Spotify
When it comes to listening to music online for free, we’ve seen fads come and go, various sites do their best at blending music listening with social networking, online radio stations and various other projects. My first proper experience with online streaming of music for free was with Pandora. Now, if you live outside the US, that link will get you a big apology page as sadly the service is no longer available outside the US. The theory behind Pandora was to analyse listeners tastes and then provide a selection of music based on those tastes. It would study all users trends and this all contributed to what they called The Music Genome Project. All sounds hip and trendy, but it wasn’t that great because you had to listen to what they suggested.
Since then, sites like Last.fm and Blip.fm have provided us with free access to music on demand but their web front end’s are a bit slow IMHO, the track quality is questionable and their list of available tracks can be a bit limited. Don’t get me wrong, I like what they do, but I never got into them because it just seemed a bit too much like hard work.
Recently however, there’s a new kid on the block. Spotify. Strange name, but this could just be the future. It’s a small downloadable application that uses the concept of peer to peer file sharing to ensure rapid delivery of the tunes, all of which are delivered in what many believe is a superior format to MP3, .OGG Vorbis q5. This streams at around 160kbps and does indeed sound VERY good.
It’s fair to say that Spotify looks and behaves in a slightly similar way to iTunes, or should I say, it behaves like other iTunes-esque applications. However, it is extremely simple to use.
The most impressive thing about Spotify is the rapid delivery of the tunes. It’s almost instantaneous. The quality is very noticable too. It does sound very good. Other very nice touches are the artist biographies, dynamic album reviews with cross linking and the flexible search feature. Album art is always there too, along with the ability to construct and share playlists. You can even collaborate on playlists with other Spotify users. Built in volume & transport controls include a handy Shuffle feature too. Tracks are also rated by popularity. Recent searches are also saved. And just like online radio, you can get Spotify to select music for you based on taste, style and era. You can queue tracks up or just flit around the library, looking for your own choices or following Spotify’s suggestions.
You can even right click on tracks and select to buy them!
The speed and quality of Spotify is down to the way it delivers it’s content. It uses a cache on your hard drive to improve bandwidth usage, resulting in that super quick start up time. How much of your HD is used is user configurable too. Spotify can also scrobble your tracks to your Last.fm account if you wish.
All in all, this is a remarkable application, even more so as it is FREE!! :o)
What’s the catch, I hear you ask. Well, of course there’s a catch, but it’s so simple and unobtrusive. Adverts. Yup, the Spotify people have to make money, as do the artists whose songs you are playing. So, the free version of Spotify will feature adverts in the form of Flash banners in the application itself and also in audio form. Both appear infrequently and are totally sublime and inoffensive. The audio adverts are much like the 30 second affairs you hear on commercial radio and only play one at a time. Spotify say that as the service grows, the frequency of adverts may increase slightly, but not in a ridiculous fashion. You can of course buy a 24 hour ticket to get ad free service, or £9.99 per month for Spotify Premium, that gets you ad free and also exclusive access to various content, like forthcoming releases and suchlike.
Spotify, even though being around for 3 years, is still starting up, but it’s making a big noise (forgive the pun) and is spreading rapidly. Currently, Spotify Free is only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain. It’s only available in some contries by invite only as well. Spotify Premium is available in most countries now.
What I like about Spotify is that it removes the need for people to download stuff illegally, simply to try it out. Sure, it’s not going to stamp out piracy single handedly, but it sure makes it more convenient to listen to music wherever and whenever, legally and free.
Sites are springing up all over the place, allowing Spotify users to share playlists with each other. One of my personal favourites (in fact, it’s the only one I currently use) is ShareMyPlaylists.com which is a free and very convenient way of getting your lists out there. Users can rate them and leave comments too.
As you can probably tell, I’m a massive fan of Spotify. As soon as it gets bigger, I can see it making a massive impact on how we listen to music online on a global scale. I’d like to see little additions like it being able to feed to things like Twitter what you are currently listening to with a link to the track too, a bit like Blip.fm does. Or even a Facebook app to show your playlists and currently listened to tracks. There’s plenty of scope for Spotify and I can see it happening very soon.
Check it out for yourself. There’s nothing to lose!
Oh, and here’s a few of my playlists that I have shared on ShareMyPlaylists.com
Failed Muso’s Best of The 80’s
Failed Muso’s Musical Homage to Ashes to Ashes Season 2
Failed Muso’s All The Fun Of The Fairlight
Failed Muso’s Electronic Influences
Failed Muso’s Queens of British Pop
Failed Muso’s Later…with Jools Holland Collection (10/04/09)
Leave a Reply