What's the point of an arts publication being on Spotify? We're about to spend the summer figuring that out. We're going to be adding playlists to many of our articles and blog posts, so start looking out for themed sets and guest-selected tunes.
While we're excited about this, we are being cautious. My biggest worry is that there isn't enough music on Spotify. While I was making our Fourth of July playlist, I had a hard time finding a lot of little local bands. Also, nobody from Drag City is on there, which is a huge bummer. The lack of the small, the brand-new and the independent directly relates to my second worry, which is that the politics and ethics of Spotify are dicey.
That said, we're going ahead with this. Considering Spotify is birthing itself into two rapidly changing industries, the music biz and the web biz, I'm inclined to ease up. If their paradigm doesn't shift fast enough, we won't hesitate to change over to another service. But for now, what we like about Spotify is that it's relatively easy to use, social and constantly updating itself in big ways. The growing pains? We're willing to wait them out.