Spotify
Crispy
Jaded GD Join Date: 2004-08-22 Member: 30793Members, Constellation
Jaded GD Join Date: 2004-08-22 Member: 30793Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Last.fm rival currently in Beta</div>I got an invite to the <a href="http://www.spotify.com/" target="_blank">Spotify</a> Beta recently, and I have to say it's pretty awesome. Before you ask, no I don't have any invites and, yes, I do think it's a terrible name.
Spotify is basically a music player linked up to a large online music library. It pays its fees direct to the licensing companies who collect royalties based on what music you listen to. It's ad-supported, with the options of temporarily removing the ads for a 24 hour period (£1/$1.50) or completely removing the ads for a subscription fee ($9.99/month or a yearly subscription; these options also come with extra features other than no adverts). The adverts come as 'slide-in' popups integral to the player and, more common, short 30 second 'radio-style' adverts that interrupt your listening for a moment. At the moment I seem to be getting them roughly every 30 minutes of uninterrupted play.
<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LQC2eBQ7Lsk"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LQC2eBQ7Lsk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
<i>Because Spotify pays the royalties to the collection agencies for the music it plays, it is entirely legal. It's like having your own personalised, online radio station.</i>
The player also has features similar to Last.fm, such as artist bios, 'similar artists', and 'artist radio', but these don't seem to have been populated with as many reliable links as Last.fm has (but its early days). So the last few days I've been thinking of something I don't have in my collection, searching it and streaming it very quickly. I should also say it streams at quite high quality (.ogg files, not sure of bitrate). Oh, and if you like a song and want to listen to it offline, you can purchase it through the player from places like Amazon and iTunes. So you can listen to an entire album, and if you like it you can buy it! (or if you only like 1 track you can just get that one).
Well worth hunting down an invite for this one. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/marine.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::marine::" border="0" alt="marine.gif" />
Spotify is basically a music player linked up to a large online music library. It pays its fees direct to the licensing companies who collect royalties based on what music you listen to. It's ad-supported, with the options of temporarily removing the ads for a 24 hour period (£1/$1.50) or completely removing the ads for a subscription fee ($9.99/month or a yearly subscription; these options also come with extra features other than no adverts). The adverts come as 'slide-in' popups integral to the player and, more common, short 30 second 'radio-style' adverts that interrupt your listening for a moment. At the moment I seem to be getting them roughly every 30 minutes of uninterrupted play.
<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LQC2eBQ7Lsk"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LQC2eBQ7Lsk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
<i>Because Spotify pays the royalties to the collection agencies for the music it plays, it is entirely legal. It's like having your own personalised, online radio station.</i>
The player also has features similar to Last.fm, such as artist bios, 'similar artists', and 'artist radio', but these don't seem to have been populated with as many reliable links as Last.fm has (but its early days). So the last few days I've been thinking of something I don't have in my collection, searching it and streaming it very quickly. I should also say it streams at quite high quality (.ogg files, not sure of bitrate). Oh, and if you like a song and want to listen to it offline, you can purchase it through the player from places like Amazon and iTunes. So you can listen to an entire album, and if you like it you can buy it! (or if you only like 1 track you can just get that one).
Well worth hunting down an invite for this one. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/marine.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::marine::" border="0" alt="marine.gif" />
Comments
Pros vs. Zune: has a free option
Cons vs. Zune: can't dl songs to your HD / zune; can't permanently keep DRM-free copies of 10 of those songs per month.
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<b>Invite:</b>
I had 5 invites appear and with most already doled out to my friends, I am prepared to give up one of them to NSOT (I may add a second one later). This comes with a proviso: you must give 2/5 of your invites (or the equivalent ratio) back to NSOT when you are given some.
PM me if you want in. To protect against scabs you must have a postcount of at least 1,500 to make sure whoever I give the invite to is likely to pass more invites back into NSOT. I'll try to check my PMs this time tomorrow; after that time I may not be able to get online for a few days so be patient if that's the case.
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<b>Invite:</b>
I had 5 invites appear and with most already doled out to my friends, I am prepared to give up one of them to NSOT (I may add a second one later). This comes with a proviso: you must give 2/5 of your invites (or the equivalent ratio) back to NSOT when you are given some.
PM me if you want in.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Thansal shoots and scores! Invite taken.
sorry, Gnome on the keyboard.
PM sent.
Denmark is not good enough for spotify.
Brits, drink up your tea and finish your crumpets, the beta's all you.
However, I have not received any invitations to administer as of yet. If anyone knows they can participate post here and I'll get back to you when/if I can.
However, I have not received any invitations to administer as of yet. If anyone knows they can participate post here and I'll get back to you when/if I can.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I've been on holiday the past few weeks. I got the invite from a Swede, so I can see two possibilities:
- Denmark is for some reason excluded from the Beta, as may be other countries.
- The organisers have resctricted invites to the territories of the persons giving out the invites to ensure a proportional distribution through different countries. (The invite I got was from someone who knows someone on the Spotify team, so it may have been an invite with 'special' conditions.)
Since Svenpa now has one and he was next in line, I'm happy to receive any other PMs (1000+ posts is fine).
On the other hand I've found a lot of good stuff just by jumping through links and having random stuff come up in searches. It'll give me an artist I didn't want beause of a keyword, I'll give it a quick whirl if it looks interesting and sometimes I'm happily surprised. I've found a few live mix albums which are not only quite refreshing, they're 70-minute single tracks so the Spotify adverts never kick in! (a flaw I'm not going to mention in any Beta feedback I give) <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Edit: e.g. <a href="http://open.spotify.com/track/5mQK1W4qA2MzakEbhDyR3A" target="_blank">http://open.spotify.com/track/5mQK1W4qA2MzakEbhDyR3A</a>
why is it not available in the states
The same reason why everything we have is not available to them. Licenses.
We’ve released our free advertising supported version in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain. In most other countries Spotify Premium is available for purchase.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->On that basis it looks like they have only got the royalties and advertising channels set up in a few countries in Europe.
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/29/AR2009012903353.html" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9012903353.html</a>
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In a blog post the startup outlines how it will be removing a number of songs from its catalogue and adding country restrictions to some tracks, which may make them unplayable for many users.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think the critic voices that are certain that record labels and Spotify favors restrictions are poorly informed. Labels have no have any interest of keeping our artist content from our customers. It is simply just bad business to prevent consumers to access only parts of our catalog and it fuels piracy.
The removal of most content that Spotify is undertaking related contractual rights – ie the label does not have the artist permission to distribute certain songs, albums or remixes digitally. I think the outcry from Spotify’s users would be equally as big if Spotify and the labels decided to keep the songs on the service although the artist had not given us the right to use. We respect our artist and the contract they enter with us and therefore this clean-up is necessary.
If you feel like music is missing on Spotify or on any other service, please feel free to reach out to the artist and ask them to release it on Spotify.
Best regards
Samuel Arvidsson,
Account Manager for Sony Music in Europe<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And another from the same Sony rep:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->There are only a handful artist catalogs that I know of (I can only think of two actually) that are exempted for digital distribution. We would like to distribute their music digitally, but they wish to focus on physical formats. On top of that comes for example remixes that we don’t have digital rights for. This has nothing to do with us “futureproofing†our deals, but rather the fact that deals done back in the days didn’t include digital. Rest assured that we are working our way through the thousands of contracts to update them and send for artist signature. Right now, country limitation is not as big challenge as not having the rights to the music at all. Feel free to send me a list of albums from us that you can’t access and I’ll look into it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And some conflicting reports from users:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Some time before christmas I did a “year:1900-2100″ search and got back ~16 million songs. When I do the same now (as the songs being removed are already unsearchable) I get back ~2 million. That’s 14 million songs, or 88%, missing since last time I searched. Am I close to the actual number?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I did last week the search “year:1900-2009″. There were more than 1,9 million tracks found. Now the same search results 1878404 tracks. I think that loss is not as dramatic as some people are complaining here. At least none of my favorite songs are missing anyway (lucky me).
Sure I hate country restrictions, and yes, there’s lots of good music that is not (yet) in spotify’s catalogue. But calling spotify useless is just… well, useless.
Keep up the good work! I will not cancel my subscription.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Sadly there's no way to be sure whether these comments are from people with hidden agendas such as Spotify employees, Record Label employees, Pirate Bay/ubertorrent employees (who make a lot of advertising revenue from their sites), or from normal folk.
I have to say I'm definitely not missing 88% from my playlists, although I'll be honest and say they don't include more than 10-15 different artists. They do include some compilations/mixes, though.
Wait, you really think that? REALLY, Mister Arvidsson?!