Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Nope, it's perfectly true.

xxxpost If this is true then if anyone wants an invite drop me a line at billy (dot) dods (at) gmail.com and I'll try to help.

current users can invite ppl, right? that's what CNN claims

Happy to send invites to people if you give me yr email, dunno if my UK invites will work for you though

ha xp

hmm the UK invite didn't get me into the free tier so I created a pay account anyway, lol

was gonna advise you skip the free stage anyway. get it on your iphone and never look back.

It's worth it imo, the free 10 hours just whizzes by

Ed, check your email again.

Nope, it's perfectly true.

no but seriously, an entire generation already stopped buying cds

technologies that had more impact, probably in order:

the ipod;
youtube;
itunes;
first-and-second-gen p2p

I'm in thx mang

spotify is on the same importance level as those things imo, and it beats them all from a useability pov

At least for now, you can get an invite just by giving Spotify your email address (which I did earlier when they were advertising the impending US launch) but I still haven't heard from them. Do they respond faster if the invite comes from a current Spotify user, and can that be from someone in the UK/Europe?

try this link https://www.spotify.com/redirect/get-open/rec-en/

spotify at least changed the way people dj at parties

I think the only way you can in right now is if a current user sends you an invitation code/token

not sure of the cross-continent invites?

my cross-continent invite had no token in it, but that's okay because I = $$$$$

holy hell, one of my college choirs is on Spotify back when I was in it

http://open.spotify.com/album/7zlm5UZLKrrZDEkyZsGSds

xxxp yeah the djing at parties thing is key; any home with a laptop or PC now has an instant mahoosive record collection. the idea that previously at a house party with no official DJ, people just randomly played records or CDs or ipods or their own mp3s or whatever suddenly, recently started to seem a very old fashioned concept indeed. making a playlist in advance that people can then edit/add *almost anything they want to* just seems like the best thing ever.

oh wait I guess billy's in the UK so intercontinental invites work

I've been anticipating this for a few years. I keep putting my e-mail in the pool but nothing has come up yet.

still waiting for this to launch in Ireland

banished by st patrick iirc

lol

So I'm guessing by being away from internet all morning means I'm already too late to get an invite?

Well, so far, I like google+ a whole lot more than Spotify because, well, I can actually fucking use it.

jon try the link i posted upthread

Thanks, I'll give that a shot, looks promising!

I'm 99% sure I'm going to end up paying for this, but I want to give it a test run first before I decide to do so.

don't bother, it's only $5 for the lower tier

The free tier will let new users listen to the company's catalog of more than 15 million songs from a computer connection for six months. After that, users will be capped at 10 hours a month and up to five spins for any particular song.

"You can still discover as much music as you want up to your heart’s content" even with the limits, said Ken Parks, Spotify's chief content officer and managing director of the company's North American business.

Subscribers who pay $4.99 a month can access the service without ads or limitations from a computer connection. A $9.99 tier also lets users listen to the service from a smart phone such as an iPhone, Android, Palm or Windows 7 device.

― Bee OK, Wednesday, July 13, 2011 11:52 PM Bookmark

So let me get this straight -- I pay $10 a month and I can listen to whatever the fuck I want as much as I want?

you can that with the $5 subscription too

$10 adds "on whatever you want"

* head tries to explode but is too confused to explode *

So why does Pandora even exist, exactly?

What's the selection going to be like in the US -- are there lots of limitations?

So why does Pandora even exist, exactly?

because you couldn't get Spotify in the US until today

re: selection, I couldn't find "Hot With Fleas" by Severed Heads on it; so far that has been my only disappointment

jon, if the link doesn't work, drop me a line at the address upthread and I'll send you an invite.

This is the hardest thing to believe since I first found out a woman would sleep with me.

Yeah, I'm really trying not to get over excited here because this seems way too good to be true. My fear is that will be awesome for the first couple of months, then labels will start freaking out and pulling their catalogs.

lol hurting

I found dope body's new album out there, between that and dan's college choir it seems pretty comprehensive

billy says there are voice ads on the UK service but all I've had are popup image ads, all for terrible musicians

Or they'll jack the price way up, more likely imo. I just don't see the economics of this making sense for labels in the long run with free, $5 and $10 subscriptions. I mean I still exchange some money for music sometimes, and with something like this I don't think I would do much of that anymore. (xpost)

re: selection, I couldn't find "Hot With Fleas" by Severed Heads on it; so far that has been my only disappointment

That's interesting. I was curious whether the US catalogue matched the European one. It must be different as that track is available in the UK. Presumably it's a licensing issue.

I should specify that I meant the original "Hot With Fleas" off of Bad Mood Guy, not the extended remix on Commerz

Yeah, it's the one on Commerz which I can see.

There are definitely some differences, e.g. about 20% of the ILM Pet Shop Boys top 50 playlist is missing (it looks like Behaviour isn't there at all?!). Comparing my playlists from the UK version it seems that a little under 10% of each is missing.

just signed up for the $5 version. It seems pretty cool so far, especially for checking out new stuff. Some of the older stuff I've searched for hasn't shown up.

I'm not sure if I could switch to this entirely from itunes though. It seems like the playlist organization is a little fiddly. Maybe I'll get used to it.

I wish it had better ways to browse and find related stuff you might like. That aspect of it seems really weak. I've tried to search by label using label: but it doesn't seem to work. There should be more prominent genre tags, recommendations, etc.

I can't even figure out how to make the search window bigger. Like if I search by genre I see about 10 titles and then a ... and there's no way to see more?

I wish it had better ways to browse and find related stuff you might like.

otm. there is the 'related artists' tab, but that seems a little hit & miss.

Ah, I didn't see the tab. I only saw the tiny summary and was wondering why you couldn't see more.

but yeah, still pretty weak

One huge pisser for me was that they took off the entire ECM catalogue a couple of months back. Perfect work music too.

I wish they had charts by genre too

Yep. It's weird - when I'm confronted by this vast store of music I find it really hard to think what I want to listen to. It's some kind of musical snowblindness.