1. Spotify Leaps Across the Pond
Just over a week ago, Swedish start-up Spotify AB opened the doors of its popular DRM-based music subscription service in the U.S. It originally launched in October 2008 and gathered a following of ten million registered users nearly two years later, a million of which were actual paying subscribers located in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Now the service is available in the United States, but the Free version is invite-only: users must sign up for the Unlimited or Premium versions, or wait in line for the next available invitation.
Unfortunately, the problem Spotify faces here is that North Americans already have a large heaping of subscription-based music services as it is – there are even free services which for some are quite satisfying including Pandora, Iheartradio and even Slacker Radio. What then does Spotify bring to the table that Rhapsody, Rdio, Slacker Radio, Napster and other services don't offer? That's a good question.
Over the past week, we've taken Spotify Premium for a spin on the PC, iOS and Android. This $9.99 per month package provides everything Spotify has to offer, from offline music playback to exclusive content to playback on iOS and Android platforms. If you have an Apple and/or Android device, then this is the plan for you, as the Spotify Unlimited and the Spotify Free accounts don't support the mobile apps – this is where Slacker Radio actually has the upper hand.
Warning to those interested in a premium account for enhanced audio quality, not all tracks are available to stream in the higher quality 320 kbps ogg format, this is not mentioned anywhere in the article. Despite what Spotify would like you to believe it appears that less than 40% of their catalogue is available to stream in high quality, despite promising in 2009 that making their entire library of music available at this bitrate was a job that would only take months.
Spotify is almost three years old, has a product the same age, and is valued at roughly USD $1 billion...I don't think they qualify as a "start-up" anymore.
You did mention that anytime you wanted to select an album or a list, one MUST create it as a Playlist, and that is not what you wanted or expected. I wonder if that problem can be corrected by Creating a Playlist called "Library" ? Just drop everything you like in that playlist called "Library"
Just a thought.
This is a great service. It has nearly every artist/song I've searched for (the only exception so far is Metallica which has always been weird about online music) and I tend to like some obscure bands. It has completely changed the way I listem to music. I no longer find myself bored listening to the same tracks (as I did with my iPod and my personal music library) or annoyed that Pandora's recommendations don't quite fit in with what I want. With Spotify, you just search for an artist you like and listen to their music right away and if you get bored with that the "Similar Artist" list opens up a whole new world of music. It is definitely worth $10 a month. In fact the service is so good I think I'm going to drop Serius radio in my car -- their music channels kind of suck anyway and with Spotify on my phone I can stream whatever I want to listen to...
Anonymous = Spotify