Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I know the lines have now blurred in this digital age such that data = product to most people...

But a solid tenner every month still feels extortionate for a rental service that still isn't quite there delivery wise, at least in comparison/addition to my monthly broadband bill.

That said, I don't suppose anybody on a premium subscription knows if the streaming is actually less buggy on it?
I'd hope it'd somehow get a higher priority in the p2p end of things...

I still get intermittent skips (more like missing blocks getting joined together without the silence) on 2 different operating systems (XP & Win7), 2 different connections (home wireless and work broadband direct ethernet connection) and well, it's okay for free sure, but having serious trouble committing any further as it does spoil my enjoyment frequently.

yeah it does skip more now than it used to plus im not convinced they take care when ripping some albums either.

I haven't experienced any skips, but the premium service often runs too slow - annoying pauses in the middle of tracks. It doesn't bother me too much though, as I mostly set currrent playlists to offline, so that they download overnight on the iPhone. No issues with value for money, as £10 a month is good value for unlimited high bitrate listening of multiple albums. A good 80% of all my listening is now via Spotify on iPhone, either on headphones or wired through the hi-fi. But I do miss scribbling.

...that should have read "scrobbling". Damned auto-correct...

yeah lots of pausing in tracks too

you cant scrobble from an iphone?

cant 'scrobble' in scrabble yet either

which is just silly

i tried premium day pass last week and the thing became nearly useless. skips, stops and tracks that wouldn't load. don't know if the size of the files had anything to do with it but yeah, they have some issues to deal with

the premium day pass is in the low bitrate too, i didn't relaise this but supposedly so.

xpost: Correct, you can't scrobble Spotify from an iPhone.

^ ... which means, as I've said elsewhere, I'm *mighty* glad I kicked the Last.fm habit before I went premium :)

Like Mike, I use the iPhone app for a tonne of my listening now, and I'd be a bit stymied without it. I can't say I've noticed any streaming problems at all since I started paying, either: maybe I've just been lucky, though.

There does seem to be a link between a song's popularity and its ability to stream. Never have a problem with big hits; sometimes have a problem with lesser-known tracks, e.g. where there's only one tick on the populariity bar or whatever. Which makes sense, considering the service uses P2P behind the scenes.

But of the 80% of all my listening that's Spotify + iPhone, maybe 80% of that is via the offline mode. I've become rigorously organised about playlist management, and it's dead easy to add an album to an existing offline playlist on the fly, pending a download the next time I'm a) plugged into the mains and b) on wi-fi (both of which you need to be).

Never have a problem with big hits; sometimes have a problem with lesser-known tracks, e.g. where there's only one tick on the populariity bar or whatever

Hmm. I'd never even noticed the popularity bar until now (or, rather, I had but had ignored it): looking back, my last few blasts of listening veer from about half-full to completely empty, but I've never noticed any differences in stream quality/reliability either way. I'm guessing a lot of it will have to do with your ISP as well?

You're absolutely right about the iPhone app, though: probably because I still organise everything in iTunes with separate playlists, it feels totally natural to do that with Spotify too. Yes, it requires that tiny modicum of forethought -- but it's well worth it.

From Chrysalis Music on twitter :

1 million streams on #Spotify earns you $167? Not good.

― J4mi3 H4rl3y (Snowballing), Tuesday, 24 November 2009 14:21 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.stevelawson.net/wordpress/2009/11/if-spotify-is-the-new-radio-the-artists-are-winning/

so it turns out this was bollocks. $167 was just the publishing fee, she made over a grand in total, which is about 100x the amount you'd make from radio for the same number of listeners.

that advert for 'a wkd christmas' is srsly the lowpoint of our culture

I don't have any wkd christmas adverts. I just get endless ads to Yahoo playlists. I have to say spotify's tactics seem to be working, since the adverts are the worst thing I've ever heard, and I was in Nam. The Super Mario Drive By guy really needs to be fired from a cannon. Or I pay for premium, I guess.

WTF is this Mumford & Sons pish that they keep advertising? Sounds fucking awful.

lovestruck.com advert assuming you're a single professional man looking for love through the medium of music-streaming (and not okcupid or hell real life) = people had better not sign up to this shit

Awesome how this thread turned from "Spotify is the future of music!" to "these fucking ads"

"In fact you probably saw someone hot this morning!"

yes yes yes beautiful women are everywhere and available and subservient and CHECK OUT THE ASS ON THAT ONE

Still, all the Kraftwerk remasters!

i am not saying that spotify is not the best thing ever, which it sadly is

Have they got rid of the women who laughs for no good reason after she says she likes 'Can You Feel It' by The Jacksons? I hate her.

Interview with Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify. They're hoping to launch in the US in the early part of this year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8478599.stm

So now I have a whole chunk of Kraftwerk, and the Monkees' "Headquarters sessions" to minidisc..

is it 1998 again? 8)

(i still use mine for recording gigs. but nothing else.)

i use mine for interviewing people. the sound quality is great and it's totally reliable.

also with Hi-MD you get hours and hours on a single disc.

Yeah, I did around 5 KW albums, and have space to spare.

Had to edit the ads out, but hey.

cheapskate

The Monkees' "Headquarters sessions" is unavailable by any other method.

I got fed up enough after hearing that ad for Brothers and the operapopstarsBritneySpears thing too many times that I paid for premium. I figure I use the thing enough, might as well give them some of my money..

But now my songs keep randomly stopping and starting again :(

BOOOOO

Search on the iPhone is dicking me around. Button takes ages to appear, then ages to find a result, then suddenly disappears again and drops me back to the playlists. 3G, five bars, it's always been fine before.

I've had the same thing this week, but only intermittently.

having the same problems, ledge. isn't streaming for me either.

all better now

got premium (tbh it's pretty sweet) for christmas. the streaming is definitely a bit choppier though, and it seems like it can't play consecutive tracks without a little skip between as well

songs are streaming right now very oddly: when they start at all, they're playing at double or triple speed, evidently by skipping every other 1/2 second, so that the songs are half as long. I was listening to Sheena Easton but it became intolerable; now I'm trying the Black Eyed Peas and "I Gotta Feeling" was absolute bizarre---just a big monotonous blur. "Boom Boom Pow" is a little better at this speed. Anyone get this effect?

haha so Chaka Khan's "Through The Fire" showed up on the home page and so I'm trying it at Spotify triple speed or whatever and the chorus sounds like the Kanye sample now! consider it auto-chipmunk, courtesy of Spotify.

> I was listening to Sheena Easton but it became intolerable

'became'?

nice

No streaming at all for me, again. Got through the first 8 tracks of Speak and Spell no problem, but it won't give me any Big Muff. Fnarr.

Ek talks America, iTunes, various things.

Anyone got a spare mflow invite?

http://www.mflow.com/

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article7016056.ece

lol it's put the Busted album under Cheap Trick.

Yeah, I saw that!

"Crashed the wedding" specifically.

Wonder if there's been a sudden surge in iTunes sales during the past six hours

This bullshit popping ads up in the scroll bar as you're clicking it to make you click them by accident is both disgusting and savage.

so far, my impression of mflow is that its not as good as spotify.... here's an articles explaining what it is:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/100004722/twitter-meets-itunes-at-mflow/

As a user you can only preview 30 sec of tracks or buy to hear the whole track. You can recommend/flow tracks to others and they will be able to hear the whole song in order to make a buy decision.

I created two user profiles and mflowed about 10 entire albums from one to the other. Under the receipient profile, I only got given a selection of tracks from the albums I had flowed, rather than the whole album.

So, whilst mflow is not ad-supported like the free version of Spotify, its way more restrictive and doesn't let you dive into an album.

I got spare invites if anyone wants one, 'cos I;m not recruiting anyone in the near future.