,
11 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
1/ What is the uniqueness about Spotify and the context in which it started? What was the conventional wisdom and how did it differ?
2/ The time was after Napster died, Lala died (got acquired by Apple), Kazaa got sued out of existence, and the perception was that it was just a license problem.
3/ The conventional view was that things are shifting toward the cloud, do a client/server architecture, get some license and then done.
4/ Then iTunes and iPod came out, it used conventional license, a la carte pricing, and a hardware/software bundle to drive distribution.
5/ Conventional wisdom of streaming like Real Networks, neglected bandwidth latency problems, licensing, and end device user experience. The MP3 experience created the latent demand, but couldn't full capture it.
6/ iTunes/iPod was 10x better because 1000 times the songs, no skipping vs CD players, fully integrated to a store, different purchase experience, ability for mobility.
7/ So this was the context of Spotify, competing against iTunes, conventional wisdom says just deploy it to the cloud, but it neglected the following problems.
8/ iTunes cost too much as it scaled, buying 99 cents is fine, but people wanted free or a bundle, cloud web experience didn't work as promised the latency was too high, the user experience needed to be personalized iTunes was simply a store.
9/ Instead, Spotify used a peer to peer architecture with a servers as a fall back, and experimented if the latency was dramatically better. It was. That was the foundation: desktop client, personal playlists, licensed music. This was different than generic wisdom you heard.
10/ In theory, technology is commoditized but in practice it's not. This was the start of the Spotify user centric music, where playlist became the foundation for recommendations and a music subscription that everyone used.
11/ Any other comments on Spotify? What was the difference in their choices that made them differentiated in the beginning? Feel free to add below.
