Spotify promises to do what we've wished we could do with Google Music, iTunes, Pandora, LastFM, basically every music program since Napster. Free music on demand. Does it deliver? More yes than no.
Spotify is a service that allows you to stream any music in Spotify's catalog instantly (and legally). That's over 15 million tracks and growing by Spotify's count. I'll take their word for it but even 15 million must not even touch the catalogs of the major record labels. I say this because in the last two weeks since the service has become available in the U.S. I've seen some pretty glaring omissions in searches for some pretty high profile artists. A search for Pink Floyd brings up a lot of covers and tribute albums but the only full album by the Floyd themselves is the live album "Pulse". Why only one album? Many artists have a few tracks on some albums inexplicably just plain missing so you can't listen to a whole album or they only have a "Greatest Hits" album available. It looks as though they concentrated on getting the big hits from artists as part of their U.S. deal first and that makes sense. But I hope they fill out their catalog with deeper cuts. That will make it more possible to discover an artists complete catalog without making the mistake of buying that one album where they decided to explore Tuvan throat singing.
Another nice feature is the way Spotify integrates with your existing music on your library. A search for an artist name or album brings up tracks from both Spotify's catalog and your own tracks. This way you can put together playlist with tracks that include both those locally stored and streaming from Spotify. You can then share playlists with other Spotify users (Spotify integrates with Facebook to show you which of your friends are Spotify users). You can even install Spotify on multiple computers and your playlists follow you wherever you log in. One caveat though. If you put tracks in your playlists that are on your hard drive and they're not in Spotify's catalog, you won't be able to access those tracks anywhere else. There's no uploading of your library like Google Music so if you plan to use the service away from your main computer or share your playlists keep that in mind when putting them together.
The service has three tiers users can choose. A free level that (for now) allows you unlimited streaming but inserts ads between songs every so often. My experience so far is that the ads have not actually been that intrusive and are mostly for record label sponsored playlists or for Spotify's premium service levels. "Ah, premium levels. That means they want you to pay money, right?" Well, yes, you're very smart. The first pay level is called "Unlimited" $4.99/mo and for that money you don't get commercials. That's it. The higher level "Premium" also gives you the opportunity to listen on your smart phone and to choose to make your playlists available offline. This will basically download the tracks in your playlists to your computer or mobile device for listening when you're not connected to the internet. This is limited to 3,333 tracks. Don't ask me why 3,333, but if you really needed to download more than that you should really reevaluate your life and how you would listen to what is probably 270 hours of music before you get to an internet connection again. Maybe you're planning to serve a long prison sentence? First astronaut to Mars? Probably not. But is it worth paying for? If there wasn't a free option (and there may not be in a year0 that might be a tougher question, but right now I'd say unless you absolutely need to listen on your phone or are planning a trip to Bulgaria, sign up for the free account and enjoy the recommendations the ads offer.
I'd also like it if they'd find a way to make their model more sustainable for artists whose work makes their service possible. Right now an artist makes $0.0004725 every time one of their songs is played on Spotify. Well, even for a chart topping artist that's going to be a paltry amount every month and doesn't even really pay for the paper the check's printed on for anyone else.
Spotify invites are pretty much gold now so I'd say if you get a chance to snag one definitely give it a whirl. The streaming tracks start very fast (scary fast actually) and sound surprisingly good. I've been really impressed with it over the last two weeks. Now if they could combine it's catalog with Google Music's cloud storage it would be unbeatable. Like many music geeks I have many b-sides and bootlegs that will never make it into Spotify's library and being able to stream those tracks as well would make this service trump everything else. As it is though it's actually replaced iTunes as my daily music player and if it did nothing else I'd be very grateful for that.
-Anthony
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