The Spotify CTO Talk

Image via WikipediaSpotify USA, 76 9th Ave., Suite 1110, 11th Floor, New York, NY
Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 6:30 PM

Have you been wondering where Spotify's going both technically and as a tech organization? How do we get the music tracks to play so quickly? What's up with Spotify's data analytics and the data processing stack? What are Spotify's general architectural principles?

Come and hear about the 'big picture' of Spotify from the guys running the show. It's not often that they're all in town from Stockholm!

Speakers:

Oskar Staal - Chief Technology Officer
Mikael Krantz - Chief Architect
Henrik Landren - Head of Analytics
Wouter de Bie - Team Lead, Analytics Infrastructure

Agenda

6:30pm Mix and Mingle
7:00pm Presentations
8:00pm Q&A

GigaOm: Pandora: Spotify is our friend, not a competitor
Vimeo: Spotify – the story
The Register: Spotify looks for local spin guru: They really must be launching downunder
ZDNet: Spotify tops the charts for multi-platform support
TechNewsDaily: Spotify Hands-on: Worth the Hype?
Global Post: Swedish tech has its ABBA moment
Time: Today in Least Necessary Purchases: ‘Spotify For Dummies’
TechCrunch: Spotify Lands Major Studio Deals, Prepares To Launch Movie Service
Forbes: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify
AllThingsD: Spotify’s U.S. Score So Far: 1.4 Million Users, 175,000 Paying Customers
Mashable: Spotify Eyes European Expansion [REPORT]
The Next Web: Spotify Opens for Business in Belgium and Switzerland
Mashable: Spotify Comes to Facebook [PICS]
LifeHacker: Spotify Is the Best Desktop Music Player We’ve Ever Used
New York Times: Spotify Loss Widens Despite Higher Revenue Its subscriptions, which cost about $10 to $15 a month, brought in $71 million, and the company also had $28 million in advertising. But its losses for the year totaled $42 million, up from $26 million 2009...... pays labels each time a listener streams a particular song. That system brings in lower royalties per song than downloads, but with a large enough listener base could in theory bring in substantial amounts ..... The company was believed to have more than 10 million total users.
TechCrunch: Welcome To Belgium, Spotify. (And To Austria And Switzerland)
Reuters: Spotify now has 250,000 paying U.S. users: sources
Forbes: Spotify Tries To Soothe Angry Users Over Facebook Conditions
AllThingsD: When Will Spotify Finally Come to the U.S.?
CNN: What's this Spotify thing all about?
ReadWriteWeb: Here's What Spotify's New Facebook Integration Looks Like
BusinessWeek: Record Sales Rise as Lady Gaga, Adele Find a Future With Spotify Music lovers are doing something they haven’t done in years: They’re buying more albums...... The number of albums sold this year has increased for the first time since 2004 .... Industry wide, sales of record albums, which include digital downloads, compact discs, some vinyl LPs and cassettes, are up 3 percent ...... Consumers who over the last several years rejected album prices of $14 to $15, and purchased singles instead, are now coming back to albums at lower prices. ..... “There is a significant market for the download of a total album for $9.99” ...... Levy and other industry executives see the pricing strategy as an investment. By making it easier for customers to buy albums they hope to gain market share and generate more interest in the music, eventually allowing them to profit from sources such as digital music platforms, merchandise, and concerts. ...... Adele’s “21,” for example, has so far sold 4.3 million copies in the U.S. this year, more than any other artist. ...... “An album like Adele’s is a concept album, enjoyed when the songs are not disaggregated,” Donio said. “She is doing well selling individual songs, but in cases like hers, the album is a work of art.” ...... Single track sales are up 10 percent to 1.055 billion so far for the year ..... When Lady Gaga released her second album, “Born This Way,” in May, Amazon.com held a one-day 99 cents sale that was so popular it overwhelmed the company’s Web servers. ....... Consumers also discover music through the growing popularity of services such as Rdio and Spotify. Though consumers can get music for free from these platforms, the services engage consumers and encourage them to make purchases, making them less likely to take part in illegal downloading ...... The Spotify service, Parks said, is helping to turn one- time music pirates into paying consumers. ....... “What Spotify has done is re-energized the base of music lovers,” Parks said in an interview. “Data shows that in all of the markets where Spotify operates, digital music sales have grown. We’re generating a lot of revenue for the industry from a generation that wasn’t buying music.”
NPR: How Spotify Works: Pay The Majors, Use P2P Technology
LA Times: Spotify's plan: get users hooked, then ask them to pay for music
Spotify - Wikipedia
Chicago Tribune: Spotify killed the radio star?
GigaOm: Indie labels stage another Spotify walkout

A Social Graph For When Everyone Is Connected

Image via WikipediaBill Gates thinks the world population will stabilize around nine billion people. Let's say he is right. Already two out of six billion people are connected to the internet. Say the penetration goes above 90% by the time world population hits seven billion people. Would that have implications for the social graph? You bet.

The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music

There is an old saying that everyone is connected to everyone else through six degrees of separation. Every random person out there knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows you. That magic number - six - might be lesser if the group size were smaller.

Lady Mayer

Fred Wilson: DJ

Image of Fred Wilson

When I first came across the FredWilson.FM web address, I "accused" Fred of flashing a vanity URL. If FredWilson.FM is not a vanity URL, I don't know what is, I said.

Fred Wilson: VC

A little later I started following Fred on Tumblr, and ends up he is quite a music man. I was not surprised. Books, movies, music are mind food. We are in the middle of a fundamental transformation akin to the one from an agricultural to an industrial one. We are heading toward a decidedly post-industrial age where mind food plays a pretty central role. Fred, owing to his vocation and interests, has a front seat to much of that change. He had to have had a huge appetite for mind food all along.

Fred Wilson's Insight

I also figured Fred might help me go one layer beneath the top layer I have stuck to for the most part. (Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred) There was this promise of richness, novelty, discovery and plain good music, although our tastes are slightly different. Some of the songs on the list are a little too soft for me, and when I say soft, I am not talking lyrics here, I pay attention to the lyrics only much later into liking a song, I am talking about the tempo of the musical rhythms; but I like all kinds of music, I could even name you a few country songs that got me truly excited. (Lady Gaga) I don't like all songs on Fred's list, although I'd be hard pressed to skip any. But I like most of what I hear. (I'll Be Gone)

Fred Wilson: A VC

So earlier today for the first time I ventured over to FredWilson.FM, and the site is a treasure. There are 881 songs liked enough by Fred that he was compelled to share. And I really like the streaming concept. You turn the music on and go do something else. 881 songs, how many days of music is that? I think I just listened to about 20.

Fred Wilson

I went over to the Streampad site that supposedly powers FredWilson.FM and FredWilson.FM is prominently displayed on their front page. I am not surprised. I guess Fred is a celebrity user of the service. If Fred Wilson is using it, it must be a good service. Good marketing. It is a good service.

Fred Wilson: VC

I wonder if during my second visit to FredWilson.FM I can go to say song number 46 and start from there. Or do I have to begin at the beginning again? I know I can skip songs, but having to start at the beginning and then skipping one song at a time would take away from the experience.

Fred Wilson's Insight

One feature that is lacking or that I did not discern during my first 10 seconds at FredWilson.FM is the shuffle feature. I want the system to jump randomly from song to song. Then repeat visits would be more likely. But even now I am definitely coming back. Something in me wants to listen to all 881 songs over months. No pressure, no hurry, just something to end up having done some day.

Fred Wilson: A VC

Now that I have found it, I realize I have been looking for something like FredWilson.FM for a while now, a good music collection of mostly never heard before music that I can simply turn on and listen to end to end. Now there is a link to FredWilson.FM from my private homepage that is my jumping point to most of my daily web experiences. That is not to say I will be visiting daily, but I'll be back.

Fred Wilson

(Update: 40 tunes down.)

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Lady Gaga