W.+Non+Fiction

​ __ Coming to America : European Streaming Sensation Spotify By: Steve Knopper __
 This is a picture of Spotify's co-founder, Daniel Ek. This is a picture of Apple's Steve Jobs

A new European streaming-music service, Spotify, is said to be coming to America by early 2010. Spotify is adding roughly 50,000 registered users every day and could be the strongest competitor against the well-known iTunes. This Swedish service is available in the U.K., France, Sweden and three other European nations and provides near-instant access to 6 million tracks. The difference between Spotify and iTunes is that Spotify users pay for a subscription and iTunes users pay per song. Spotify users hear an advertisement every 20 minutes or they can also upgrade to Spotify Premium for $14 a month which enables them to listen to CD-quality music that is ad free. Whereas ITunes users pay 69 cents to $1.29 per song or around $9.99 per album. Spotify’s co-founder Daniel Ek, has said that Spotify’s future is heavily dependent on it’s mobility. “Imagine if you create a service that is as easy as the iPod, but you can bring with you a library of millions of tracks,” he told Rolling Stone earlier in the summer. Although Spotify seems like it could challenge iTunes when it arrives in 2010, some believe that iTunes could easily come out with a subscription service of their own that would crush them. So the question remains, who will win, Spotify or iTunes?

I think that most people will stick with iTunes and not convert to Spotify when it arrives to America in 2010. People tend to do what they’re used to out of habit and so therefore I think more people will continue to use iTunes, a service they know they can rely on, rather than switch to Spotify. However, today many teens and adults download hundreds of songs and this becomes pricey with iTunes. If you were a person who buys a lot of songs, a subscription to Spotify would be cheaper for you. ITunes is beneficial to people whom only buy a couple of songs a month. Personally, I would choose Spotify over iTunes because I think having a subscription and being able to download as many songs you want per month is a better deal than paying for each individual song. I also believe that when Spotify reaches America, iTunes will come out with something bigger and better in effort to surpass Spotify. I’m looking forward to trying Spotify and seeing if it is truly better than iTunes and seeing what iTunes will do to fight back and maintain its dominance in the digital-music market.


 * ailing :** unsound or troubled
 * viability:** having the ability to grow, expand, develop

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