Spotify

In this day and age there are several streaming services available offering «free» streaming with limited advertisements (yeah, right). I started off back in the dark ages with Rhapsody on my PC, but after I entered the smart phone age about six years ago, I tried several services before opting with Spotify.
No service is absolutely free without a catch, usually in the form of advertisements, and I found myself deleting Apps left and right, as I found most of them to be clunky, less than user friendly, and advertisement heavy.
When I tried Spotify, I liked the ease of creating playlists, the library of music was close to perfect, and with little to no buffering wait time.
The catch on most of these streaming sites is to pay a fee to listen without interruption.
After using Spotify for several months, I chose to pay the $ 9.99 flat fee to listens as much as I want, as long as I want, and to create as many playlists I want.
Of course recently we’ve heard in the news that Taylor Swift pulled her music from Spotify, and Prince has since followed (though he has always been uptight when it comes to sharing his music library) and while I totally understand they are protecting their «art» and their earnings, I also find it ironic that the sharing of music is nothing new, before burning CD’s, there was the copying of albums to Cassette tapes,
Now Itunes is offering their version of «Spotify», they offered a 3 month free trial, and after that 3 months the user would be paying $ 9.99… I thought about doing it for a moment, but then came to the conclusion… Why would I leave something that isn’t broken, to pay the same monthly subscription fee just because it’s offered by Apple?
Spotify continues to supply me with entertainment, unless that changes, I’m with them to stay.

I would give them zero starts if I could. They’ve been fraudulently charging my credit card every month. I have NEVER heard of them before and somehow they got a hold of my credit card. It’s impossible to get a hold of them by phone. Here is my email correspondence with them:
ME:
Hello,
My credit card is being charged $ 9.99 for a subscription I do not have with Spotify. I would really appreciate a call or email from someone who can help me resolve this matter. I would also really appreciate the contact information (phone number) of the account subscriber that is using my credit card without my permission.
SPOTIFY:
Hey there,
Thanks for getting in touch.
I couldn’t seem to find an account with the email address you emailed us with. To locate your account, please can you let us know all your email addresses.
Umm, really!!! Well obviously my email isn’t associated with an account, I’ve never ever heard of you before. I don’t have a subscription!
I strongly advise against the use of any of their services.

This is a strange one. On one hand, I love the service that Spotify supplies. On the other, you need to consider the concept.
Imagine there was this really cool street food market stall. On the stall, there were all of the coolest food items you ever could imagine. All cooked how you like them. All with your favourite cocktail. And they are potentially free. All you have to do is endure some advertising and if you want your food and drinks while you are on the move, you pay a fixed price for delivery.
The main guys who have the market stall get to be pretty well known, all take a huge salary and all have investors and shareholders in the stall.
The main question is, where do the guys who operate the stall get their food and drink from? How can they legally pretty much give it away?
Well those guys go to loads of local bars and restaurants and take all the produce first and then return the bar and restaurant owners $ 0.004 (not even a cent per menu item) for each item.
Then because the investors want more profit, you promise that you will renegotiate down to maybe $ 0.001 per item from your suppliers.
This is the Spotify business model. I believe Lady Gaga was paid £162 for ONE MILLION streams on Spotify. Who wins? Not the people with the talent (debates over the talent of Gaga, not to be discussed here!).
However, I concede, YouTube is worse for artists!
I’m not saying that Spotify is all bad. But squeezing the artists more and more because you and your shareholders want more dough is robbery.

Spotify how could you do this to us?! From 1^st May 2011 Spotify slashed our streaming limits and announced that the free music service will now be «subject to more stringent usage allowances». Basically for my fellow cheapskates out there, it’s sign up to a premium or unlimited account or say goodbye to listening to your playlist’s on repeat, with a cap of five times the maximum play for any one song.
Spotify bigwigs have stressed that there focus remains on providing a free service in order to combat music piracy. However, with a reassurance that the paid for unlimited and premium memberships remain unchanged and constant pressure from the music industry to charge for all music; can Spotify really live up to its aims?
These days most people expect to be able to go online and have access to free music. If legislation continues to cut and limit all of the legal ways of doing so then it is only a matter of time before people turn towards the illegal sector. I regret, with a sad sad smiley, it seems the beginning of the end for legal free music.

Remember the days when the idea of a personalised radio station «just for you» seemed crazy? Yeah, so do I. Then I discovered Pandora. Oh how my life became better. Pandora really was the perfect date. She filled me with musical knowledge and useful tips, like when Dolly first got married and why Sublime only speak to spotty teenage boys (in musical terms that is!). She introduced me to fabulous new artists and she was beautifully presented; white with a pale blue tint. I understood Pandora, until she was taken away.
Yes, Pandora was removed for anyone with a UK IP address and my heart weeped. I knew of FineTune and Last fm, but with their strange UED and unfriendly man colour, they were sites I just couldn’t identify with. Times were dark.
Then one day someone invited me to Spotify, I registered, downloaded and glanced across this crude software like shit on my shoe. For month Spotify and I did not speak, we merely bumped into each other on my computer from time to time. It was a sad and lonely period for both of us.
Finally it happened, the moment when we actually had a conversation. It was a little awkward at first and really no more than an introduction from a friend. On the Unilocal talk boards, I had seen people build playlists with Spotify and post them up. I wanted to find out more.
Finally, I got in bed with Spotify. Like a teenage boy, it was awkward and pushy. It wanted to take over my twitter and Facebook accounts and broadcast our relationship to all. Now I don’t want to air my knickers to the world. Yes, sometimes I feel the need to listen to N’Sync all day, or I feel inspired and want to enjoy the seriously sexy sounds of Phil Collins for a few hours. My friends and acquaintances do not need to know about these guilty pleasures.
And so after a few teething problems, we are now in a fully functional relationship. Sometimes he is empty when I ask for something strange like Trailer Trash Tracys, and I have to stare at a blank word doc for a moment and think of the joy of a past time with Pandora. But we get over this and grow and now, I am happy. Very happy.

I’ve been an avid iTunes user for years and had gathered together over 30gbs of music so was looking for another way to go about chilling to my favourite tunes.
Enter Spotify, a subscription based streaming music system where all your current (and future) fave block rocking beats are stored in ‘the cloud’. There are three different ways of chewing through your slice of the Spotify cake, Open (free, only 20 hours of streaming a month, with adverts), Unlimited (£5, unlimited streaming, no ads) and Premium (£10, as unlimited and with mobile streaming too).
I opted for Premium. I really need music on the go and I couldn’t imagine being limited to 20 hours a month, so it was the natural choice.
I deleted my entire iTunes collection and started playing with the user friendly interface (btw, this review relates to the Mac version, although I can’t imagine the windows one being much different). It is all very intuitive and you’ll be sorting your playlists, starring your favourite tracks and publishing your top artists on Facebook before you know it (oh yes, just like everything else, it links to good old FB).
There are millions of tracks available to stream and the vast majority of songs I searched for were found within seconds. It gives you access to so much music without having to take up very much space on your hard drive, which is ideal if you’re a media hoarder like me!
The one thing I will mention is although a tenner a month is nothing for unlimited music wherever you go (I just paid more than that for a Pizza), as its all streamed, make sure that your broadband/​mobile provider doesn’t have much in the way of download limits/​charges.
Bin iTunes. Love Spotify.

Spotify is a London-​based music service that’s going to take the world by storm. I downloaded it this morning and can’t get enough. Buhbye iTunes.
Spotify is free download to a quick-​loading slick looking site which works like a giant remote iTunes. Just search for the song you want and click play, it streams so quickly and smoothly even with my crappy 2Mbps line that it makes me wonder if they’ve not just hidden all the songs somewhere in my hard-​drive before I could even think of them.
When you’ve had 20 mins or so of playing songs (which you put into a queue) you’ll hear a 20 second advert to help pay for all this music. It’s not annoying enough to ruin things. If you’ve used Hulu you’ll know what I mean.
I’m so impressed with the depth of obscure remixes I’m now listening to. It’s a goldmine for electro. It’s a bit like Limewire but actually user friendly and legit. And still free!
4 stars for now. Some big name artists aren’t onboard yet (Floyd, Metallica) and I think it needs some recommendation software to help you find new things. I’m getting hooked but until I can get this on my iPhone as well I’m stuck with iTunes. Maybes I’ll just put in some dodgy patch to record everything that plays.
I know it was made in Sweden but I’m still passionate that the best thing in music right now is once again from London.
: Sorry this sounds like an advert. It’s just I really like this so far.: