My never-ending quest to listen to all the music I want when and where I want has led me to Spotify. This is a Swedish company that rolled out in the US last fall. Different than Pandora, the idea behind Spotify is that you can listen to exactly the artist, track, or album you want when you want to. So, If I want to hear The Stones "Sticky Fingers" I just search for it and it comes up.
They have 23 million songs, no Beatles because of a prior agreement with Apple, and I noticed The Eagles are not in the catalog. But just released music hits Spotify right away. And the nice thing about it is that it is totally legit. The artist gets paid, and there is no downloading.
The service is free, but it has 3 catches to it. First, you get only 10 hours per month. Second, about every third or fourth song you will get a commercial. And the big one is that the free service is not available on your smartphone.
Of course, there's a solution to all that, and it is Spotify premium, $10 per month, about the cost of one album download on Amazon. OK, wait...for the price of one album I can get ALL the music? And with premium you get no commercials, no limit, higher quality, and a smartphone app! So, I get in my truck, plug the phone in the radio and go "Hmmmm, I think I want to listen to The Dirty Heads" and snap! there it is.
The service also allows you to create playlists, yesterday I created one from the Stax and Volt artists who created the Memphis soul sound of the late 60's. It will synch your playlist with your phone, and you can share your playlist with others on the service as they can with their lists.
Spotify, similar to Pandora, will also let you create artist radio stations, but the one major shortfall here is that Spotify does not allow the stations on a mobile device app. Kind of a miss.
One other thing, about February of this year Spotify changed its new account sign up and will only allow the creation of an account with your facebook user i.d. Then, of course, it will splatter your listening across all your friends' pages, and everyone will know that you are listening to The Dead Kennedys "Too Drunk to ****" . There is a simple solution as there is a box to check a couple of menu layers down to stop this.
All in all a great product. Let's see, I did albums from birth to 1989, cds until 2008, mp3 until 2011, cloud music for 9 months, now this. Maybe next they can just jam the music right into my brain!
They have 23 million songs, no Beatles because of a prior agreement with Apple, and I noticed The Eagles are not in the catalog. But just released music hits Spotify right away. And the nice thing about it is that it is totally legit. The artist gets paid, and there is no downloading.
The service is free, but it has 3 catches to it. First, you get only 10 hours per month. Second, about every third or fourth song you will get a commercial. And the big one is that the free service is not available on your smartphone.
Of course, there's a solution to all that, and it is Spotify premium, $10 per month, about the cost of one album download on Amazon. OK, wait...for the price of one album I can get ALL the music? And with premium you get no commercials, no limit, higher quality, and a smartphone app! So, I get in my truck, plug the phone in the radio and go "Hmmmm, I think I want to listen to The Dirty Heads" and snap! there it is.
The service also allows you to create playlists, yesterday I created one from the Stax and Volt artists who created the Memphis soul sound of the late 60's. It will synch your playlist with your phone, and you can share your playlist with others on the service as they can with their lists.
Spotify, similar to Pandora, will also let you create artist radio stations, but the one major shortfall here is that Spotify does not allow the stations on a mobile device app. Kind of a miss.
One other thing, about February of this year Spotify changed its new account sign up and will only allow the creation of an account with your facebook user i.d. Then, of course, it will splatter your listening across all your friends' pages, and everyone will know that you are listening to The Dead Kennedys "Too Drunk to ****" . There is a simple solution as there is a box to check a couple of menu layers down to stop this.
All in all a great product. Let's see, I did albums from birth to 1989, cds until 2008, mp3 until 2011, cloud music for 9 months, now this. Maybe next they can just jam the music right into my brain!
