When it comes to music, I am a complete maniac. I must have some new, non-overplayed songs to get any work done. That’s why I invested in a solid studio monitor setup and that’s why one of my screens usually looks like this:
Left to Right: Hype Machine, SweetFM, thesixtyone, iTunes, Last.fm
Add to that my propensity to store stuff in the proverbial cloud, and it’s no wonder why I’m relying more and more on music websites than actively seeking downloads to put in my iTunes (and it doesn’t help that I always have just a few MB left of space on my early-adopter SSD). I used to labor over uploading my music to Amazon S3 via Bandwagon or backing up to Anywhere.FM to be able to access and sync my music from any computer. Now I’m seeing that is the wrong way to go into the cloud. Users shouldn’t have to do so much work — downloading, uploading, organizing, and constantly updating.
Enter Spotify. (and if you don’t live in the U.S. chances are you already know everything about Spotify.)
Spotify 101
That’s why I have always been intrigued by Spotify. I’ve always thought of it as a cloud-based iTunes of sorts. No need to download songs, yet you still have access to a massive catalog of songs numbering in the millions. Songs are streamed and play instantly, even on the sub-par 4 megabit Comcast cable connection I am currently using while out-of-town. Spotify serves up infrequently played songs themselves, while relying on a custom Peer 2 Peer infrastructure to stream popular songs. Spotify claims they are built using 95% open source technology, which seems to imply that their P2P technology is not too dissimilar from BitTorrent, with a twist. It has been said that they begin by streaming the first parts of a file rather than random parts (as with BitTorrent), enabling speedy playback.
According to Wired, Spotify is “the most successful music sharing platform in Europe with more than five times the usage of its closest competitor.” That’s no small feat either. As for the “catch”, there are three plans: a free ad-supported plan, a paid day pass that gets rid of the ads for a day, and a premium account that ups the audio quality to 320kbps (audiophiles rejoice) and has special “VIP” offerings like access to pre-releases and concert ticket lotteries. The free and day pass plans stream music at 160kbps (better than most online streaming offerings of 128kbps, but not quite near CD quality, commonly defined as upwards of 192kbps).
Once you have your Spotify account, here’s how it works:
- Install the Spotify client on your PC or Mac
(sorry *nix-ers, nothing for you just yet) - Browse around, play radio, search for songs and artists, make playlists and play music!
- You can share playlists with people, even enable collaborative playlists and get your friends to help you make playlists
- If you ever install Spotify on another computer and login, your playlists will all be there.
Coming to America
Whenever an overseas friend told me about Spotify, I’d eagerly load up the website, only to be greeted with a banner saying I wasn’t cool enough to use Spotify.
Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions we are not yet available in your country. We understand that you are currently in United States (your IP address 127.0.0.1). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at support@spotify.com.
Well, that depressing banner will soon be a thing of the past for US-based music listeners. Spotify is coming stateside soon and I just got my hands on a US beta invite and have been happily playing around with Spotify for a few days.
Will Spotify be able to replace the myriad of online music sites I rely on for my daily music fix? The short answer is undoubtedly yes.
Pretty Screenshots
As usual, you can click the images for a larger version.
Spotify Search View
Spotify Radio View – You can sort by time and genre tags. Artists also have their own radio pages (not shown).
Spotify Home – What’s New
Spotify Home – Top Lists (Tracks and Albums)
Spotify Album View
Some album pages display reviews
Spotify Artist View
Spotify Artist Bio
And then I installed Spotify on my PC… without a hitch all of the playlists I created on the Spotify client on my Mac showed up flawlessly
Spotify PC client Menu – Queues… reminds me of my WinAmp days.
Mark a playlist as collaborative and share the link with friends.. they’ll be able to view and add songs to it.
The best part of Spotify’s streaming nature – you can share playlists, tracks and albums with other Spotify users with just a link
Pros & Cons
Okay so you’ve seen what Spotify looks like and can do. The interface isn’t terribly robust or feature-packed at the moment (version 0.3.18) but it has all the features I regularly use in iTunes, with the huge exception of an equalizer. Poking around in the preferences only reveals the ability to change the cache size, add in Last.fm details and enable volume normalization.
Spotify rocks because of 1) a great music catalog, 2) instant plays, 3) the ability to easily share tracks, albums and playlists with a simple URL, 4) good search functionality and 5) all the music at your fingertips with none of the gigabytes taken up on your hard drive. However, Spotify might scare a few people away due to the you-dont-really-own-songs nature of the service that more or less limits playback to the (online) computer. Spotify plans to combat that issue with iPhone (if approved) and Google Android applications that can cache playlists.
However, the biggest drawback of Spotify in my eyes is how hard it is to find good music. Sure, if you want to know what artist or song you want to listen to then you’re set. And sure, the radio feature and artist radio feature helps solve this issue to a degree. But I still don’t know what I want to listen to. That’s why I’m always browsing the popular lists of Hype Machine and thesixtyone or poking around Pandora. Yes, Spotify does have a featured and top lists area of their homepage but it’s a muddled highlight of songs from their entire catalog, most of which I find overplayed (like a Black Eyed Peas song that was released over 2 months ago, or the epicly overplayed Kids song by MGMT). My suggestion? That they also highlight users’ playlists (with their permission of course) on some area of the application. For example, if you’re on an artist page for 50 Cent, it would show off popular playlists incorporating some of Curtis’s tracks. I’d like to be able to find like-minded music maniacs and link up with them.
Another suggestion: enable the “popularity” column in playlist view.
Would you pay for Spotify?
Yes. I’ve always been a fan of the subscription model and would love to rid myself of worrying about how much space my iTunes collection takes up. Not to mention how cool it is to share a playlist with a friend and not have them ask me where they can download the songs I’m listening to, or be able to Twitter out a link to a new song I like without worrying about the legal repercussions of sharing an mp3 hosted on one of my servers.
But.. but… I like owning my songs!
I will admit that it feels a little weird relying so much on something that could be pulled from under my feet at any moment. I have always been a big proponent of owning my stuff (yeah I know I just said I like subscription models..), which is why I don’t yet use Dropbox, and why I regularly backup my data on services that let me export it (currently trying to write a script that I can cron and will nightly archive my pads on EtherPad and ship off to my S3 account… anyone good with curl?)
But in the end, I think this type of thing is the future. Applications are moving from your computer to the cloud, and surely data is the next thing to do so.
Am I the only person that still burns CDs for my car?
Yeah, I burn CDs to listen to in my non-iPod-enabled car. I did the whole FM modulator thing and hated the quality, and short of getting a new head unit and amplifier, I’m stuck burning CDs. That’s something I can’t do with Spotify as I don’t have access to the files and pigs will have to fly before the music labels let Spotify put in some sort of CD burning ability in their application.
I live in the US. When can I expect to get a Spotify account?
I have no idea (but if their recent funding is any clue.. it’s not too far in the future), nor do I have any beta invites at the moment. Sorry! Leave a comment and if/when I do get any invites I’ll be sure to email them to you.
Verdict
Spotify gets 9.5 out 10 Stammys. I’m just waiting for it to get a bit better and then I’ll gladly ditch my personal music collection (that I will have recreated with playlists in Spotify).
Have you been using Spotify recently? Thoughts? If not, what provides your music these days? What do you think about the whole subscription and streaming music model?
Sounds like a very cool service. Do keep me in mind when/if you do get your hands on invites. I’d love to test it out!
Great overview! Now I really want to get in on Spotify ASAP. I’d love an invite if you ever get some!
You dont need an invite….you just download it ;)
I love the concept of Spotify for discovering new music and listening to new albums, but I’m different from you in the sense that I like to listen to some music for quite a long time, and don’t need to constantly change it. For this reason, a streaming service just seems disadvantageous because of the whole “if they disappear, all the music is gone” reason.
That being said, I think Spotify is a fantastic concept, and I think if our world does become more and more dependent on the cloud, which is likely, that this style of service, if not Spotify itself, will take off with even people like me.
As you have said, Spotify has been available in Europe for quite some time now and the majority of people I know use it. The sharing link feature has been popular.
I really like the choice of having: 1) ads for those that don’t want to pay, 2) The day pass for £0.99/€0.88/~US$1.10 or 3) Premium user: The ad free and higher quality version for £9.99/~US$15 a month
The iPhone app (if approved) will only be available to those who pay for the Premium user service. Personally I’d rather have it available to everyone along with the same ad funded concept as the desktop.
I suppose only time will tell…
Love spotify.. Already installed it.. Just waiting for an invite.. Cool insight into spotify..
Man if you think that looks good, you outta see the iPhone app! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNCb1IdmJ_0
Saw that on TechCrunch UK I think it was… pretty impressive! Hopefully approves it ASAP.. and if not, the labels will push them to do it or hinder their iTunes presence.
If/when you get a spotify invite I would be eternally grateful. I talk to lots of people over sees and they are always sending me spotify links I can’t click :\
Paul, if you come across any invitations, please share them with us!
I stumbled into Spotify not but a few days ago. I’m in Europe, so I have been playing with it since.
So far, I have been very impressed. Their catalog hasn’t left me hanging yet. In fact, I checked out all of the artists playing at a big concert in a few weeks with no trouble.
Another thing to mention is that their ads are not annoying at all. They are nicely done and not too frequent. They’re localized, too; I have been getting ads in French since I’m in Paris.
Finally, if you’re curious about using it, I’m pretty sure it’s possible to try out with a proxy…
Awesome write-up. Thanks, Paul. Invite please?
I’d like to take a good look at Spotify, would you please shoot me an invite when you get one? Thanks Stammy! ^_^
Terrific review, quite a good piece, and if you do find any invitations please shoot them this way.
Hey, that’s not that bad… I’m rocking a 1.5 Mbps DSL here in Toronto.
Yeah I am definitely spoiled with my fiber connection back home.. nothing else compares :(
300 speakers and 192kbps streaming, way to go…
If you need invites email me
fedelaos (-at-) gmail (-dot-) com
yeah… until the U.S. premium accounts are up and I get my 320kbps ;-)
Nice post man. The UI for Spotify is spot on…lame, I know. I can’t wait to try it out. Hopefully, you can get some invites. Otherwise, I hope it’s not too much longer for it to open up to the US.
I got an invite too. Have to say, finally I can get rid of my iTunes library which takes up 1/3 of my Macbook’s harddrive (will leave music backed up on external).
I love Spotify. Its too good to discover new music. You can download spotify without invite too. Check this for details..
http://pcsplace.com/news/try-spotify-without-an-invitation-code/
this sounds like a great service and cant wait till it comes to the US. Some times there are songs that i want to listen to, but only think im going to like for a week or two, but dont feel like forking out the 1.29 that iTunes wants for it (unless its from a band i like etc). This way i can listen to them and when im sick of them i dont have the file floating around in my library and six months down the line im like, uh.. wtf is that doing there?? haha
Hey Paul,
TBH Spotify seems like the service I’ve been waiting for. (Last.FM seems lacking behind for some reason).
I personally divide my mp3s to two categories. (actually there are more but they all go down to those two)
1. Music I want to own
2. Music I want to listen to.
Music I want to own is songs that I actively seek out for. Songs that are tied up with my life.
Music I want to listen to is songs I still enjoy, but I don’t have any emotional attachments with. More like a radio service.
What I really want is an app that scrobbles (Yes I got that from last.fm) my music and creates an online radio of all the songs I want to listen to. Of course including searching/tagging and everything.
Plus give me price quotes on how much and where I can buy all my other songs. (even do it for me with a click)
That would give me an option to still have all my music available, anytime, anyplace, without me having to manage it in any way (covers, quality, lyrics, bio, etc)
Now where is my treat?
Really looking forward to Spotify. Seems like a very promising platform, especially with the iPhone app for mobile/ offline syncing. It’s very close to where I envisioned music going in the future (with a “music tax” payment allowing for unlimited access to music, though instead of streaming, I always assumed it would be straight-up downloads.
A few things I’d love to see from Spotify that I haven’t seen from any reviews anywhere.
- some way to convert/ migrate/ “import” my iTunes catalog/ playlists to Spotify playlists (doesn’t appear to have that functionality from any of the info I’ve gleaned over the last month or so.)
- some sort of “master playlist” that mimics the iTunes Library – all of the screenshots appear to tackle the regular playlists, but not your whole catalog. may just be a usability adjustment thing though, and likely easy to do with one honking playlist.
- maybe some way to play stuff already on my disk (for things not in the catalog, like obscure bands/ live shows/ etc.)
needless to say I’m definitely going to be giving it a go once it’s out.
I was hesitant with using Spotify before, but finally gave it a try after reading your review and have loved it so far! Simple interface and does what it says!
Would be fair that you guys in the US don’t get Spotify, as long as we don’t get Pandora in Europe?! :P
Listening to Miike Snow at the moment, btw! :)
I’d love a Spotify beta invite if you get some. Thank you for the great review!
Reading @Stammy’s Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) — PaulStamatiou.com http://bt.io/5MZ
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Reading @Stammy’s Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) — PaulStamatiou.com http://bt.io/5MZ
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Reading @Stammy’s Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) — PaulStamatiou.com http://bt.io/5Mf
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Reading @Stammy’s review of Spotify http://bt.io/5MZ
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Reading @Stammy’s Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) — PaulStamatiou.com http://bt.io/5Oe #musicmonday
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Spotify looks like it has potential, looking forward 2 the US release @Stammy http://tinyurl.com/nk8owz lifehacker http://tinyurl.com/nx5zbk
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Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) — PaulStamatiou.com http://bit.ly/LZ2zw
#spotify
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Reading @Stammy’s Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) — PaulStamatiou.com http://bt.io/5MZ
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Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) http://bit.ly/apPLy #postrank #frienderati
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Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) http://bit.ly/wmTqn #postrank #frienderati
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Review: Spotify (Music on Demand) http://ff.im/-6vFoa
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Spotify (Music on Demand) http://bit.ly/GbCOC
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