Music for the Masses

[andrewducker]

So, I've been playing with Spotify (bypass the "invitation only" bit by going here) and am so far very impressed.  It's a music streaming service that does it _right_.  Not only does it search for music faster than most local music apps do, but it's managing to play songs without gaps between tracks.

It's still not quite there - it's missing a few big name holdouts (Beatles, Pink Floyd) and a fair chunk of small label music (It's got Covenant, but not Apoptygma Berzerk), but I hope it'll keep adding more music.

It's add-supported, which will put some people off (or £9.99 to play without adverts) - I haven't heard/seen any ads yet, probably because they're trying to suck me in first...

If they keep this up then the only reason to actually have a music collection will be to put music onto my MP3 player.

Comments

[andrewducker]

There's a little bit on the technology behind it on the wikipedia article - P2P sharing of files to keep server load low, Vorbis compression on the files (presumably to keep licensing fees down), caching of files locally so that they're ready to play instantly. Oh and it's running in 15MB of memory, which is nicely minimal - and what you'd expect when one of the engineers behind it was also behind utorrent...

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Have you seen lastFM ?(Which has both Apoptygma Berzerk, Covenant, the beatles and pink floyd (just checked ;))

Or is there some reason not to use it?

[andrewducker]

I've used Last.FM - last I checked it was awful at queuing up songs, and not fast. Nor did it play songs seamlessly.

With spotify I've just done a search, found three more songs I wanted and queued them up to play next. Fairly instantly easy. With Last.FM I searched for Leftfield and it put me on a page which was going to play a radio station based off them, starting with a track from Trainspotting. Searching for a Beatles Track led to a similar experience. This is not what I wanted.

[accordingly.livejournal.com]

last.fm and spotify are very different.

I use last.fm to listen to new bands (type in a band name & listen to artists similar to them) but Spotify is good for when you know what band you want to listen to. It also has a lot more content (and more gets added all the time, keep checking back every few days), whereas last.fm often only has a few tracks by bands. But last.fm pays artists and I'm not sure Spotify does. You can also make playlists on Spotify which is cool.

Anyway, I'm going to continue to use both.

Oh and the ads on Spotify don't bother me at all, they're very infrequent.

[andrewducker]

They are paying the rights owners:
https://www.spotify.com/en/work-with-us/labels-and-artists/

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

Spotify does complement last.fm pretty well though: you can scrobble from it.

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow I'll be ditching the 20GB subset of my music collection that sits on my computer at work.

Haven't tried logging in on different computers though: interested to know if any playlists are stored remotely with your account or on the client app...

[andrewducker]

Let me know how it works for you!

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

Installed it at work: playlists are stored against your account so they appear wherever you log in.

[andrewducker]

Oh - and cheers for getting me past the invite screen!

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

No prob. It's good to know that reading the comments on Digg articles is occasionally worthwhile. :-)

[drjon.livejournal.com]

After reading this and your next post, I think it's a cert that when international subs are allowed, I'll be joining.

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

If you don't want to wait, you can do the following:

1) go to
http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/

2) enter the following URL:
https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/

3) Create your account. You'll need to use a valid UK postcode but any will do the trick.

4) Download the client software.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Ooo, ta!

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I've been highly sceptical of these sorts of services for a long time, mainly because they never usually deliver content beyond the main labels and there's very little there I'd like to listen to (that and I object to the principles of the 4 big labels and the RIAA etc these days).

A decent legal digital music service that could actually give me the content I want (i.e. the more obscure metal and prog) and doesn't cost the earth or is riddled with DRM seemed to be a bit of a dream but this ain't too bad. It's not failed too many of my obscure band searches yet although they've only got one Madder Mortem album and no Closterkeller - but then Polish goth metal might be pushing my luck a tad :) Even so, if they're expanding their collections this might actually be the start of decent online music! Ta for the links.

There are times when I'd still rather download off eDonkey / torrents, etc and send the band money instead, meaning the people that matter get paid rather than labels / execs / stores. Artists have been ripped off far too long and even with something like this, chances are the artists are seeing very little of what Spotify pays the labels unless the artists put their music up independently.

Still, it's a good start....

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

OK, let me revise that - it's missing a LOT of the non-mainstream metal/goth/prog. Still, we'll give it time and see how it evolves....