Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I just read about this. Apparently some kind of streaming iTunes looking service with rights to all the majors cleared. Could be interesting? If nothing else just to see it fail miserably...

trying this now. blatant rip of itunes design-wise but looks better in many ways. all i really want to do with it is listen to whole albums easily and it seems to let you do that very well (i haven't heard the ads yet tho).

20 second xbox ad came in after 5 songs. not bad really.

needs last.fm support asap

the ads don't bother me that much either, haven't noticed if 5 songs is always the limit? in any case it's 5 songs of any length, and you can listen to "In C" for example straight through which is cool.

I love it!

I think there is progress towards spotify scrobbling happening here:

http://www.last.fm/group/Scrobble+for+Spotify

carsmile sent this link: http://code.google.com/p/scrobblify/

scrobbles perfectly

for Windows maybe!

Yeah this looks terrific, I like how easy it makes it to dip into artists with huge discographies.

Although I haven't actually listened yet, just been browsing so far.

i am so in love with this thing <3

some artist tag crapness tho

the radio is fun for discovering things totally insane and cheesy

Oh wow the quality is actually pretty good.

The radio thing is indeed cool. I'm trying to get it to find me some techno from the 50s.

the quality is good, the range not so much, but this could well prove useful.

Presumably the range will increase as they agree deals with more record companies? It seems fine for major label stuff and a quick search for eg Kompakt pulls up a lot.

does it pass the melt banana test?

the range seems identical to what's on 7digital (and therefore itunes i think). eg they have trina's first and third albums but inexplicably not her second or fourth. i dunno how much use i'll have for spotify but kudos for how well it works, the quality of the tracks etc - the tags need ironing out but i'm sure they'll do this in time.

actually it'll be most useful for stuff like the goldfrapp album this year - i didn't really expect to love it but i wanted to hear it, so obv i wouldn't buy it but couldn't be arsed blagging it. that's a ton of consumer laziness in there.

oh god i should've said i was american! fuck. could've got access to all the hip-hop and r&b which never makes it over to this godforsaken, miserable island.

Do they have a license for the US now? I don't think they did a couple of weeks ago...

Four MB albums, Deano: Teeny Shiny, Bambi's Dilemma, Charlie and Scratch or Stitch.

does not work in australia yet

Just searched for The Recession and that shows up in its entirety, and it hasn't been released here at all right?

It's really good for the one-album playback when you've no idea if you'll like it or not and can't be arsed downloading.

yeah i'm basically going through albums i've been wondering about checking out but didn't have the hd space for.

no the recession was released here, but the label didn't bother telling the pr - she only realised when she looked on amazon and found it had been there for a fortnight

"80s funk house disco" radio suggests Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers!

> Four MB albums, Deano

thanks. we don't have any, amazon.co.uk mp3 store has scratch n stitch and a couple of tracks from compilations, emusic had a lot... all these people seem to be getting their info from the same places though, they all make the same mistakes (search for broadcast on amazon - details are about duophonic / warp broadcast but the listed albums aren't)

One detail I like: when it gets to the end of what I've queued up, it just continues with the current album without me needing to ask it to. (I suppose I can see how someone might not like this, though.)

Finally got round to sorting scrobbling for this (there's a windows messenger box ticked by default in the last.fm client that somehow stops Scrobblify from working). So far I'm really liking Spotify - handy for hearng stuff you randomly think on that you haven't got in your library or for legal trying before you buy. The adverts don't annoy me in the slightest.

fails Boredoms test :(

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

anyone got a spotfiy INVITE?

If not, try the "oooh ask me please!" option on the website ("Get started" -> email in "Not invited?" field). Took about five days for me, was surprised to get it at all actually.

jordan, webmail me an email address to send an invite to.

didn't get asked for an invite here, just got straight in

This is amazing! You type in what you want to listen to, and then you are listening to it. all this needs is to work on an iphone, and then i'll buy an iphone, and then i will have achieved bliss.

Mine appears to have made it through an album without giving me any adverts. Maybe they've bumped me up to a pro account without realising it.

you can now scrobble to last.fm from within spotify (it's in 'preferences')

That's handy, saves me running that scrobblify thing at the same time.

Spotify lists 'The Prodigy' as 'Prodigy' and makes last.fm think this guy sings Smack My Bitch Up and Out of Space
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/17704623.jpg

can someone please send me an invite?

thanks!!

Er....

https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/

Think there's still a waiting list though.

<3 this service btw.

Got in straight away with the link I posted.

Aha they've obviously opened it up!

Downside is loads more ads (I've heard two during the same album), but you can hear them coming after a while and tune out. Still great.

thanks Chewshabadoo but I need an invitation code.

Please!

If i hear gareth jones from cardiff reciting pi again i'll scream

(advert)

And I'm not buying that White Lies record either.

At least it doesn't scrobble the adverts

jonathan from spotify sounds remarkably like Michael Vaughan

the "random song playing" glitch happened to me a few times several weeks back, but only when listening on my smartphone. seems like whatever was in the next update a few days later fixed it.

i otoh am a queue obsessive and have many suggestions on how to make it a lot better☺

(seriously, you guys don't use it?! it's rad! you drop in whatever you want then you're good for a few hours.)

Use queue all the time. Definitely one of the features I couldn't live without.

well, yeah

I don’t know how you could not use the queue.

I basically use playlists instead of the queue...

me too, use the queue mostly when hanging out with people who all want to play songs

I often will put a huge playlist on shuffle then scroll through the queue and bump up anything I'm particularly excited about to next up.

Hey hey hey you're listening to HITLER RADIO [sound effect of a sieg heil, stuka dive, air raid siren, and explosion] where we're playing ALL the Reich's favorite hits ALL DAY LOOOOOOONG

[Imagine Dragons - Radioactive starts playing] https://t.co/wExe0JTQ2Y

— the prince with a thousand enemies ♂️ (@jaketropolis) March 2, 2023

(It wasn't actually a playlist, it was just the automatic artist-radio for an "artist" that was some historical albums of WWII music...)

Das Führer Weekly

Finally, a change I can get behind: the new improved Add to Playlist.

Ooh, what's this?

update on discovery mode, which lets artists accept a lower royalty rate for an algorithmic push. joe says in the first month, listeners save songs 50% more often and follow an artist 37% more often when the mode is used

— Ashley Carman (@ashleyrcarman) March 8, 2023

excellent news for consumers

Sad lol. Maybe I'll actually try it, since Spotify royalties are effectively $0 anyway.

can you switch back once you get those listeners locked in?

I don't like or defend Discovery Mode, but yes, as an artist you can opt into and out of it.

Ooh, what's this?

Last night the app offered an alternative shuffle mode that I guess throws in suggested tracks as well, no thanks

There's an 'enhanced' button that does that. I use it on some of my genre playlists and it'll throw up some cool tracks I may not have heard.

So instead of one swipe it’s now multiple actions to ‘add a song to the liked playlist.’

Gotta get those app engagement numbers up?

pro: you can add a track to several playlists simultaneously (which comes in handy for me, I do a lot of that)

con (and it’s a big one): you can longer add duplicates to a playlist (this really fucks with my playlisting methods, because I do a lot of that)

It’s only one action to add to the liked playlist. Then once it’s in the liked playlist, or any playlist, then you can click again to add to or remove from others.

That’s if you use the plus, otherwise you can use the three dots and then add to playlist.

how many slurp juices to convert your heart into a plus

but please remember to never leave the house without your laptop if you’re thinking of adding duplicates, kids!

I just created a playlist in Spotify (for sharing / to duplicate one I made in the service I actually use), and was impressed at how easy it is... you can type directly in a dedicated search box to add songs, etc.

Used to be that in the list of songs in Release Radar or something I'd swipe left and it would have a green heart and the song is saved to my likes.

Now I swipe and it pops up with another menu asking me to add it to a playlist (or multiple) and I have to tap done to make that screen go away. There also isn't a visible heart on the list of songs in a mix so I don't know if I've already liked it or not.

This seems designed entirely to make you look at the full screen view of a song (where there's the plus sign) so you can get the full Spotify-becomes-TikTok experience. I'm not looking at my stupid phone when I listen to music, I'm walking or riding in a car or working on a computer.

The visible indicator should be back shortly, at least.

is there a way to look at longer song titles immediately?

so many things these days have such long titles and then you factor in bonus tracks/remixes with "extra info" that gets added to the title. so sometimes i won't know what i'm listening to and i want to see the song title because that's where the pertinent info is. i just want to see who the remixer was or who the featured guest vocalist is and it's at a point where that info is only in the song title. i look at my phone (or ipod, whatever i'm using atm) and it will sometimes take a full 15 or 20 seconds for the proper song information to display, as it's on a "scrolling marquee" for those longer titles. it's reached a point for some deluxe editions and singles with multiple remixes of the same song where i just give up and go look at the full info on discogs. it wouldn't be such a discrepancy if i could just click on song credits and have it all be there, but that info is notoriously incomplete on spotify.

holy hell, that post makes no sense. the crux is: i want more easily accessible and fully detailed credits, dammit.

one more sunday morning gripe—
the new "add to playlist" implementation has broken the ability to add offline or local files to playlists. as of now, i have to "like" the song, "add it to my library", go to the playlist i want to add it to, click the add songs button, and then browse to the local file. i used to be able to just click the three dots next to the song and "add to playlist." i know spotify doesn't give a fuck about offline files, but c'mon. it's objectively worse and a frustrating downgrade.

hmm, the ... method still works for me on iOS, at least.

yeah, sorry to come off like a jerk but it's doing it on both of my main devices and i use offline files a lot, so it's pure frustration. it seems like the ones that were already there on various playlists are grandfathered in. and it still works the way i outlined, just huh. it's doing it on both my ipod (ios) and smartphone (android) and seems to have started either with the new "add playlist" implementation or immediately after. as it stands now, when i hit the three dots ("song menu") the only option i have for offline files is "add to queue" (and it will play the track just fine if i choose that, so it knows those offline files are there). just... i can still do it technically. with a lot more unnecessary steps though.

was reminiscing with my partner about watching mtv as a kid in the 90s, watching the videos flow for hours in hope of your favorite video coming on

or listening to the radio at night with the cassette deck ready to record if that great new single came on

and now it's at my fingertips any time I want

unbelievable

I miss those days

Maybe the real treasure was the cassette recording we did along the way

kids today will never understand the sublime annoyance of having to not being able to edit out Casey Kasem's voice from the opening of "Safety Dance"

sure, guys.

another thing with this new version is that it takes ages to load (several minutes in some cases) - something I’ve seen people complain about through the years, but which had never happened to me before

yeah very long load times on mobile now

Yeah, I had some load-time issues, too, and they should get better shortly...

Once again sparing you all my Spotify doomsaying and confining it to Thread For Chatter About The Streaming Music Economy

Yeah, the app just opens into blackness for ages before finally getting its shit together.

wow the whole app has gone completely buggy over the past couple hours.

on iOS there's something called DJ where the queue button used to be and, as of now, it's an error generating button. the queue button on my android is now a generic "share" icon.

IT'S TALKING TO ME NOW?

okay. i'll stop using spotify jfc.

It only talks to you if you ask it to, dude.

It's always listening, though. Like a good friend

(It only listens if you ask it to, too...)

i pressed the button that i thought was the queue. it started talking.

everything's gone now and the queue is back to normal across the board. no "DJ" anyway. "add to playlist" has returned for local files on android only.

anyway=anywhere

Kind of interesting, from a business perspective, how they got snaked on HiFi audio (and still haven’t launched it).