Augustus Gloop, the arch glutton of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is depicted in film adaptations as a repudiable, moon faced podge dressed as a post-war Germanic stereotype. The book had it right though: the novel’s ambiguity on Gloop’s origin better conveys Dahl's cautionary tale of overindulgence, and how best to confront it - an allegory that Spotify has fatally ignored.Daniel Ek, the music streaming service's co-founder and CEO, has positioned his online j ukebox at the forefront of a movement to legitimise free and limitless access to music, by way of a caveat that seems to prefix all ‘free’ services: the ad-funded, so-called ‘freemium’ business model. Spotify’s popularity stems from its provision of an instantly accessible library of music, with nearly seven million songs on its database. Best of all, it’s absolutely free.
So, a roaring success, right? Not exactly. All is not well with Ek’s chocolate factory. Spotify’s profit margins, or lack thereof, are a source of constant conjecture: of Spotify's 3 million UK users, estimates claim that only 10 percent subscribe to the £9.99 a month service. Growth figures are slow to the point of obduracy. Critics also suggest that artists whose songs and albums are available on Spotify make in a six month period “what a mediocre busker could earn in a day”, according to Swedish musician Magnus Uggla.
An insightful series of articles from The Guardian’s Helienne Lindvall provide more insight into the economics of the matter. Spotify’s worrying numbers, and the attention that the issue is attracting, conceal a more fundamental issue that has long invoked the Augustus Gloop in us all. At the heart of Spotify’s allure also lies its most injudicious oversight: unlimited music is fine, and we’ll gobble it gladly, but it misses the point of why we listen to music. Physical records remain important. Ownership is the fundamental tenet of a music collection; Spotify not only overlooks this, but it also strips the concept of a music catalogue of its implicit value.
Dr Michael Bull, a media expert at the University of Sussex, cites the transference of ‘ownership’ from the record to the mp3 player. Arguably, Spotify have been sensible to the phenomenon, via the Spotify iPhone app, but the implication is that they’ve jumped on the Apple bandwagon and accepted a subordinate market position, which, even when given the disparate financial realities of the two, is hardly becoming of a major industry player.
Ten years ago, Napster’s short-lived monopoly on the digital black market paved the way for its various successors to effectively hand music fans the keys to the proverbial chocolate factory. Our appetite for music has since become insatiable and Spotify is at the thin end of the wedge, hopelessly exposed by its back-to-front business plan. Audiophiles, having long since taken their golden ticket for granted, continue to have their cake and eat it - a music industry gateau made of unwitting altruism and short-sighted strategy. Gluttony is rarely a defensible quality, but as it is, it serves them right for those adverts.
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