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[ChoklitReign]

Pandora plays music it thinks you will like based on your input, Spotify plays music or playlists that you specifically select.

So it's like Zune Pass - you keep as many songs as you want for a monthly fee that are tied to your account. I have some issues with this:

1. Can you listen to entire albums?
2. Can you only listen in a web browser?
3. Can you upload music you own?

I'm tired of having so many applications to listen to music. I prefer listening to music I own with Foobar or Banshee so I can customize everything and scrobble to Last.fm. Then I use Amazon Cloud Player to listen to my MP3 purchases or keep them in a convenient location. Then I use Pandora, which I understand I cannot own the music, but it sure makes great radio stations. My biggest question is, is Spotify a replacement for buying music?

 

[gerg]

Maybe if Spotify gets popular in the US the free version can go back to not sucking!




lol

Edit:

1. Can you listen to entire albums?

Yep. I gladly imported entire albums into my playlist.

2. Can you only listen in a web browser?

Spotify is an application, so it doesn't use a web browser to work. The free version always requires an internet connection, however; the paid-for versions don't.

3. Can you upload music you own?

I don't know about this one. I don't think I ever tried.

My biggest question is, is Spotify a replacement for buying music?

I've never paid for Spotify (for as an early adopter I enjoyed the best free service before they nerfed it), but I listened to so much more music through Spotify than I would if I only ever bought CDs. I think I own 10 CDs, perhaps, but I would play Spotify for hours. So, for me, Spotify was definitely a replacement for buying music. You sound like a much more avid music listener, though, so I don't know how Spotify would fit into your habits.

 

[StopMakingSense]

3. Can you upload music you own?

If it's like Rdio they probably have a syncing tool that will sync your spotify library with your local music library.

 

[gerg]

But you make a good point. I'm not as excited about it as I would've been 2 years ago. Now we have iCloud, Google Music, Grooveshark: all which offer music streaming.

Having used Spotify for a couple of years (before moving to a region where you can't use it), you really appreciate having everything properly labelled and organised in a way that they aren't on Grooveshark. I'm sure the latter is good enough if you only want the latest Rihanna single, but trying to find the entire Chicago soundtrack through it (in the correct order, too!) was too much of a pain to be worth it.

 

[sruckus]

I thought I read there's no free streaming - that was required to for Warner to sign on. Is that not the case?

 

[Antagon]

If it's like Rdio they probably have a syncing tool that will sync your spotify library with your local music library.

The desktop app can play local files as well. You can automatically import your itunes library and when searching local files show up in between the streamed files. Best thing about spotify imo is how fast it is.

 

[Drewsky]

I want it.

 

[Antagon]

So it's like Zune Pass - you keep as many songs as you want for a monthly fee that are tied to your account. I have some issues with this:

1. Can you listen to entire albums?
2. Can you only listen in a web browser?
3. Can you upload music you own?

I'm tired of having so many applications to listen to music. I prefer listening to music I own with Foobar or Banshee so I can customize everything and scrobble to Last.fm. Then I use Amazon Cloud Player to listen to my MP3 purchases or keep them in a convenient location. Then I use Pandora, which I understand I cannot own the music, but it sure makes great radio stations. My biggest question is, is Spotify a replacement for buying music?

1: Yes
2: No, it's a standalone app.
3: You can use the app to play local files and I think you can sync local files to your mobile phone as well. Can't upload files though, so you can't listen to music that's not on the service on other systems.

Spotify has a radio feature as well, though it's pretty shitty. They depend on meta data they get from record labels, which has some very strange genre classifications and such.

Personally, as long as the music that you want to listen to is on Spotify it's a great replacement for buying. It's extremely fast (I'd recon it's actually faster then ITunes, even though you're streaming), quality is great (320 kbit ogg vorbis if you use premium, 160 kbit otherwise) and searching works pretty good. Downside is that there's still some artists that don't cooperate (including big artists like The Beatles and Pink Floyd) and they still have to acquire rights for a lot of smaller labels. Certain music styles, for example techno, are underrepresented as well. Still, I use it a lot myself and happily pay for it. Just try the free service to get an idea, even with the limitations it gives you a good idea of the music you can find and you'll see how well the program works.

 

[Jayayess1190]

Here’s How Spotify Plans to Invade the U.S., With Facebook’s Help

 

[Jayayess1190]

Music service Spotify finally to launch in US on Thursday morning

Don't look now, but music service Spotify will be available to US residents starting Thursday, July 14. The company announced its... planned announcement on Wednesday, saying that it would provide further details about its US offerings at 8am EDT on Thursday. The company is currently accepting requests for invitations on its website.

Spotify's streaming music and subscription service has long been popular among many of our friends in Europe since its launch in late 2008, and has been aiming for a US launch for nearly as long. (Our sister site Wired spoke highly about Spotify in 2009, describing it as "a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world.")

The holdup on the US launch has apparently been due to licensing concerns with the record labels—much of the Spotify-related news cycle over the last several months has been made up of rumors about Spotify signing deals with this label or the other. Even in Europe, Spotify has reportedly clashed a bit with the labels, which resulted in the company cutting back on some of its free music offerings due to supposed pressure from the music industry.

Now the day has finally come—or will come tomorrow, that is—for those in the US to find out why folks in Europe seem to love Spotify so much. Because Spotify chose not to actually announce the details when sending out its PR e-mails, however, no further information is yet available as to what may or may not be included in the service. Here's what's currently available in the UK though: Spotify's three tiers of free, unlimited, and premium muisc. The free tier lets you stream 10 hours of music per month with ads and play unlimited local music, while the the unlimited tier offers unlimited ad-free streams, and the premium tier offers all of that plus offline mode and access from your mobile phone. We can only assume that the service structure will be the same for US customers, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out for sure.

Thisismynext:

Once you get in you’ll have access to a library of 15 million songs, which you can enjoy for free with ads, $5 a month with no ads, or $10 a month to include your mobile and higher bit rates in the mix — right in line with services like Rdio and MOG, except for that sweet, sweet ad-supported option. Oh, and let’s not forget Spotify’s real killer feature: a truly great native application for Mac and Windows.

 

[Crumpet Trumpet]

50 MILLION users first year? I can see it. Maybe. Hopefully if they get that many users they'll be profitable enough to drop the 5-play limit :C

 

[The Faceless Master]

tomorrow?

HYPE!

 

[celebi23]

Can't wait to hopefully try this out tomorrow.

 

[Slayven]

What is it the kids say? My body is ready.....

 

[Antagon]

Hopefully a US release will speed up the development of the XBMC support. Want to build a HTPC and Spotify is one of the things it should support.

 

[Majine]

Hope this becomes a success so I can use Spotify on all devices, 'a la Netflix.

 

[Antagon]

50 MILLION users first year? I can see it. Maybe. Hopefully if they get that many users they'll be profitable enough to drop the 5-play limit :C

I'm pretty sure they've had to put on the limit because of record company deals. Also, they're still losing money on the free accounts, so don't expect these limits to go. For 5 dollars a month you'll get unlimited streaming without ads though, can't see how that's a bad deal.

 

[jamesinclair]

Doesnt rhapsody also offer free listening...?

 

[Enco]

Give us Netflix dammit!

Oh and I tried Spotify and cant see the rage. Pretty useless to me.

 

[kottila]

Give us Netflix dammit!

Oh and I tried Spotify and cant see the rage. Pretty useless to me.

You don't like music?

 

[SpacLock]

So it's like Zune Pass - you keep as many songs as you want for a monthly fee that are tied to your account.

It sounds sort of like Grooveshark. But instead of being free, it costs money.

 

[jonremedy]

Is there still a need for invites??

If European invites work in the US, I have quite a few I'd be willing to part my way with...

 

[kottila]

Is there still a need for invites??

If European invites work in the US, I have quite a few I'd be willing to part my way with...

Yeah, I have over 40, but everyone already has spotify here. Don't even know if they're used for anything anymore.

 

[Antagon]

How did you guys get the invitations? I've got a premium subscription but only got two invitations when I created the account and none afterwards.

 

[jorma]

50 MILLION users first year? I can see it. Maybe. Hopefully if they get that many users they'll be profitable enough to drop the 5-play limit :C

Maybe they could have done huge numbers (although noway near 50 million) with the original Spotify, but todays free version of Spotify is a far cry from what it once was.

 

[jonremedy]

How did you guys get the invitations? I've got a premium subscription but only got two invitations when I created the account and none afterwards.

Hmm... I get 2 new invitations every month... Have been a subscriber for a while... In addition to that, I got like 20 invitations when I first signed up like 4 years ago.

 

[GhostRidah]

So what is the difference between this and Grooveshark, and Google music?

Edit: Read the thread, ehh this doesn't seem interesting at all, Grooveshark does most of all that and better since you can play a song more than 5 times lol

 

[Munin]

So what is the difference between this and Grooveshark, and Google music?

Edit: Read the thread, ehh this doesn't seem interesting at all, Grooveshark does most of all that and better since you can play a song more than 5 times lol

Grooveshark is shit, there is a shitton of wrong named and duplicate tracks and the library is much smaller.

 

[GhostRidah]

Grooveshark is shit, there is a shitton of wrong named and duplicate tracks and the library is much smaller.

Maybe for whatever genre you listen to, I find most of everything I need and I don't care for duplicates as long as the song is there.

 

[Antagon]

So what is the difference between this and Grooveshark, and Google music?

Main difference with Grooveshark is probably that you use a desktop app which you can also use to play local music and that content is provided by labels, meaning that you can't upload your own. Spotify premium also has some nifty features such as an offline mode so you can download music to your phones (and I think ipods nowadays as well) and listen to it without streaming.

Haven't gotten much experience with grooveshark though, as spotify has served me well.

 

[Truant]

Spotify is awesome.

The only thing that sucks is that there's no real community built in to it besides the Facebook connectivity, and no way of finding new music besides just being lucky with random searches.

Here in Norway, we have a similar service called WIMP, which is far better when it comes to new music. They have recommendations, playlists with new stuff that's actually worth checking out, and other stuff. It's really well done. Spotify is great if you know what you're after.

 

[makingmusic476]

I'm not seeing what makes this better than, say Last.fm, aside from being able to pick which specific songs you want to play.

Last.fm scrobbles what music I play at home, then I play a radio station consisting of all the songs in my playlist on the go.

 

[numble]

So what is the difference between this and Grooveshark, and Google music?

Edit: Read the thread, ehh this doesn't seem interesting at all, Grooveshark does most of all that and better since you can play a song more than 5 times lol

Unless you are using Google Music China, Google Music only lets you listen to songs you already own.

 

[McBacon]

Spotify is the shit.

£10 a month for 10 million songs? Sounds fair!

 

[Antagon]

I'm not seeing what makes this better than, say Last.fm, aside from being able to pick which specific songs you want to play.

Last.fm scrobbles what music I play at home, then I play a radio station consisting of all the songs in my playlist on the go.

Last.fm doesn't make something like 15 million songs available instantly at home though. To me that's a pretty major improvement.

 

[Angst]

Maybe they could have done huge numbers (although noway near 50 million) with the original Spotify, but todays free version of Spotify is a far cry from what it once was.

They probably won't be using the same free version in the US as we have here in EU now. If they are smart they will give US free users the same experience we had before the nerf. I have Spotify Premium and it's more than worth the 9 Euros per month.

 

[Enco]

You don't like music?

Music is great and there are plenty other options that are better.

I don't listen enough to pay a fee every month. I usually just listen to what I have so it's useless. Plus there's grooveshark, YouTube and plenty other places for music.

 

[makingmusic476]

Last.fm doesn't make something like 15 million songs available instantly at home though. To me that's a pretty major improvement.

Ooooh.

Well that makes a big difference. The comparisons to Google Music and stuff gave me the impression you had to upload your own music.

 

[satriales]

I stopped using Spotify when they introduced the 10hr a month limit. I switched to Grooveshark and while it's not as well organised as Spotify it does the same job and actually has more of the stuff I like than Spotify did.

 

[SteveWD40]

Yeah, unfortunately they completely gimped the free version a while back. Before then it was unlimited, you just had to suffer through some ads every few songs. I loved Spotify back then (it has been available here in Sweden for ages), but now I don't use it anymore. The free version is now worthless, and I'd rather buy my own music than pay for streaming their library.

Same here

They never really announced it either, a bunch of tracks I had star listed just blacked out.

I don't listen to enough new music to justify £9.99 a month, shame iTunes sucks so hard on Windows though.

 

[Pizza Luigi]

Welcome to 2010, USA!

I have been using Spotify quite a while now and I'm still loving it. It all works pretty much flawless. Streaming of tracks to your phone or making them into Offline Playlists. Even your own local tracks can be put on there without a hassle. Facebook integration for the friends list is also really cool and they keep updating that shit and it is already so much better!

 

[jorma]

They probably won't be using the same free version in the US as we have here in EU now. If they are smart they will give US free users the same experience we had before the nerf. I have Spotify Premium and it's more than worth the 9 Euros per month.

I think they will, because afaik the upcoming us launch was the very reason they nerfed the free spotify to begin with...

 

[kottila]

Same here

They never really announced it either, a bunch of tracks I had star listed just blacked out.

I don't listen to enough new music to justify £9.99 a month, shame iTunes sucks so hard on Windows though.

To be fair, the announcement was everywhere. Both on their website and facebook page the discussions were enormous and it was covered by a alot of media

 

[SteveWD40]

To be fair, the announcement was everywhere. Both on their website and facebook page the discussions were enormous and it was covered by a alot of media

Ah...it seems I am a little out of the loop on this one.

 

[kottila]

Ah...it seems I am a little out of the loop on this one.

Don't know if they had info on the client itself though. Would imagine that many were surprised when it happened.

 

[WordAssassin]

Is there still a need for invites??

If European invites work in the US, I have quite a few I'd be willing to part my way with...

I'm in the US and I'd take an invite if it turns out they work for us.

 

[Ghost]

I subscribed a couple of months ago because I was going to a festival and wanted a free (it was a trial) way to get all the more obscure bands on my iphone so I could remind myself what I was in for.

I'm paying for it now and I love it, the app (on iphone) is really great, it syncs wirelessly with your desktop client, so if you make a new playlist, you just open the app on your phone and the desktop prompts you to ask if you want to sync it to the device and asks whether you want it available offline or not, it has proper pause & resume functionality through the mic as well, its as close as you can get to an iTunes replacement.

The more I think about it the more I realise that the fact its not provided by my phone supplier is really a massive positive for Spotify, it's one less thing I have to worry about if I ever want to change platforms. If you get heavily into iCloud, what are the chances of that ever working on android or WP7?

And having a desktop client with 10 million tracks that responds like iTunes did when I only had 200 tracks just proves to me that this the future of music libraries, I don't want hundreds of gigs of music grinding my PC/Mac to a halt every time I do I search, I want everything accessible with no lag, and then I want to put what Im listening to right now on my device.

The only niggling thing in the back of my mind is that the Zune Pass is better value because of the 10 free tracks you get every month, In general I think they could do more for subscribers, just some small perks like ticket competitions or exclusive events would go a long way.

The other thing that does worry me is that apparently it's absolutely terrible for Artists (presumably they are only getting paid when people buy the tracks, which is rare)

 

[Angst]

I subscribed a couple of months ago because I was going to a festival and wanted a free (it was a trial) way to get all the more obscure bands on my iphone so I could remind myself what I was in for.

I'm paying for it now and I love it, the app (on iphone) is really great, it syncs wirelessly with your desktop client, so if you make a new playlist, you just open the app on your phone and the desktop prompts you to ask if you want to sync it to the device and asks whether you want it available offline or not, it has proper pause & resume functionality through the mic as well, its as close as you can get to an iTunes replacement.

The more I think about it the more I realise that the fact its not provided by my phone supplier is really a massive positive for Spotify, it's one less thing I have to worry about if I ever want to change platforms. If you get heavily into iCloud, what are the chances of that ever working on android or WP7?

And having a desktop client with 10 million tracks that responds like iTunes did when I only had 200 tracks just proves to me that this the future of music libraries, I don't want hundreds of gigs of music grinding my PC/Mac to a halt every time I do I search, I want everything accessible with no lag, and then I want to put what Im listening to right now on my device.

The only niggling thing in the back of my mind is that the Zune Pass is better value because of the 10 free tracks you get every month, In general I think they could do more for subscribers, just some small perks like ticket competitions or exclusive events would go a long way.

The other thing that does worry me is that apparently it's absolutely terrible for Artists (presumably they are only getting paid when people buy the tracks, which is rare)

No, they get paid when people play their tracks. It used to be very low, but it has increased a lot recently.

 

[Ghost]

No, they get paid when people play their tracks. It used to be very low, but it has increased a lot recently.

How much? Because the story everyone quotes is Lada Gaga getting $167 for 1 million streams of poker face last year.

To me that might as well be nothing.

 

[jonremedy]

I'm in the US and I'd take an invite if it turns out they work for us.

How about I give you one, and you try it out to see if it works?