Spotify - anyone heard of it?

pretty dumb unconstructive article

It's a fair point though that the business model appears to rely on being able to get money from people who want everything for free by giving them something for free. It's not encouraging me to spend money on music, though it's definitely cut down on my legally dubious downloading - I recently listened to a bunch of spotify stuff in anticipation of going to ATP then didn't buy any of it. I can't see the point (for a record co.) on cutting down/out piracy if it doesn't lead to more sales.

There's something illogical about the ad-selling thing too.

"Hi do you want to advertise on spotify? Give us $$$s and you'll have a million listeners!"
"Are those the same listeners you encourage to give you $$$s to avoid hearing my ads and possibly giving me $$$s?"
"Yes! How many shall I put you down for?"

I still think it will be a success if mobile takes off. Most people I've spoken to who use the free version would pay for an ad-free mobile version.

It does answer one question, though. How on earth are they paying all the royalties? They're not. They're giving equity stakes in lieu of them.

My dad asked me if next week I could help him learn how to download when I go see him and I said he would be better off just using something like spotify. Do you still need an invite to start using it though, (and how would I go about getting him one?)

Well, I just went to the site and enrolled myself. So, no.

this Nokia advert guy who comes on and says like "sorry to interrupt your free music" just sounds like he is dripping with contempt and resentment; I will kill him!

i'm gonna cancel my subscription in protest at their awful artist and tracks labelling system. no more cash til that's sorted (or there's a last.fm facility to edit/merge such details).

xp Mr Free sounds like Zane Lowe to me? Anyway he's really blowing my mind with this concept of "free"!

Any other free users getting increasingly bombarded with ads? I had a playlist running whilst painting the spare room for 5 hours today and rather than Nokia guy every 30 mins or so (which I was used to) am getting ads and adverts to advertise after every 3 tracks or so. I wonder if they are ramping this up to encourage people to pay the tenner a month for premium?

Also, Mr Free def has a Zane Lowe twang, although could be Jason Donovan too. Given the cheapness of the ads otherwise though, more likely to be a Spotify employee (again).

New Sonic Youth album is on Spotify

http://open.spotify.com/album/5qo7iEWkMEaSXEZ7fuPvC3

lol at idiots phoning in to Spotify voicemail service.

I lolled so hard I stumped up for Premium.

am considering that option now

sorry if this is mentioned above (it's a huge thread!) but what bitrate are songs streamed at on spotify? and how does it allow songs to be played pretty much instantly, is it a bandwidth hog? (i've only seen it in action at a friends house, looks pretty good for older bigname stuff but up-to-the-minute modern stuff seems sparse)

It surprises you with some of the modern stuff it has.

I think the bitrate is 160kbps and some version of Ogg Vorbis, making it equivalent to about 192kpbs.

Sounds great streamed through my stereo, anyway.

That doesn't make it much of a bandwidth hog. Bear in mind that it uses p2p to ease the load on their servers - by default it allocates 10% of your free HD space to a cache. So while it's running, you may well be giving over some of your upload capacity too.

I've experienced next to no ill effects on other bandwidth-using apps from using Spotify. It actually feels very sleek and unintrusive in most respects. (Esp compared to the previous streaming service I used, MSN-branded and run by Nokia I think, which was a several-layer nightmare of glitches, random offloggings, rights-downloading etc etc.)

It feels lightweight, in a good way, is what I'm trying to say there.

I've only started using it over the last few days. The sound quality is excellent and it runs like a dream on my shitty 6 year-old home PC.

Yeah, it's like iTunes used to be before everything started weighing it down. It's wonderful to use. Could do with handful more features, but it's so slick. Compare it with the last.fm player!

You'd think it could remember my password for more than two logins though.

they need to ditch this invite reminder thing. i have 18 left...

That's funny - it never forgets my password.

never forgets mine either

huh - yeah it remembers mine for exactly one time after I check the box

I had that password problem for a long time. sorry I can't remember how I fixed it but there might be a faq on it or something

i'd suggest re-installing

you would

re-install THIS

yeah i gotcher spotify right here, bud

huh - yeah it remembers mine for exactly one time after I check the box

I get this on the PowerBook (PPC, 10.4) but not the iMac (Intel, 10.5). Can't really be arsed worrying about it.

That's funny - it never forgets my password.

I'm glad it remembers mine, because I can't.

Is anyone else insanely bugged by how Spotify's scrollbars/ads are programmed specifically to FUCK YOU OFF? Like, click on right-hand scrollbar, it brings up an advert in the right-hand panel so that if you click again (e.g. you are scrolling and do not have a scrollwheel) you are clicking on the advert. Click on the bottom scrollbar or on the bottom arrow of the main scrollbar and it brings up an ad in the bottom panel, which you'll click on if you do it again.

But what really fucked me off on this occasion: have an ad at the bottom already? Click a couple of times on the non-ad space above it, and it replaces the ad with a new taller ad, which you are now clicking on!

...Nobody else?

PS I know they've gotta get paid (or at least make some nods in that near-futile direction), but also, I've gotta be able to scroll without major UI irritation if I'm going to keep using their program. Or something?

Yeah, I'm with you on this issue.

hook a bro up?

you cant, you're in the US

Good luck USA!

srsly tho, why don't you have a scrollwheel?

I'm on a laptop and there is some kind of scroll-gesture on the trackpad which I am incapable of doing consistently. Ahem.

I'll never buy anything from Suitopia.

No shit - and that is the only ad I hear, other than Spotify trying to sell advertising. I've no idea what their costs are, but if they are making 14p a month from each user then I cannot imagine the service can possibly be sustained for very long:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/25/spotify_exclusive/

I'm not trying to revel in schadenfreude over this; Spotify is the *only* streaming music service I use at all and in many ways it's superb. But I just cannot see how they make any money, or how they can possibly pay the licensing on the tracks from such a low income.

Spotify's demographic is around 40, and precisely the sort of impulsive media buyer defined by 50 Quid Bloke.

What on earth is wrong with suitopia guy's voice?

lol at new suitopia ad being an apology for previous ad

i have actually heard two or three different ads on this now!

REALLY ANNOYING: if you turn the volume on ads down below 40% they pause until you turn back up
ANNOYING AND KIND OF CREEPY: if you mute sound in yr OS spotify recognises this and again pauses the ads

also, really, really, really bad hot compression - anything with an isolated drum hit really really hurts to listen to

subscribers now get twice the bitrate quality btw

i think default compression is 160bkps

i mean range compression, it feels like some of that is going on. listening to music on spotify is more painful than listening to it via VLC player or similar. maybe it's me.

oh wait, there's a 'volume normalisation' box to uncheck