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MUSIC

Spotify adds Zeppelin and free mobile service

Spotify extended its free music streaming service to smartphones and tablets on Wednesday, while at the same time announcing that the music of rock legends Led Zeppelin was coming to the Swedish digital music service.

Published: 12 December 2013 07:15 CET
Spotify adds Zeppelin and free mobile service
Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin perform at Live Aid in 1985. File photo: AP

Spotify released applications that allow users to listen to songs from the Sweden-based company's library using Apple or Android mobile devices.

Previously the service was available only from laptop or desktop computers, unless users paid for a subscription.

"Today we're giving people the best free music experience in the history of the smartphone and the tablet," said Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek.

Spotify also expanded its reach to 20 new markets, bringing to 55 the number of countries in which the service is available.

Ek also used the New York press event to announce that the catalogue of rockers Led Zeppelin would soon be available on Spotify, a move expected to attract more users to the service.

The company boasts 24 million active users, with more than six million of those paying for a premium ad-free service costing $10 a month.

Free versions of Spotify are supported by ads in a model similar to that of California-based Pandora.

"Spotify's move to offer a mobile listening experience to users who do not subscribe signifies the company's hope to use the free mobile experience to get another six million people to first try it out for free and then eventually splurge for the on-demand subscription," said Forrester analyst James McQuivey.

The free service lets people listen to songs generated in play lists and does not allow selection of specific tunes on-demand.

"Spotify's move this week is not only good product marketing in the present, it's necessary positioning for that future, in which Spotify itself will likely have to become a feature in somebody else's product, or disappear."

Created in 2006 by two Swedes, Spotify, while labeled the world's most popular streaming music service, has yet to make a profit, unlike its US rival Pandora.

In 2012, the company said it lost €58.7 million, on sales of €434.7 million ($594 million).

McQuivey said that Spotify is out for users' time and attention in a market where titans such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft each offer a "cloud music experience."
 

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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