Spotify - A world of music.

[photek]

http://www.spotify.com/en/

No thread about possibly THE greatest software released the last century kinda surprised me. Anyone else using Spotify ?

What is Spotify?

Spotify is a new way to enjoy music. Simply download and install, before you know it you’ll be singing along to the genre, artist or song of your choice. With Spotify you are never far away from the song you want.

There are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when. Forget about the hassle of waiting for files to download and fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them. Spotify is instant, fun and simple.

Because music is social, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists, Friday afternoon in the office might never be the same again! We’re music lovers like everyone else.

We want to connect millions of people with their favorite songs by creating a product that people love to use. We respect creativity and believe in fairly compensating artists for their work. We’ve cleared the rights to use the music you’ll listen to in Spotify.

[stray]

Well... I guess this is one reason why I'm not using it yet.

[photek]

Im sure some people have invites lying around. I will see if I got some left.

[Righ]

I would imagine that for most of us, this will be the reason:

Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions we are not yet available in your country. We understand that you are currently in United States

You may want to save your invites for f13 folk who are living in the selected countries of Europe that the songs are licensed for.

[Stormwaltz]

The description is a little vague on what it actually does. Is it like Simplify (which does work in North America)?

[Sky]

We respect creativity and believe in fairly compensating artists for their work. We’ve cleared the rights to use the music you’ll listen to in Spotify.

[DraconianOne]

Pandora by any other name?

[Fraeg]

Pandora by any other name?

Pandora was quite a let down for me, hopefully this is more robust with more niche music?

[Grimwell]

I use Slacker and it makes me quite happy.

[Der Helm]

Not available over here... 

[photek]

Spotify is a software which allows you to stream music to your PC, any artist, any genre, any album, it basically has everything. Imagine having something like Itunes, but free. You cannot save the tracks, but you can create playlists and it is all on-the-fly. Most awesome software ever, and I apologize to my US friends, I thought this was international, but I knew it had to have some restrictions, simply too good to be true as "free-for-all".

[Krakrok]

Imagine having something like Itunes, but free. You cannot save the tracks, but you can create playlists and it is all on-the-fly.

I don't have to imagine it.

http://free.napster.com/

Edit: No playlists though.

[nurtsi]

Anyone got spare invites to this? I'd like to test how it compares to last.fm.

[photek]

I do. Send me a message, got three left.

[schild]

The fact it's not available in America is really not going to help this service.

[Xuri]

Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and the UK don't care 

[Righ]

You put Sweden and Spain in the wrong order.

[stray]

Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and the UK don't care 

Take your weirdo Euro shit like Spotify, Bebo, and Opera and shove it!

edit - err... i know bebo and opera are here though. but no one gives a fuck anyhow. 

[photek]

Invites sent to those who requested. Any feedback ?

[Jherad]

Hmm. This is... fantastic.

Very quick. I don't have the best internet connection in the world, and streaming music normally takes a couple of seconds to kick in, but not with this - both searching and playing is snappy, without hitches. The music quality is good.

Adverts are infrequent and short. Are they making money out of this?

[Xuri]

Two fancy links:
SpotyShare
Spotify Playlists

[nurtsi]

Most important thing first: integrates to last.fm... check.

The ads are actually targetted by country. Now I can enjoy Finnish adverts that are trying to sell me car parts instead of the typical American car insurance ads I've grown accustomed to while listening to DI.fm etc. The ads are short and not coming often.

This is like play-exactly-what-I-want-when-I-want instead of the play-something-similar-to-what-I-want-but-not-what-I-want of Pandora. No idea how much music is in here, but so far everything I've tried searching has come up.

You can seek in the songs!

This is too good to last.

[schild]

This is too good to last.

As long as they don't try to get into America, it'll probably be fine.

[Tarami]

This is too good to last.

As long as they don't try to get into America, it'll probably be fine.

That leaves them 6.4 billion people, so it seems like they'll be doing okay.

[K9]

Invites sent to those who requested. Any feedback ?

Minor necro, sorry. I'm using this full-time now at work now, I haven't even run itunes or media player in a month or so. I mostly tune the adds out now, and really can't fault them on anything bar the dearth of Metallica and the Beatles; they seem to have ample amounts of everything else though and I'm finding plenty of new stuff too.

[Tarami]

Spotify is one of those softwares that just work. Tiny labels remain a problem, but on the upside I can listen to lots of nice stuff I'm not directly inclined to buy.

Like Nine. http://open.spotify.com/artist/4NgXkFawAZea0X9OQVQh3X

[K9]

Hmm, your post highlights the only problem I've noticed with Spotify, in that it struggles to differentiate bands with the same name. I'm sure this is something that will be resolved in time though, and it's not a big problem.

[Tale]

Anyone who thinks this is "just like [insert product name here]" or "just another version of [blah]" is wrong.

This is much of the music ever released, streaming in MP3 quality, searchable, for free, in an application as slick as WoW.

The country blocking doesn't work. All you need is a UK proxy server to register: http://www.daveproxy.co.uk. You do have to re-register occasionally as it does ask you to travel back to the UK every few weeks from your overseas location, but there's nothing to stop you using it.

[Jherad]

Still using it here also. The only real drawback is that it can be a bit heavy on the bandwidth usage if you're not careful (ie. it is very easy to just pile up a huge playlist and have the thing running all day - bad if you're on a cap). That's a user issue though. Very popular app with my work colleagues, and works fine through the corporate firewall if I pass it through CNTLM first.

The ads are much more frequent than they were, and they sometimes run two back-to-back now, but still ignorable. Now, if they could get this working with cached playlists+advertisements on portable MP3 players...

[Tebonas]

So it works in Austria? I'm astonished. Any invites still lying around?

[Jherad]

If you use a UK proxy, you don't need an invite.

[K9]

You shouldn't need an invite.

[Tale]

Link one track you (re)discovered on Spotify, that you'd like everybody else to hear. Here's mine:

Vapour Trail - Ride

(you can get a URL for any track by right-clicking on it in Spotify, and selecting "copy HTTP link")

[Righ]

http://open.spotify.com/track/2X9gApcguimlVTPqxIE19Y

[schild]

http://open.spotify.com/track/2X9gApcguimlVTPqxIE19Y

Are you proxying in to make it work? I've been thinking of doing so.