Recently I blogged about my Spotify experience and that I am premium user now. I was amazed by how many people contacted me online as well as in real life, voicing their concerns, which ranged from topics like intellectual property law, the problem that they don’t give you anything that you may keep after your membership ends to net neutrality. All of them do really have a point.

Apart from the interesting discussions I’ve had, this also triggered me to dig deeper and so I happened to stumble across something apparently known as the Open Music Model (OMM).

One of it’s major aspects is a shift from understanding the music business as product-based to a service-based understanding. If you are willing to accept this mode of thinking about music and given the benefits of the OMM, paid, online streaming makes total sense – at least from my perspective.

That being said, I do have to add that Spotify does not implement the OMM to its full extent and leaves out critical parts, which would silence a lot of critics (especially on the consumer side) right away. E.g., the OMM asserts open file formats, without DRM restriction, which may be freely shared by users as requirements. So we’re absolutely not their yet.