ReadWriteWeb

Everybody piled into the ballroom today at the Austin Convention Center to hear Spotify CEO Daniel Ek give the final keynote interview of SXSWI of 2010 fully expecting to be blown away with the release of the peer-to-peer music player.

Instead, we got somewhat evasive and allusive answers on when to expect a U.S. version and were left looking to yesterday's announcement of MOG's move to mobile, with full knowledge that Napster is nipping at its heels.

As an entrepreneur, blogger and the investor in charge of the Founders Fund seed investment program, Dave McClure knows the importance of a proven revenue model. In a recent blog post he makes the assertion that "subscription models are the new black," despite the fact that startup monetization has focussed heavily on cost-per-click advertising. He writes, "This Don't-Be-Evil-AdWords-Click-Happiness..It's made us a bunch of lazy, ad-happy, Web-Tards with crappy ROI...We have largely WASTED an entire web decade of time, energy & venture capital on extremely inefficient revenue models." While we might not have chosen this exact phrasing, we cannot agree with McClure more.

The only reason streaming web music hasn't completely killed all other forms of music distribution is the fact that it's not available when you're traveling across wireless networks - say, in a car. Well hold on to your hats and start canceling your satellite radio subscriptions, Pandora is taking to the road.

MOG's $5 all-you-can-eat streaming music subscription service has finally launched. Although we interviewed CEO David Hyman in mid October, the music industry has changed considerably in the last two months. Imeem sold to MySpace for a song, and competitor Spotify is rumored to be delaying a United States launch as it refuses to enter North America with a paid-only version. We spoke to MOG CEO David Hyman to find out his thoughts on the industry and why his service is different from his competitors.

In 2008 the idea of another subscription-only music service was enough to get your knickers in a torrent. Sure Rhapsody was doing well, but they'd been around for forever and in 2008, freemium was the music model du jour. With a year to reflect, co-founder of the Future of Music Coalition and longtime San Fran Music Tech Summit organizer Brian Zisk tells us what it takes to survive in today's music environment.

Let's face it: the music industry is broken. Labels charge stations and providers exorbitant fees; independent sites have little chance of recouping their costs; and in the end, the listening experience is fragmented and confusing.

In our current model, a company like Grooveshark pays a fee for your stream even if you have access to a song via a separate paid subscription service or download. In other words, labels are getting paid twice on songs you already own the listening rights to. In order to change that, Playdar offers us a chance to search for music by artist and song as well as access the files we already own.

The question period after today's launch of Google's OneBox music search focused a great deal on the project delivering users with easy "legitimate music" versus other illegitimate sources. While discussion was centered around squashing the millions of illegal torrent files available for download, the truth is that a number of streaming music sites like Grooveshark have worked hard to pen legitimate label deals. While some may wonder why iLike and Lala were chosen above others to benefit from the Google deal, many more are worried that the companies will be unable to offset label fees via premium subscriptions and advertising.

Just when you thought media darling Spotify was going to be the sexiest music service of the year, music blogging platform MOG is announcing plans to offer a $5 dollar per month, all-you-can-hear music service. In an interview with MOG CEO David Hyman, ReadWriteWeb
learned that tomorrow morning the company will announce deals with Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI. While other services are scrambling to sign licensing agreements with the four major US labels, MOG All Access will launch before November 26. It looks like Americans will have plenty to celebrate this Thanksgiving.

Gainesville-based music startup Grooveshark just signed a major label agreement with EMI Music and EMI Music Publishing. While the company is unwilling to disclose the exact terms of the deal, Grooveshark VP of Marketing Josh Bonnain expressed that the agreement is fair and mutually beneficial. The surprise deal comes after EMI filed a June lawsuit against the company. While Grooveshark members gain access to EMI's huge song catalogue including tracks from the Virgin, Blue Note and Astralwerks labels, it'll be interesting to see if the agreement is actually a sustainable one.

In a surprisingly candid post on Spotify's blog, company co-founder Daniel Ek recently shared his thoughts about where the popular streaming music company stands today and where he hopes it can go in the future. The main point of his post was to clarify that Spotify, despite being a media darling these days, is nowhere near becoming a sustainable company with a stable revenue model. However, that's their end goal, Ek says, and they're in it "for the long haul" with no intention of simply "flipping" the company after the hype reaches its crescendo. But in the meantime, the company struggles with the exorbitant per-play fees enforced by the music industry while not finding success with an ad-supported model.

European music service Spotify is one of the most highly anticipated applications coming to the U.S. The service, best described as a streaming music version of iTunes, consists of both desktop software as well as complementary mobile applications for Apple's iPhone and the Google Android platform. Already, the service is wildly popular overseas in its current markets which include the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Spain, Norway and Finland where it has accumulated over 5 million users. There, the company offers two versions of its service - a free application and a premium, ad-free subscription version.

According to recent reports, however, Spotify may do things a little differently when it reaches the States. Says Andres Sehr, Spotify's global community manager, the company is considering going the "freemium" route for the U.S. market.

Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek must be ecstatic. The company's iPhone application has been approved for the App Store ahead of competitors Rhapsody and Grooveshark. PaidContent UK reports that Apple has notified Spotify that its app will appear in the store shortly. In late July there was fear that the Swedish site's iPhone service would be denied due to the fact that it was seen as a threat to iTunes. Since then, Apple has come under FCC investigation for its app approval process. The investigation could not have come at a better time for Spotify; the speedy approval is likely due to Apple's interest in deflecting accusations of anti-competitive tactics.

Yesterday we asked what 3 web apps or services you find the most exciting right now. Not your 3 most used or favorite, but the apps that currently make you tingly with excitement. We got some great responses in the comments, so in this post we pick out our top 10 from your choices.

We've chosen the 10 in two batches. Firstly, the services that got the most number of mentions. As expected, these are well known apps that millions of people are using (or will use when it's launched, in the case of Google Wave). We didn't want this to be purely a popularity contest though, so we've also selected 5 lesser known web apps or services. Those apps all got multiple mentions and in our estimation they're each worthy of being labeled 'exciting.'

Not to be outdone by recent announcements from streaming music site Spotify, Gainesville-based Grooveshark announced a $3 per month or $30 per year ad-free Grooveshark VIP service. Grooveshark VIP offers users early access to development pipeline releases including early testing on the upcoming Grooveshark iPhone application and early August 24th access to Grooveshark 2 - the site's next generation. In addition to offering users WordPress and Facebook integration, Grooveshark spokesperson Josh Bonnain laid down some key differences between Spotify and Grooveshark.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has the Midas touch. In anticipation of the company's US launch, the on-demand music streaming site is finalizing what is rumored to be a $50 million dollar round of investments. According to the Financial Times, if Spotify closes the round with Wellington Partners and Li Ka Shing Foundation, the Swedish company will be valued at $250 million dollars.

Yesterday, Swedish music service Spotify announced their application's submission to Apple iTunes App Store. Spotify, which already boasts over 6 million users in Europe, is somewhat of an iTunes alternative - albeit with streaming tracks instead of downloads. However, the similarity between the two services leads some to believe that Apple, notorious for booting apps that duplicate iTunes functionality, won't approve the new Spotify iPhone application. And in another example of Apple's totalitarianism, the company also just pulled Google Voice and other third-party Google Voice applications from the App Store.

Luckily for jailbreakers, problems like those above are less of an issue. There's currently an open source Spotify client app available for download and the third-party GV Mobile app for Google Voice is coming soon.

Swedish music service Spotify just announced their application's submission to the iPhone App store. Similar to the company's Android application, the iPhone app gives users the ability to search for tracks and create music streaming play lists. One key feature of both applications is that it allows users to cache music for offline play. With this sort of functionality, it will be interesting to see if Spotify's app will be taken as a threat to iTunes. If this were the case, then Spotify's little green iPhone app might never make its way onto the device.

US audiences are in for a listening treat. It turns out that Swedish on-demand streaming music service Spotify is set to officially launch to US audiences in the late Summer. Up until now, Spotify's American fans have either had to use foreign proxy servers to access the service or they've simply gone without. The service is currently available in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Spain, France and Finland. Despite only being available in a select few countries, Spotify already has more than 5 million users and is often mentioned as a competitor to Grooveshark and Imeem.

Not too long ago, after the demise of Napster, Kazaa became synonymous with P2P file sharing. After a number of costly lawsuits and failed attempts to appease the music industry, however, Kazaa shut down its P2P network. Tomorrow, however, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, Kazaa will rise from the ashes and begin its second life as a legal subscription download service. For $20 a month, users will be able to download an unlimited number of songs. These songs, however, will be DRMed and in the WMA format, which will probably spell doom for the service in the long run.

On-demand streaming music service Spotify just announced the addition of more than 90,000 releases to its catalogue. The announcement came on the heels of their recent deal with CD baby, and users will be pleased. The company published two lists sorted by artists and labels early this morning.

While Spotify is not yet available to North American audiences, legal streaming music services have certainly proved their demand with competitors like Grooveshark, Lala and Tunerec seeing steady growth.