For those of you looking for a distraction from the debt ceiling, here’s a review of Spotify after the break.
I got an invite to Spotify via this link the other day, and so far I’m very impressed. Free or cheap unlimited streaming has been around before, but Spotify’s implementation is by far the best I’ve seen.
Spotify has a desktop player that seamlessly integrates your iTunes library (or other music libraries) with their seemingly infinite music collection. When you search Spotify for an artist or track, it returns everything it can find in its collection and yours. Both search and playback are virtually instantaneous. In practice, it’s impossible to tell whether you’re streaming a song or playing it from your own music collection.
You can also do things like share playlists over social media, or create a playlist and email a link to it to your Spotify-using friends. The artist bios and related artist components are decent quality and work well with search.
The key fact about Spotify is that it “just works” — the player isn’t overfeatured and the streaming is glitch-free. There are three editions: free, with an invite, which plays an (annoying) ad every few minutes and displays ads in the player; unlimited ($5/month), which does away with ads, and premium ($10/month), which also lets you stream on your mobile device or on other network devices. I’m still mooching on the free service but I’ll probably throw down for the unlimited, since it’s less than the price of one album.
This review sounds like a goddam commercial, but I was predisposed not to like this service, and I’m surprised at having the opposite reaction.
zzyzx
I have to confess that I only have been using it, well, spottingly. It does what it does reasonably well but ultimately I’m more likely to look up a song on You Tube…
arguingwithsignposts
What good is a review if we can’t get in?
mistermix
@arguingwithsignposts: I got an invite within a day or two after submitting my email via the form linked in the post (it’s from Ars Technica). I’m still waiting for the invite from the main Spotify site.
cathyx
It’s so odd that you wrote about this this morning because I just got my invite this morning. I only had to wait about a week.
One question though. Do you get to keep the music or is it listen only? Once I play it, is it mine forever in my library?
arguingwithsignposts
@mistermix: I entered my e-mail on the site you linked, and it said they were all out of invites. The main Spotify site says you can get in the queue for an invite, or you can pay for an upgraded membership and get in now.
I get why these companies do the “soft rollout” “invite only” stuff, but it’s been going on since Google Mail and it’s gotten tiresome. Same thing with Google+ (which I like) and other trendy tech gizmos.
Spotify is not new, though. It’s been around for a while in other countries. They should stop with the hipster “in-group” bullshit and just open it up already.
mistermix
@cathyx: No, the music is just to listen to. I’m still going to buy music, but this is a good way to listen a couple of times before buying, or to listen to back catalog songs from artists you like, or to live versions that you wouldn’t buy but are interesting nevertheless.
Brian R.
Wow, Spotify lives up to the hype? Awesome!
Maybe I’d be more excited if I’d ever heard of Spotify.
Mike
I got an invite in half an hour with this link last week:
I wish it had suggestions: “if you like this song, you might like . . . ” Other than that, I agree with mistermix.
Guster
Request an invitation? How about this: fuck you.
I don’t request invitations from people trying to sell my eyes to advertisers, or get a monthly fee.
(ETA: Er, not fuck -you-, misterm. Fuck -them-.)
jheartney
I think putting most content into an unlimited-streaming architecture is only a matter of time. By now broadband is robust enough to stream music effortlessly, and video generally reliably, so the logic of the situation is that living within your own little walled garden of only a tiny bit of the universe of content is pointless and unnecessary.
Eventually it will all congeal into a universal subscription/universal access setup, like Netflix streaming expanded to infinity. At least I hope so.
mistermix
For those of you upset about the request issue: my guess is that it is an attempt to make sure their streaming architecture keeps up with the demand. You can’t just release a service to a potential audience of a hundred million in one big bang.
The same is true of Google+ — don’t you think Google wants everyone to use it, now? They’re running to catch up with Facebook.
Mike
@ 8. Mike
Hmmmm – link was deleted. I’ll try this – copy and paste:
https://www.spotify.com/us/bmi
arguingwithsignposts
@mistermix:
No.
They want to generate buzz. If Google can’t keep their server architecture up to the task – being *Google* and all – then they shouldn’t be in the social media business.
jibeaux
I haven’t tried it yet, keep meaning to try to wrangle an invite, but a co-worker & I have been playing around with turntable.fm — it basically lets you get a little group together and DJ for each other. Kind of a nice way to find out about new music. I think it’s also a version of invite-only but if you have any facebook friends who are on it somehow you can be on it. Or something.
mistermix
@arguingwithsignposts: Gmail was rolled out by invite only first, too, even though Google was, indeed, Google at that time. They’re showing that they’re some of the best engineers in the world by their well-informed caution in rolling out G+ slowly and fixing bugs as they go.
NobodySpecial
@mistermix: Unfortunately, those on the outside looking in have less reason to want your product if it takes being in the companies’ good graces to have something. I dislike artifical caste systems and Old Boys Networks in real life, why do I want a duplicate of that in the virtual one?
Thomas
I got my invite here http://www.spotify.com/us/lefsetz/. I got the invitation e-mail about a half-hour after requesting it.
I love the service for what it is, though I’ve recently started using it more like Pandora by generating playlists through Spotibot. Then I asked why I wasn’t just using Pandora, since that would remove one of the steps (search and playlist generation at Spotibot, then playing the list in Spotify).
Think I’ll keep the free account to find and listen to specific music and just continue using Pandora for my general listening.
Kaleb
I find Turntable.fm to be a much better way to encounter new music, but Spotify is great for listening to the specific songs/albums you want.
Bort
I use Mog and i like it better. Spotify makes you manage your playlists through their downloaded player instead of on the website. And honestly, why do people need to integrate their music with spotify’s? If they have a 9 million song catalogue, why not just listen to “your” music from their server.
Rhapsody is as good as Mog too.
zzyzx
The main problem with streaming is that I listen to music a lot of the time in unstreamable environments. Driving takes me through dead spots. Flying doesn’t always have wifi available and it costs money if you want to use it when it does. It’s fine for a desktop environment but not ready for anything else.
4jkb4ia
$60 a year is an incredible bargain considering all the music I have to buy, but I am pretending I am too poor.
arguingwithsignposts
@zzyzx: Bingo! Also, all that streaming does cost more than $60 since all the cell cos are getting rid of unlimited data plans.
@mistermix: My point is that they don’t do “invite only” just to get the kinks out. They let the kool kids have first crack, so they can rave about it to their minions. Look at who gets to hand out invitations sometime. (caveat: I say this as someone who’s been given early invites to some of these sites by said kool kids numerous times)
@NobodySpecial sort of has a take I’m getting at here.
ETA: I just got an invite from one of the four places I input my e-mail, so just forget I ever said a bad word about those kool kids, m’kay. (kidding)
ETA2: It was via the link @Thomas left above.
stormhit
The free service is nice- but for anyone who’s been using Rhapsody or Zune for years, there’s nothing about it that’s new or unique. The most interesting thing about it is the enormous hype it’s generated when people have been largely ignoring identical services up to this point.
Also, nothing about a slow roll out shows that a company has the best engineers in the world. It’s standard practice in the industry.
arguingwithsignposts
@stormhit:
I will refrain from the obvious Zune joke.
the dude
I’ve been using Spotify (free version) for a few days now. Not too bad, although it’s annoying when you search for an artist and find that half the tracks on an album are not available for streaming.
I’ve been thinking of upgrading to a subscription service like Spotify, but I’d like to see streaming supported to my Squeezebox first.
Maybe Rhapsody or Napster are better for this?
John S.
I’ve had it for a couple of weeks. It definitely has potential, but I have a number of issues with it.
1. It isn’t really a full catalog of music. It definitely has a lot of albums, but more popular albums will have songs (usually the best ones) tagged as unavailable by the label. And more popular artists are completely absent – The Beatles, Peter Gabriel and even the B-52s really have nothing licensed. That definitely sucks.
2. The plans are terrible. The free option binds you to a desktop and peppers you with LOTS of audio commercials, many of which are several minutes long. The $5/mo. plan gets rid of the commercials, but keeps you tethered. The $10/mo. plan is the only plan that lets you play music through your phone, and that’s really where it’s at for most people with these types of services.
3. The interface and usability is kind if shitty. It isn’t very easy to create random playlists by genre, and the app is kind of clunky and weird to use. It cuts off information that appears for artists without providing a “more” function to expand. It doesn’t do a great job of suggesting similar artists or music, and what it does show gets clipped off as previously mentioned.
It’s a terrific digital jukebox for the most part, but it isn’t worth the money yet in my opinion. Pandora is completely different and offers a different experience entirely (more like a radio than a jukebox), but it’s paid service is only $3/mo. They also don’t force you to pay for mobile access, and their ads are far less annoying on the free plan. I can’t see spending 3X that for what Spotify has to offer right now.
Danny
This post is strictly for mistermix and other members of the master race (my appologies to the downtrodden masses who cannot spotify):
http://open.spotify.com/track/4x4Ja5WXwRjqP66Puowv07
http://open.spotify.com/track/6CZX7oXBw74Mu7ZkE3cjmr
http://open.spotify.com/track/5PEpq0XThGwhw8nOTvyUhm
http://open.spotify.com/track/4OiqkgQAbU8zOGYmgrAUWp
http://open.spotify.com/track/30hKzveKyWKlyHZZhVGOhi
http://open.spotify.com/track/66h75N57rsz0wlQ3rfqKW3
http://open.spotify.com/track/4RUfZBGuiA79ETYeOhis00
http://open.spotify.com/track/2VEZx7NWsZ1D0eJ4uv5Fym
http://open.spotify.com/track/4nx2Nlkded5dYhqVhu1ea8
http://open.spotify.com/track/7Hlt3NrOfqSGR9QugZz8Jn
Martin
Spotify, Pandora, and Netflix all suffer from the same long-term problem – they don’t generate enough revenue for the labels/studios/networks to rely on them long-term if those services offset traditional revenue streams – cable, DVD sales, CD sales, iTunes sales, rentals, etc.
If Spotify users keep buying music, then all is well. If they stop, then they’re going to lose their catalog. The Netflix price increase was the first direct sign that they’re bumping up against that reality because Netflix users *are* dumping cable, etc. and that lost revenue will only be made up by charging Netflix more money for access to content.
BlueMan
I find the hype about the amount of tracks available to be quite overdone. It has some of the music I’ve searched for, nothing like the articles I read led me to believe.
And I don’t know if it’s intentional, but the ads that pop on are for music so much the opposite of the kind of music that I’m listening to that I’m thinking the logic is to annoy you into paying to get rid of the ads. Was thinking they might do a pandora/amazon thing and advertise music that might intersect with the type of stuff you’re listening to.
Bender
Got it last week after being told for awhile by friends in the UK what I was missing. It’s had almost everything I asked for, including old obscure stuff — like Jacobites (during that thread last week) and old Jazz Butcher singles — and obscure newer indie like a great Cloud Nothings single and some Floating Action.
Impressive catalog, if I can figure out the UI.
Danny
I’ve been using the premium spotify service for awhile and wrt to streaming & cells you’re allowed to permanently cache a certain number on songs on the phone (1000?), and fill/change the cache over wifi. So basically standard mp3 player but with access to the library in the cloud…
On a computer you can cache up to 9999 songs, I believe.
quaker in a basement
A pal o’ mine has been a subscriber in Europe for a while and was able to send me an early invite.
Recommend!
Danny
@28
I also hear this all the time, but:
Before becoming a Spotify customer I had basically stopped buying (or downloading for that matter) music. But even in my prime @23-27 I never bought more than one CD / month on average.
With services like Pandora/Netflix/Spotify though I feel that the user value vs. price is much higher than with CDs / Itunes and it’s completely effortless to try new music / movies, so I’m gladly paying 10$/month.
And what I’m wondering is this: if in a near future that behavior becomes the norm then the music biz ought to make MORE money – not LESS. Or does really mr median music buyer spend >10$/month on music?
Bender
Yeah, for indie and alt stuff it’s the best catalog I’ve seen. I can see that for mega-groups it would be pretty sparse.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Interesting. I’d like to hear more about how it stacks up against Pandora, which I’ve been listening to since 2006. I recently paid for Pandora 1 because I finally gave up on trying to get used to commercials. $36/yr well spent IMNAHO.
catclub
Would spotify be of any use to a classical music listener?
Can I find a specific old recording, for instance Conductor X performing the St. Matthew Passion in year Y?
Also, what level is their compression. I am no audiophile, but classical music has quiet bits ( pun intended).
Nutella
@arguingwithsignposts:
Rollouts aren’t usually hung up on hardware problems so Google’s hardware scaling skills aren’t going to be enough to make Google+ a success.
Google+ is having trouble with software design problems that are really affecting how their new product is perceived. The biggest one right now is the issue of identity.
They are trying to figure out how to fix that and the faster the rollout the harder that is to do. I think they rolled out too fast and may crash and burn.
kicks82
@catclub I just did a search for St. Matthew Passion and came up with hundreds of hits. I don’t know much about classical music so I’m not sure if it helps. Also, the premium version streams at 320 kb/s.
I know it’s definitely missing a few artists/albums/songs but it’s still an incredible interface.
Anyone have any playlists they want to share?
Don
Personally I think GrooveShark is superior. It’s a drag that Apple is playing lawyer-cop and preventing their app from showing up in the store but if you jailbreak or only listen via browser that doesn’t much matter.
The think GrooveShark does that Spotify doesn’t is the one thing that’s critical for me – provide some sort of radio mode where it’ll keep selecting things it things are similar, relieving me of the need to keep finding and adding things to the queue. Unlike other alternatives it doesn’t limit me to a certain number of skips.
I guess if you want to micro-manage your listening the Spotify way is fine. I may be abnormal and I know I am not as big a music listener as many, but I like the fire and forget. It’ll keep playing similar-ish stuff till I decide I want to hear something radically different. Then I punch in a song of that style and it’ll start finding stuff in that vein.
mistermix
@catclub: I just put in a search for “John Eliot Gardiner”, just to pick someone with a huge catalog, and it looks like Spotify knows of most of the albums he’s recorded with his many different orchestras/choirs. Two issues. First, some albums are not available in the US (they show but aren’t playable). Worse, for some reason, the individual tracks won’t play. It appears to be related to length – anything longer than 8 minutes won’t play. I wonder if that’s due to some limitation of the free account or it’s some other limitation.
Danny
Spotify’s features page w info on compression, etc
My experiences as long time user:
Wrt to catalogue the big picture is that labels that they dont have agreements with they obviously dont have anything from. I’m sure there’s a list on the spotify site or via google. For the labels that they do have agreements with they usually have everything with a couple of caveats:
1) Stuff that hasnt yet been processed to be published on spotify (a guess is that the labels do the publishing job in order less obscure first, more obscure later.
2) Artists that told their labels they don’t want to be on Spotify (e.g. Beatles, Metallica, Dylan pretty much nothing, perhaps Best Of, or some songs. Bowie, Stones, U2, Depeche pretty much all major albums, but rarities are… rare)
For less well known acts if they’re not super obscure the hit rate is maybe… 60%?
3) Individual songs may be locked, if the Artist requests it. This is typically a hit song on one or a few albums in their catalogue. This is the case for perhaps 10% of artists, but definitely more common for major artists. You can purchase locked songs.
So I’d say that likelyhood is high that there are gonna be some artists you like and songs you like that aren’t available. And many (likely more) that you like. I cant vouch for all genres though: they do seem to have a lot of jazz, and at least one obscure wahabi muslim prayer album that sounds like ObL could have enjoyed.
I pretty much changed my listening habits to regard the music world as what’s available on spotify. That works out for me, but YMMV.
(You can add mp3 albums in the client though and make them part of playlists etc)
Favorite features for me are: Allmusic/Wikipedia integration on artists & albums, and collaborative playlists.
I haven’t used Pandora in at least five years though and none of the other services so I don’t know what’s “standard” these days really :)
Occasional Reader
I’ve been using Spotify in the UK for about a year. It’s great, but they’ve recently put restrictions on free streaming – limiting the number of times you can listen to any one song etc to try to push people over to paid.
ABL
I got a premium account because I have a lot of “Klout” (it makes me feel verrah important.) I like it so far. I listened to a bunch of artists covering Amy Winehouse songs. But I want it to play different crap that sounds like the crap I want to listen to like Pandora does.
I’m sure it does that, I just haven’t figured out how yet. I have a short attention sp– a penny!
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i am going to check it out, per your recommends.
i have some unwittingly obscure taste in music, there was a time where i didn’t listen to bands i hadn’t seen live. i am older, more mature, and partially over that now. i want to see what they have.
Valenciennes
Spotify’s so awesome I’ve been illicitly using a “Norwegian” account (and have had a Norwegian buddy occasionally log in) for months. It’s like Rhapsody but better, and also free (up to 20 hours).