Spotify founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon

The UK radio market is in a state of flux. Ask an optimist and they’ll say it’s just ‘adjusting’ to the recession-hit economy. Ask a pessimist and they’ll say that radio is in terminal decline. As advertising revenues from traditional radio fall, station bosses at commercial stations are cutting corners by ditching presenters and networking output across multiple markets. At the same time, the need to pull in as many ears as possible means radio playlists are becoming increasingly bland.

The BBC is trampling over its commercial rivals. Its public funding and lack of requirement for profits means it can get on with running the kinds of music radio stations the public want to hear. Let’s face it, what would you rather listen to? Your favourite music presented by a big-name personality on a national BBC station or the same music presented by an average nobody on a local station that’s moved all its live output to a studio hundreds of miles away?

While the commercial guys argue about the dominance of a public sector that’s supposed to fill unprofitable gaps in the market they’re increasingly digging themselves in for a bland future in which all local radio shows are presented by a computer in London with a nationwide playlist. So, what does the future hold for radio? It may bounce back but by the time the economy recovers we may all have got used to new technology that we might end up preferring to most music radio.

For the past couple of months I’ve been playing around with a service called Spotify. Over the course of a couple of weeks late last year practically everyone in the UK that I follow on Twitter started using it; and with good reason. Imagine a service that allows you to listen to any song you like, on demand, whenever you like. A full album? Not a problem. The same song over and over? That’s fine too. As long as you don’t mind listening to the occasional advert the musical world is your oyster.

Spotify takes the online radio concept honed by Pandora and Last.fm and further sculpts it into an image of exactly what the future of radio should be. The lack of choice over what plays next that nobbles the Pandoras of this world is replaced by a ginormous library that’s at your fingertips whenever you want it. If you’d prefer to let the software pick the songs you can pick a genre and let it go. There’s even a brilliant collaborative playlist feature which allows users to crowd-source music choices.

Could it be that in the future some radio listeners will ditch their old receivers and use services like Spotify to listen to whatever they want whenever they want, all without ever having to listen to any inane DJ banter ever again? It won’t replace all radio listenership – many people like to have a presenter talking between records and there’s always speech radio like phone-ins, dramas and documentaries that can be replaced as easily by software. One thing’s for sure though – as much as radio is changing right now, there’s more upset to come for the execs. ‘The Spotify Effect’ is waiting in the wings and it could be the start of a revolution.

Spotify currently offers its free, ad supported service in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain. This service is curently invite-only although if you click through to this page you should be able to sign up without one. If it doesn’t work contact me for an invite.

A paid, ad-free version of the service is available across most of the world.