Spotify - anyone heard of it?

if i can't play it on guitar hero it's not real

I want to shazzam an audible code unique to my physical copy of the album that releases all digital content, ie the album should appear on my shelf in Animal Crossing a moment later

KK's Moombahton

Can I ask you guys that don't have cds and records etc what you use to play digital dl and streaming on? Not just your computer with headphones right? I do a lot of listening like that, via my laptop - usually late at night but if I can I'll pump cds and records from my separates system but the sound is 20 times better.

Can anyone recommend a speaker set I can plug straight into my laptop - or is there more to it than that?

― kraudive, Tuesday, March 26, 2013 6:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Powered monitors out of the headphone jack are the best compromise I've come up with so far. Sound pretty good. You could also get some kind of usb interface and then run it out through your stereo.

KRK Rokit 5's, fwiw. I do pay for the "premium" spotify so I get allegedly better sound quality. For some reason, I notice the inferiority of Spotify sound the most on very old recordings, as though it "flattens" them and accentuates certain flaws. Not sure why.

I play digital music off of my computer. Office is next to living room and the speakers are decent enough that it sounds fine to my non-audiophile ears. For kitchen I stream to a little Bluetooth speaker. I wish I had a better one of those.

For kitchen I stream to a little Bluetooth speaker.

I should do this -- never thought about it before.

You could also get some kind of usb interface and then run it out through your stereo.

You don't need a USB interface, just a cord you can plug into the headphone jack that has RCA left/right plugs on the other end.

I'm about to pull the trigger on the Soundmatters foxlv2 bluetooth speaker, seems to be the best sound in a little package that also supports apt-x.

You don't need a USB interface

Didn't he say that at the beginning of that paragraph you quote, Tim?

You don't need a USB interface, just a cord you can plug into the headphone jack that has RCA left/right plugs on the other end.

― timellison, Monday, April 1, 2013 5:21 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's true, in fact I use 1/8" to RCA with a splitter. But I had always thought you get better sound through an interface than you do through the headphone outs? Maybe that's not true anymore.

this is supposed to be awesome

http://www.audioquest.com/usb_digital_analog_converter/dragonfly-dac

new version is v ugly imo

Didn't he say that at the beginning of that paragraph you quote, Tim?

He was talking about running some powered speakers out of the headphone jack, but you can also just plug your computer straight into one of the channels on your stereo using the kind of cord I was describing.

Oh yeah, sure. Sorry for indulging in Beef by Proxy.

so...is this borked again for everyone or is it just me?

Working just fine for me on both the home and work pcs.

I'm about to pull the trigger on the Soundmatters foxlv2 bluetooth speaker, seems to be the best sound in a little package that also supports apt-x.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Monday, April 1, 2013 5:23 PM (3 days ago)

borrowed this advice while doing some retail therapy. it came in today and boy does it sound AMAZING so thanks for the recc

MOG, btw, seems to have none of the licensing issues Spotify has. All these albums that are missing tracks on Spotify have no issues on MOG.

I left mog bc the iPhone app was terrible. This was at least a year ago. Maybe it's better now. Also, can you share playlists on mog now?

No, the social aspects suck. Or, I guess you can share them on Facebook and Twitter, but it's nothing like Spotify.

But the app is solid as a rock. And the catalogue is definitely better.

borrowed this advice while doing some retail therapy. it came in today and boy does it sound AMAZING so thanks for the recc

Woohoo, good on yer Mordy! I'm off to place my order, thanks for confirming my research!

Here's a question for all of you:

What Spotify apps do you recommend? There are some that look interesting but don't want to risk giving more of my info to third parties than I already do. Is SoundTracking any good?

I like Swarm.fm.

got onto MOG since it you can run it in-browser in chrome os, it's p dope although i prefer browsing in spotify (use it at work)

if you're having probs with spotify taking ages to load and being a bit shit turn all the crap off in preferences, except for enable hardware accelleration i guess, made a huge improvement here

what stuff did you turn off?

everything except hardware acceleration. removing the 'sync local files' seems to have made a difference to the startup time on this machine. turned off all the social grap, gapless playing etc. really seems to have made an improvement.

iphone app is still fucked for me tho v annoying, crashing all the time, taking forever to load

artists not on spotify: isotope 217 for some reason. Seems like other thrill jockey stuff is on there.

fucked for me again? anyone else not getting it to work? (i'm on a mac)

been glitchy for me lately

same here. tracks dropping in and out a lot. happened once on iTunes too though so I was afraid it might be my wifi. (I beam from my laptop to powered speakers.)

been ok for me

Was crashing over and over again for an hour or two earlier, so I got the new update (another one) and now it seems to have stabilised a bit. I've had to stop it from opening on start up though, it was killing my pc for a good 6 or 7 mins each time, was really winding me up

i did the clear cache, uninstall, reinstall thing AGAIN and it's better now, still getting annoying tho

only glitch i ever get is sometimes when a song starts playing, it's completely silent, but if i bring it back to the beginning and start it over then it's fine. but i've had that issue the whole time i've been on spotify - not a recent problem.

according to my spotify feed, Miles Davis just listened to Walkin by Miles Davis

Yeah it was getting worse and worse for me but uninstalling and reinstalling cleared it all up. Killing a few of the apps might have helped as well.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22064353

^^^ This is interesting - not sure why artists are making so much more from streaming in some countries than in the US and UK?

that's only more as a percentage though, doesn't necessarily correlate to actual money.

New update for iPhone app claims it fixes crashes. We'll see....

I really liked using ctrl+f to quickly locate songs titles within long lists of artists, or to quickly filter out unofficial "re-recordings." And now one of the recent updates has disabled the filter option. (It's still an option under the "edit" tab, but it's been grayed so that it can't be selected.)

Also I'm still bummed about the lack of accuracy in my "top lists."

mac version borked again today

yeah this up and exploded on me today, had to reinstall from scratch

Same here. Didn't reinstall though.

i wish i hadn't! It's reloading all my local files and that's like a near terabyte of music and it can't get it down.
searching for anything makes this fucking program freeze like a deer in headlights

artists not on spotify: isotope 217 for some reason. Seems like other thrill jockey stuff is on there.

lol i noticed this

not sure why artists are making so much more from streaming in some countries than in the US and UK

Well in Sweden the takeup of Spotify is just huge. 70% of the population uses it. If 70% of the UK used Spotify I imagine Uk artists would be doing much better out of it as well.

goddamn, the new icon for the desktop app is very ugly.

And they've increased the font size on playlists, which greatly reduces the number of tracks that you can view at the same time. Yet the font sizes elsewhere remain the same. Visually, it's becoming such an ungainly cludge.

so what finally worked for this was to disengage all my own music from the service so now i have to use both itunes AND spotify, way to go new version