The last 15 years has been an innovative period for music replay. First we saw the advent of the Steve Jobs’ iPod, condensing a room full of CDs into the palm of your hand; and around about the same time came the final crack downs on our beloved P2P file-sharing networks. Gone are the days were one could haphazardly click on a collection of fun sounding tracks on Napster or Kazaa whenever your mate told you about a cool new band.
Instead, we now look to Spotify in these very same situations. Spotify’s viral spread and immense ease-of-use has empowered even the most rapidshare-inept among us with quick and legal access to a huge collection of music. It seems that it will remain the next big thing for a while now, especially with new ‘social’ capabilities they’ve recently added. But the software is far from perfect. Understandably, for free users it’s hard to foresee the application ever dissociating with those pesky ads every 3 or 4 tracks; and perhaps more annoying than the ads is the gaping hole made by the lack of artists of the Warp label, and others of such calibre. Reasons such as these may mean that it could never replace your own library on iTunes.
In view of the future, one thing that comes to attention is the innovation of the very new ‘Playbutton’. It is a small badge sized mp3 player containing the content of a single album, letting the music enthusiast proudly display their taste while supporting their favourite artist at the same time. It aims to bridge the gap between those who want more than just an online download but find the idea of a new CD a bit lacklustre. While the idea seems pleasant enough, it will be interesting to see just how in demand they are in when they’re actually released later this year.
