Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I've been moaning at them on Get Satisfaction for the past month about how I can't get a decent stream in the evening: after 5pm it starts stuttering terribly. After a while I realised that everyone with the same problem was using BT as an ISP: fair play to Spotify, they've had several chats with BT about it and tonight -- for the first time in months -- it seems to be working properly, after they persuaded BT to tweak something technical I don't quite understand.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying: I like Spotify. A hell of a lot.

Is the compression on standard Spotify really bad? I don't remember it being atrocious, but I went premium ages ago so might have forgotten

£5 at Our Price would at least have gotten you something in decent quality and without horrible compression.

Aye, a poster.

compression on Free causes me no problems, although admittedly it's only through headphones or a cheap-ish 2.1 PC speaker kit. Never had a single stutter on Free either (am on a LLU ADSL2 connection with very low contention ratio though, it sounds like grimly's problems are with BT rather then S/ify themselves).

Disappointed at the end of Day Pass, I've bought this a few times recently when I've been off work decorating etc. I've still got a psychological block about paying a tenner for it on a recurrent basis rather than a quid every so often, I guess.

Utterly addicted to this, thanks to sonderangerbot for the invite.... it's sort of a problem for me though as 95% of my listening is home listening while typing up essays or just perusing through the internet, so now I see no need to ever buy an album ever again. Unfortunately they don't have a lot of stuff from Warp Records, :(

Listening to 'God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It' and it's jumping like a dodgy vinyl record. Having never heard the album before I wonder if it's supposed to be like this.

In the early spotify days I heard quite a few vinyl rips - I figured they were just throwing in everything they could hoover up from anywhere but I haven't heard anything like that for ages.

I was listening to a song that skipped a lot, making me think it was just a CD rip.

Bill: it was far more BT's fault than Spotify's, yes, though the fact it seemed to affect Intel Mac users more than PPC or Windows users (though not exclusively) pointed to something slightly more complex -- as Spotify admitted. Fair play to them: they could have just said "lol BT fuck off", but they stuck with it and it all seems to be good now.

For the moment, at least.

As for the pricing: the tenner a month is worth it for me because of the iPhone app, pure and simple. I'm at the stage now where Spotify's simply an integral part of how I listen to music: I'd be screwed without it.

Not entirely convinced it's BT at fault as that's the only thing I've had problems with. The stuff I listened to before and after played fine.

There's a track on My Dying Bride's "Turn loose the swans" (title track, I think) that turns into a completely different song in the middle. Spotify guerilla mashup, I assume.
Rather, uh, disconcerting. A bit amusing. Turns out, incidentally, that that album isn't as enjoyable at 29 as it was at 19.

2 gripes: signing up to the day pass isn't/wasn't as easy as it should be. we tried to sort this for a party last weekend and ended up paying £10 for the month, bit irritating. second gripe, listening to it during the day and songs constantly pause and skip, im guessing because of the increased bandwidth needed to stream 320 mp3s. i use bt too but this was still happening late last week. they should at least have a setting to bump this down to 128 as my only workaround is to log in with an old ad-supported account - the idea of (mistakenly) paying £10 for an unusable service is kinda ridiculous

My questions upthread answered, I just got an email from paypal saying I'd paid for premium, so it does do it automatically!

2 gripes: signing up to the day pass isn't/wasn't as easy as it should be. we tried to sort this for a party last weekend and ended up paying £10 for the month

1st gripe is down to the day pass no longer existing

I got an email yesterday about some kind of free account they're introducing, but I only glanced at it then and my webmail isn't loading now. I'll be back with info soon, promise.

oh okay it was the already discussed Spotify Open. Nevrrrrrrmind.

1st gripe is down to the day pass no longer existing

no we did this the other saturday, 8th may i think, so it was still available at that time

I did it that day too - it's been scrapped since, as discussed upthread.

http://www.spotify.com/int/get-spotify/day-pass/

Day pass is no longer available!
We recommend Spotify Premium or Spotify Unlimited instead.

Wanted to have a listen to a new release album today and it's greyed out with This is a Spotify Premium exclusive. It will later be made available in Spotify Free message. Considering I've paid for a Spotify Unlimited pass this month this irks me - wonder if it's yet another Sign of Things To Come.

Hey, since when did the iPhone app start scrobbling to last.fm? I've just noticed that you can now switch this on via the settings. ALL MY DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE.

Oh, and the latest version of the iPhone app now has multi-tasking, if you've upgraded to iOS4.

^ so awesome. Also works with the headphone buttons, the lock-screen double-tap controls and the swipe-left-on-switcher-bar controls.

Think Farnborough fucking airshow and The Boy Who Trapped The Sun might have finally made me crack and move to Unlimited. Still worried I'll move from Free to Open if I cancel payments. Anyone done that yet?

is this true? spotify works in USA now?

http://twitter.com/KellyeSue/status/19081467285

this person has protected their tweets

HOLYFUCKINGSHIT spotify works in the US now!!!!! My life just got 30% better.

hang on what

WELCOME

Uhhh, it doesn't though?

okay i asked KellyeSue how it's working and all I got was:

" I don't know how it's working.I just did an update, and then it started working again.I'm terrified it's going to stop working."

I thought you were in the UK? afaik if you use it in the uk, you can use it for 2 weeks abroad.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok any nerds know of a good proxy i can use to get spotify here in the land of the free?

nevermind, why would i want to circumvent the very laws that protect my freedom

for unlocking my UK account I use ivacy, since most of proxies I used to use stopped working and I wanted to have something reliable, bought 20GB of transfer for 13$ which is enough for me and my friends to have an eternity of unlocked spotify

this Lynx advert = please die, now

rip 'histoire de melody nelson'

I have gotten myself on the free version for a while, and that is sufficient for me, just to check out stuff I am curious about and whatever. Still stick to CDs for actual listening to fave music.

And I still wonder if Spotify will last, as in, will they actually make enough people want to pay for this to keep it going?

Serge Gainsbourg was driven from the interent solely by the awful doggerel of Sky Sports adverts.

God I want this in the USA!!

awful doggerel of Sky Sports adverts.

p sure these are actually done by spotify to force you to get a pay-scubscriptch

rip 'veedon fleece'

I bet more stuff disappears once it opens in the USA.

I miss the Sutopia ads. :(

'there you are in your perfectly nice little car' -- what a horribly formed advert

Someone in Dylan's team has a sense of humour as the only CBS albums available are Empire Burlesque, Down In The Groove and Under a Red Sky.

"We've tried a number of times but have been unable to renew your Spotify subscription. Unfortunately, this means that we're no longer able to continue your Spotify subscription."

Yeah well I had to cancel my credit card because of fraud, maybe if you'd emailed me earlier I could have rectified for you.

Like Friendster, it is probably doomed in the long run.

Agreed. It's a great way to check out new stuff I haven't heard right now, but I cannot see them making enough money to keep going.

No idea how they work out "related artists" but alongside Kraftwerk they have "Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones, New Order, Radiohead, David Bowie, Morrissey, Talking Heads and Various Artists" :/

I get a couple of them but there's a dozen other's I'd put before that lot - wonder if it's a record company/marketing thing - like they'd rather I was tempted to buy something by an established popular artist than go off listening to Klaus Schulze all night.