Spotify - anyone heard of it?

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2012/05/31/spotify-transparency/

In Singapore, I interviewed Ken Parks, majordomo of Spotify’s U.S. operation. I told him I would ask tough questions. That I had to, everybody already thinks I’m on the Spotify payroll, I just couldn’t let him do a commercial. He said this was all cool.

And then didn’t answer a single question I had, certainly not any that probed into the inner workings of the service. Not that I was interrogating him. But why exactly did you have to sign in with Facebook? Ken said everybody liked that, he got no complaints. He did admit that search was flawed. But I still can’t understand why it works so well in iTunes and so poorly in Spotify.

...

But at the end of my "interview", Peter Jenner, original manager of Pink Floyd, thinker extraordinaire, stood and asked why there was no Spotify transparency, why artists could not see what they were getting paid.

Ken gave the usual response. That Spotify paid record companies and these entities accounted to artists, and if something got lost in translation, it was not Spotify’s fault.

Spotify has been releasing some really shitty updates to it's iOS app. I get so fucking tired of companies using the general population as goddamned beta testers.

yeah, the latest one that came out in the past couple days caused me lots of headaches. I'm going through the process of reinstalling from scratch and re-loading all of my offline files, which seems to be helping.

Im having to do that too. So slow syncing them all.

I don't really get why it is so slow to sync local files even when you have your device plugged into the omputer that houses all the source files.

*computer

Bigger issue I noticed was that the new update drops out if the internet connection changes, even if were listening to offline songs. That didn't happen in the previous update.

So I've been using this for a few weeks now. It seems to have the song I want to listen to about 1/3 of the time, and there really are a lot of ads. It's useful for listening to things I want to listen to once without bothering to obtain, but at least for me it's replacing the process of "type song title into YouTube," not the process of "getting music onto my hard drive."

It's useful for listening to things I want to listen to once without bothering to obtain

I finally caved and created a puppet Farcebook account so I could do the same. It's better to sit through two minutes of interrupting ads than to spend six or seven dollars on something from Half.com only to find out that I'm not crazy about it.

And I've already ended up buying a couple things because I used Spotify to preview and liked them that much. It's not perfect, but it works.

Spotify
Introducing radio you can save!

If you’re a Spotify Free user, you can now discover millions of songs on your iPhone and iPad for free. Just download the app and get ready to be blown away by a new radio experience in Spotify.

Download the free app.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spotify/id324684580?mt=8&usfb

OK, I'm putting this on my phone, but what is it?

im gonna hazard a guess and say its spotify radio for those who wont go premium to get spotify on their phone and they then hope you all go wait a min rather than radio id like to choose the songs i want i'll stump up £10/$10

or as It's known - Spotify Mobile For Cheap Bastards™

oh i see -- there's basically no situation in which i would listen to music on my phone so i guess i don't need this

OK, I'm putting this on my phone, but what is it?
there's basically no situation in which i would listen to music on my phone so i guess i don't need this

lol what did you think Spotify's app would do?

I just decided to go premium last night after finally getting a smartphone a few weeks ago. I don't know that I'll use it in my car every day (lots of hooking up cables and pushing of buttons), but if I'm headed out on the road or even just driving around town, having access to a zillion albums is MUY ATRACTIVO!

yeah I figured paying 10 EUR a month was definitely worth it seeing how much I'll be saving on impulsive purchases that I end up listening to once.

syncing playlists to multiple devices is one hundo percent worth the $ during wedding season.

driving around town listening to ilm playlists is just bonus.

i'm kinda new to this but it always looks a bit like cheating when creating single-album playlists and then making them available offline. Why would anyone then purchase the damn thing?

theyre saved in a proprietary format that requires a current subscription for playback?

This thread reads like my parents are posting.

The radio app has promise tho I'm not sold yet.

lol what did you think Spotify's app would do?

Excellent question! I didn't really think about it.

spotify is being a right bastard this morning with connectivity issues in the uk.

when will there be spotify for comix?

MDCU.

no herge or barks iirc

it's a start at least.

not on ipad it's not

dont have a premium account but have had spotify on for 2 hours and have not had a single ad

holiday weekend promotion?

Still figuring out the art of the playlist. Right now my playlists pretty much stick to one style of music. Making one out of a mix of styles takes a lot more work. I have one (unpublished" of all new wave albums I could find that I haven't heard enough...but I like mixing it up with old doo wop and soul...so now I have to combine playlists...making about three days of music.

I'm getting lazy about doing a queue and just put the playlist on.

Oh wait, I am a dummy. If you start playing your playlist, your queue will use that as a default. Then you can pick out other tracks and throw them in your queue.

Wow, their FAQ sucks, though. You have to learn by using it pretty much.

There's still a mix of things I like and things I hate, but the thing I like a lot lately is that when you thumbs-up a song on the reasonably interesting Spotify radio, it gets sent to a playlist of songs you've thumbs-upped. That's really cool. I didn't even realize it was happening at first. Probably should have read the instructions...

On the iPhone/iPad app, I'm forever being rolled back to what must be a months-old backup of my playlist directory (maybe it's even a year old). The app then re-loads all the updates that have been made since then. This can take several minutes, which is annoying, as none of the current offline playlists are present on the backup...

...apart from "Starred", which is always immediately available and fully up to date. N.B. "Starred" has become a favourite feature: its a tidy way of maintaining a rolling "A-list"/"heavy rotation" playlist.

Weird, that hasn't been an issue on the Android app and I'd have expected the iPhone one to be more advanced, unless Apple are being dicks about it which is entirely possible.

So you can't get the app for iOS 4 anymore.

this new droid app interface is so confusing.. and it doesnt download songs anymore. it says "0% downloaded" next to anything recently selected for offline. what am i doing wrong?

NO I DON'T WANT TO AUTOSUBSCRIBE TO YOUR STUPID PLAYLISTS

Dunno if this will only happen in the UK but check out the 1st album listed when you go to the Public Enemy page http://open.spotify.com/artist/6Mo9PoU6svvhgEum7wh2Nd

Can't login on to Spotify uk. Says check my firewall settings, but they're fine. Anyone else having issues?

fine here

It'd been weird on-and-off for the last couple of weeks now. spotify admin seem to be aware of it, so I guess it's just a case of hunkering down.

Still no joy :-( Looks like I'm not the only one with issues https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/keeps-on-going-offline-Error-Code-102-112-117-etc/td-p/109089

spotify needs some kind of library feature (not just local library), smart playlists, and a way to tell you when an album you have in your playlists has been removed from the site.

i want to make a serious run at using spotify exclusively for playing music on my computer, but i'm so worried that it'll just close shop one day and like 10 years of music listening will be lost and i'll have to reconstitute my entire collection

yep, that'll certainly happen

i'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not... they've already removed albums when publishers stopped contracting w/ them

No, i'm being serious! Just saying it comes with the territory.

Mordy, you should just do it. It probably makes sense to redo your collection every 10 years anyway.

^this is kinda what i'm getting at

Long before spotify disappears there will surely be some new music app that you'll be even more excited about anyway. There's no reason to assume that any solution will be perfect for you forever.