Spotify

The term I chose relating to the modern informational society is Spotify.  Spotify is an online music interface very similar to iTunes.  They offer free music or offer subscriptions which gives you the capability to download the music.  The first article I found related to Spotify was out of the New York Times on May 28, 2009.  The article is called: To Tap the Web, Music Labels Try to Help Start-Ups. This was a period in the music industry where consumers were choosing between paying for music through something along the lines of iTunes, or they could illegally download music.  This opened up a market for start-ups that believed they could offer free music to everyone while still having the reliability and legality of it all.  The article talks about how their is a lot of skepticism but hype about Spotify, but at the time of the article, it was still based out of Stockholm and not in American yet.  The skepticism revolves around the excessive advertising for non-subscription users and the longevity and success of the business because other starts-ups before 2009 had failed.  The scholarly article is written almost a year before the New York Times article.  It talks about Spotify's successful launch in Europe and how all four major labels backed them, including Merlin and Orchard.  This allowed Spotify, from the get go, to have the rights on a huge database of songs.  When Spotify came to America, there was much skepticism as the NYT article stated.  However, in present day, more people are moving away from iTunes and using Spotify.  It has more songs than iTunes because of its close connection to electronic music in Europe, and the price for subscription has decreased over the years.  Spotify has offered students deals on subscriptions, and the skepticism about the company's longevity has been put to rest.