Let the music play

Or not as the case may be!

Well known and renowned company Sky have been discussing plans to close down its service which allows people to download music. Sky Songs just has not been getting as much interest as what it was hoped and therefore due to the lack of demand for it Sky have a big decision to make concerning its future.

Users of Sky Songs subscribed and paid a monthly fee of £4.99 which in all fairness seems a reasonable amount however this was just a subscription fee which only allowed you to stream music but you had then to fork out for each individual single or album that you wanted. The venture by Sky had been planned to make a bigger impact and a spokesman for them was forced to make a statement where he commented that it just “wasn’t working out” and then he continued to confirm rumours by saying, “we just didn’t see the consumer demand we had hoped for”

Not to worry though for those of you who have signed up for Sky Songs, anything you have downloaded will still be in your music libraries for your use and the site will not officially close until February 2011. Furthermore to this you will not be charged with a subscription fee which is a nice gesture on their behalf. However, the library of tracks actually listed on the site may change as the shutdown of the service draws ever closer.

However, was it really so that there wasn’t a demand? We really don’t think so – there is a huge demand for people today to have access to the latest music and that chart topping song that everyone is singing. But with companies such as iTunes well established maybe Sky Songs just didn’t quite make the final grade. Not to mention the competition of Spotify, which has managed to attract a massive user base when compared to around as few as 10,000 subscribers rumoured number that Sky Songs actually managed to attract.

Sky Songs did try though, we have to hand it to them they managed to sign contracts with all the major record labels. Gaining their support and backing so in its initial stages it must have had something going for it!

So with Sky Songs closing down there is still other places to turn to, Spotify is proving to be a popular choice for many at the moment and with their aspirations for the future things can only grow stronger for them. Launched in 2008 and only available in certain parts of Europe they plan to try and move towards social networking despite rumours of them being involved in discussions with Apple and iTunes.

The discussion was meant to be regarding a possible takeover which would of been one in the multimillion pounds region. Spotify have however disregarded these discussions as having no truth in them as they have no plans to sell the business.

The move towards social networking is a strong one and now users of Spotify can check out what their friends are listening to and share their songs with them as well as the option to swap. They will also be able to import their list of friends from social networking sites such as Facebook and even songs from iTunes.

Only time will tell what Spotify will grow into, with it not being launched in the US and only being in some parts of Europe it would seem that this may well be a move for them in the future not to mention them moving, adapting and growing with what social networking has to offer.