The liberation of Spotify from the desktop and onto mobile marks not only a revolution in music consumption but may also gives us a clue as to what the future "networked" home might feel like.
The key challenge facing the music industry is often defined as the battle of paid-for content vs. pirated content but I think what is really going here is a shift away from models of consumer ownership to models of consumer access. In the old days you had to own a physical copy to be able to play something whenever you wanted. Its clear from technology such as this it is that ownership - whether physical or digital - is not necessary or even desirable (given the needs to store & manage a library). Perhaps I'm being a little optimistic here, but prevalence of illegal peer-to-peer networks could be seen as a transitionary phase in the march towards this model of "always on" access. When you can get what you want whenever you want why go through the bother and risk of accessing these illegal networks?
The music business has long been accused of missing the digital boat when Napster first revolutionised the industry but its support of services such as Spotify and we7 show it is they who are leading the way as to how the digital future may look for the cultural industries. With Sky rumoured to be soon launching a music streaming service (Sky Songs), its not hard to imagine a scenario whereby all music, TV, film etc is delivered via the internet to a single home receiver that then wirelessly connects to your TVs, hi-fis, computers and mobile devices. With people like Sky then in control of distribution it would then appear that labels can get back to concentrating on marketing and building artist brands. With consumers facing unlimited choices, getting them to find your artist will then be the major issue facing labels rather than losing sales to the pirates.
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