Photo: Gareth Brown / Corbis
Streaming - what is it?
Services like Spotify are revolutionizing the music market. Listen to music for free with a download ? How favorite song-listening works with it.
Buying music online, for example on iTunes, always has something of the shopping buzz of clothing sales: you basically buy more than you planned to do. Here is another hit, which one finds quite nice, there is still an indie band because of the coolness factor. After a few listening times you often have enough and disillusionment remains. And a peppery bill.
Music listening with so-called streaming services like Spotify works much more frustratingly. These platforms are something like digital music libraries. Instead of buying and downloading each track individually in the online store, you can conclude a monthly subscription and have access to millions of songs. Because "streaming" means that the songs are played over the Internet directly from the server of the provider. You do not have the title because it is (mostly) not stored on your computer or smartphone. But you can listen to it as often as you want - "borrows" it almost every time.
That's how hours and minutes feel. Because when you rummage around for a while, you are constantly coming up with new bands that you have not heard a) forever or b) would absolutely have to hear. Then it's back, the Sale Fever - only without a bad conscience.
Because the song selection is so huge, the streaming services also have nice extras. You can put together playlists with favorite titles. Or let bands recommend. On request, many services also put together personal "radio stations" and play about sixties soul or anything that sounds like "Seven Nation Army".
What to do to use everything: create an account or sign up via your Facebook account. The social network works like free advertising for the music services. Even those who do not have an account can see on Facebook what the friends are playing and they want to listen in. (If you do not want to be overheard yourself, just click on "Post on Facebook").
The fact that streaming is very much on trend can be seen in the market leader Spotify, which launched in March 2012. According to the company, German users hear an average of 109 minutes of music on the song platform every day. Which may also be because the service offers a free subscription - with commercials between the tracks. The artists earn on this advertising revenue and the number of song views with. The whole thing is legal. Unlike before, when music was often banned from the net. Sounds all hit.
Maxi is on Spotify too! Here you can find our account >>
