.
When I'm making music... or writing a bar... I'm not thinking, 'Ah, I can't wait to put this on Spotify! I can't wait to put this on Apple Music!' I don't make music for that. I make music so I can see it - I need to see the reaction. I need to feel it.
I grew up in Mountain Pine, Arkansas. You get no more country than where I grew up. But I also grew up in the Napster / iTunes / Spotify/ iHeart Radio era, and so I see that everything is influenced by everything else, and that's what country music is now.
Everyone feels like there's something you should do: you should make a song, do a YouTube video, get your views, put it on Spotify, tweet it, Instagram it, do it again and again and again. And I think, that's not what I'm living for. I ain't living for that.
I think overall, and this isn't specific to Spotify or any streaming service or any label... when you consider the overall value chain of the music industry and how important the songwriter is to the business - I think there needs to be another look at the value chain.
Spotify appeared nine years after Napster, the pioneering file-sharing service, which unleashed piracy on the record business and began the cataclysm that caused worldwide revenues to decline from a peak of twenty-seven billion dollars in 1999 to fifteen billion in 2013.
I realised that you can never legislate away from piracy. Laws can definitely help, but it doesn't take away the problem. The only way to solve the problem was to create a service that was better than piracy and at the same time compensates the music industry - that gave us Spotify.
I suppose Spotify is a good thing. The ads are quite annoying, but a lot of people seem to like it and use it. I don't myself, but it seems like a good idea, and the labels are getting a huge amount of money off it, but the artists aren't, so that must be good for them... but not us.
I'm listening to Spotify all the time and pulling in different things. I might find an artist or a song that I like, and I'll pull that into playlists, and then you'll find related artists. But I like an album as a nostalgic thing; I remember buying albums and getting into the whole thing.
There are half a billion people that listen to music online and the vast majority are doing so illegally. But if we bring those people over to the legal side and Spotify, what is going to happen is we are going to double the music industry and that will lead to more artists creating great new music.
Companies like Spotify, the new Apple service, and all the others are really going to have to pay artists more. And I think it's a matter of time; I think a lot of these companies and the individuals that are involved in them realize that as well. They know that artists are not getting what they should be getting.
When I was touring in Texas, that was before iPods and Spotify. Driving around through towns, I had to, out of necessity, scroll the radio. Whatever region of the country you are in, that's a great way to find out what they listen to. You find music wherever you are, and that becomes the soundtrack for whatever your road trip is.
Consider the social proof of a line of people standing behind a velvet rope, waiting to get into a club. The line makes most people walking by want to find out what's worth the wait. The digital equivalent of the velvet rope helped build viral growth for initially invite-only launches like Gmail, Gilt Groupe, Spotify, and Turntable.fm.
There's a lot of creativity in the industry, but I don't necessarily think that the most creative DJs or producers are always the biggest ones. I think it would be nice to see more of an open culture to different music. I think that's happening. With Spotify, I think people are discovering a lot of artists they might not discover otherwise.
