Nevertheless, Uggla insisted that Spotify is a fantastic service with a great range of music to sample. However, he felt that the fact he wasn’t getting paid was the fault of the major labels involved in the project (Sony BMG bought 5.8% of Spotify for 2,935 Euros, Universal Music got 4.8% for 2,446 euros, Warner Music paid 1,957 Euros for 3.8% and EMI pocketed 1.9% for an investment of 980 Euros), claiming that he “earned as much in six months as a BUSKER could earn in a day.”

As the dust settled on the story, many non-Swedish readers were saying “Magnus who?” and wondering if this artist’s lack of mainstream popularity was the real reason behind him earning virtually nothing. But what about big artists? What about really, really big artists with huge international appeal. Say, an artist like Lady Gaga, who has sold more than 4 million albums and shifted in excess of 20 million paid digital downloads?

According to a report today, Lady Gaga’s track “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks during a five month period on Spotify and was played more than a million times. So how much money does she get paid by STIM (the Swedish Performing Rights Society) for this massive achievement?

SEK 1150 – that’s around $167 or roughly 113 Euros.

Commenting on the story, Douglas Léon, better known as Swedish rapper Dogge Doggelito, said he was dismayed.

“It is totally sick. We musicians have no rights, you may not charge [for music] anymore,” adding that Lady Gaga could’ve earned more driving an illegal taxi-cab.

Swedish artist, music producer and philosopher Alexander Bard, however, said that this payment was better than Lady Gaga would have achieved from her music being available via The Pirate Bay, noting that the amount was “…more than zero.”

Technically Bard is absolutely right, but let’s be honest – Lady Gaga would blow the money she earned from STIM in a 20 minute hotel mini-bar bender. Looking at the overall downloads, let’s face it, per track she earned pretty much near to nothing from both services.

While Spotify is to be commended for having the guts to try something new, for providing a truly wonderful service and for having achieved such a lot technically in a such a short space of time, one can’t help but wonder if it is ever going to bring in decent money for the artists.

After all, aren’t these the very people the music industry continually holds up as the important ones to encourage, nurture and support?

Lady Gaga’s example shows that Spotify’s business model needs some work, and the labels seem to agree on this. The US launch of the service has been delayed earlier this week, allegedly because of concerns about Spotify’s ability to upgrade free users to paid customers.

“We think Spotify is a great service but they’re going to have to convince us they can convert enough people from free to paid subscriptions to make it worth our while,” one label told the Financial Times. “As an ad-supported service the economics don’t work at all.”

Despite the startup troubles for Spotify the reviews from users, many of which were avid file-sharers, are still extremely positive. The service recently launched an iPhone app that allows users to play the tracks on the go, with or without an Internet connection, which many saw as the missing link. Now all they have to do is come up with a plan to actually make money.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Last week music industry body IFPI requested Niemelä to be taken off the case, since he is connected to the music streaming application Spotify which is partly owned by the major record labels. This request was soon backed by movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted. “There should not be any doubt in this case,” she said in a response.

The Court today agreed with this assessment and disqualified Niemelä because he holds stock options in Spotify. This despite the fact that Niemelä himself denied a conflict of interest. The decision by the Appeal Court is unanimous and can not be appealed.

The question remains why the music industry was so eager to have this lay judge removed, since they usually keep quiet when the person in question supports their case. However, as we’ve pointed out before, there could be more to this lay judge issue than initially meets the eye.

Niemelä’s involvement with Spotify was limited to the technical side. In fact, he is a tech savvy programmer who co-owns a streaming technology patent along with the original developer of uTorrent and knows the ins and outs of BitTorrent.

Instead of having a bias towards the music industry, as IFPI wanted the Appeal Court to believe, he might actually be one of the rare candidates who knows how BitTorrent really works. Judging from the plaintiff’s discrediting of other tech experts in the previous trial, it might be that IFPI’s true motivation to remove Niemelä was not that humble.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, that eventuality was denied after the Appeal Court investigated the bias issue and ruled that the judge’s ties to these groups did not influence his judgment.

Instead of a retrial an appeal has been granted which will take place in November. The case will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of judge Tomas Norström, because she too was linked to pro-copyright groups.

Today there is yet another question mark hanging over the head of another judge scheduled to play a major part in the appeal.

Launched as an answer to the file-sharing problem and the possible savior of the music industry, Sweden’s Spotify music service has been widely well received by both the industry and hardened pirates. But there is a problem.

According to an SR.se report today, one of the lay judges in the case has been revealed as an employee of the fledgling streaming music service.

“If the man is not judged to be biased he will be part of the court’s team at the right time,” said judge Ulrika Ihrfelt.

“I would not say there is a problem, but we definitely consider it a factor to which we must draw the attention of the parties, given that Spotify is a company that provides online music,” Ihrfelt added.

But of course, the problem goes just a little bit further than Spotify simply being a provider of online music. It also counts the major music labels – the absolute arch-enemies of The Pirate Bay – as shareholders.

Both the plaintiffs and defendants in the appeal have been notified of the lay judge’s affiliation with Spotify and it will now be down to the court of appeal to decide if there is a conflict of interest.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

But where are the alternatives? If someone created a service to compete with pirates, everything could improve. Sites like The Pirate Bay would cease to exist and users would flood to legal services where not only could they avoid being sued, but the artists would get paid too.

It seems that just about everyone who has tried it absolutely loves Spotify. It has in excess of 3.5 million tracks available, all for free (if you chose that option), all funded by advertising. And of course, for those wishing to champion the morality of paying artists, this is dealt with too. This week it was revealed that the major labels all have fingers in the Spotify pie – surely paying the artists would be a foregone conclusion?

Not according to Swedish noble, artist and composer Magnus Uggla, who has launched a scathing attack on the fledgling streaming service, branding it as dishonest.

Writing on his blog he says that Spotify is a really incredible, fantastic service which offers everything – for free too. But, he writes, it’s too good to be true. Like thousands of other artists, Uggla’s work is available via Spotify and, due to involvement of the major labels and a lack of involvement from the local torrent site operators, he of course expects to get paid a reasonable amount. Not so.

Uggla says that when he received his first earnings statement from Spotify it became apparent that he “earned as much in six months as a BUSKER could earn in a day.” Ouch.

Understandably upset, Uggla raised the issue in a long discussion with Sony boss Hasse Breitholtz but came away feeling that he should trust in the man and the service.

However, Uggla was as surprised as most people when he learned last week that the major labels, including Sony, all have a stake in Spotify. A mere 30,000 kroner ($4,000) investment bought the company 5.8% of the service now valued at around 1.8 billion kroner ($251m).

Referring to the valuation, Uggla questions how this company can do so well – and comes to the conclusion that it’s at the artist’s expense. He says that Sony Music, after “suing the shit out of The Pirate Bay” is acting just like them by not paying the artists.

“I would rather be raped by Pirate Bay than by Hasse Breitholtz and Sony Music and will remove all of my songs from Spotify pending an honest service,” he says.

Sony? Dishonest? Surely not…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

One of the software engineers at Spotify is Ludvig Strigeus, the creator of uTorrent. It is therefore no surprise that the application uses very few resources, just 12k memory when we tested it. The rumor goes that some of the money made when uTorrent sold to BitTorrent Inc., has actually been invested in Spotify, an application that competes with piracy.

When we asked Andres Sehr of Spotify to describe the service, he told us “Spotify is a new way of enjoying music. We believe Spotify provides a viable alternative to music piracy. We think the way forward is to create a service better than piracy, thereby converting users into a legal, sustainable alternative which also enriches the total music experience.”

The quality of the music on Spotify is comparable to 160kbps MP3s, which is more than decent for a streaming application. To fill its library, Spotify has cut deals with EMI, Warner Music, Sony BMG and three other major labels, which all responded positively to the new concept. Interestingly, Spotify also uses P2P technology to stream the more frequently accessed tracks.

“Spotify uses a hybrid p2p system where music is delivered both by our servers and using P2P,” Andres Sehr said. “This allows us to deliver the long tail of music which may not be very popular, as well as quickly serve up the latest hits that the majority of users listen to. P2P allows us to both increase the speed that we deliver music and also lower the cost of streaming it.”

Aside from being a music streaming application, Spotify also allows users to create and share playlists with each other, the top 100 tracks of 2008 according to Pitchfork editors for example. On top of that, the Spotify interface helps you to discover new artists with its “similar artists” and “artist radio” feature.

The overall response from Spotify users seems to be very positive, but can it compete with piracy? Time will have to tell, but Spotify invites are actively being traded within the BitTorrent community, and it has even been well received on some of the most elite music trackers.

One user at the music tracker What.cd wrote: “Honestly it’s going to be huge. I’ve been browsing and playing from its seemingly endless music catalogue all afternoon, it loads as if it’s playing from local files, so fast, so easy. If it’s this great in such early beta stages then I can’t imagine where its going. I feel like buying another laptop to have permanently rigged.”

Spotify is not perfect though. One of the mentioned downsides is that it is not compatible with iPods and other portable MP3 players. The Spotify team hasn’t ruled out the option of an iPod compatible version in the future, but for now they will focus on optimizing the Windows and Mac application.

Overall we can conclude that Spotify definitely has potential, but time will tell if it’s able to compete successfully with piracy. Spotify is currently in Beta stage, invites to the free (ad-supported) version can only be used in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Spain and France, but restrictions usually don’t stop pirates.

Update: We have a few invites left, please remember though that it’s only available in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Spain and France. Those who’d like to receive an invite, send me an email with “spotify” as subject. According to some of the commentary, an invite is not even needed though.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.