Spotify - anyone heard of it?

*cough cough*

My Spotify playlists, let me show you them

ILM Top 100 Tracks of the 1970s
ILM's 125 Best Tracks of the 20th Century

sorry ledge :)

Why? It was already linked upthread anway.

many thanks to the kind ilxor who sent an invite my way!

this is really cool.

That was me. No worries. I've got a few left in anyone wants one.

I'm finding the ads really annoying today.

Does skipping to the next track just before it finishes still work?

No, but double clicking on the next song does, weirdly.

I think they count how many times you do that tho, and then when you inevitably forget to double click, they play you a bumper crop of adverts that you can't get out of.

I wish it would stop asking me to share what I'm listening to on Facebook.

digging it so far. looking forward to enjoying some of these ILM lists!

listening to all of marquee moon for the first time in a while

probably won't be posting about alt rock from the 90s and nu-metal from the early aughts so much anymore rip

artist radio is showing up now. I can't figure out how to make it actually do anything though. it just shows a list of related artists.

duh never mind. you just click on the album art boxes at the bottom I guess

That's not on the mobile app though?

I don't know, I'm using it on the desktop app only.

They should allow you to subscribe to an artist and then have it automatically create a playlist with everything they've done, plus new stuff appearing as it arrives. That would be amazing. And then some kind of running new music playlist that shows you all of the new stuff from artists you've subscribed to.

And then some kind of running new music playlist that shows you all of the new stuff from artists you've subscribed to.

I use this for notifications about new stuff - http://www.freshspotify.com/

It sends you an email when any of your artists have new material available. If you use spotify you can point at that to go find your top artists.

sorry that should read "if you use last.fm"

Thats a cool link, if a lot of info to sort through. It'd be cool if you could change filters for that, at this point I'm more interested to see when certain lables pop up as opposed to artists.

I did see that markers should be thrilled that they added a bunch of Metallica.

There's a "new album releases on Spotify" playlist here: http://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/3Yrvm5lBgnhzTYTXx2l55x

And this new releases list is also useful: http://open.spotify.com/user/the_junes/playlist/4lAy93JwdfYICArhzndaxs

Thanks for the links.

thanking u spotify for showing me that owl city has a new single out called LONELY LULLABY

I use this for notifications about new stuff - http://www.freshspotify.com/

Thanks, that's pretty cool. Just signed up for it. I wish something like that were integrated right into Spotify though. It would also be nice if you could subscribe to a label.

I just signed up for Spotify and was sort of dubious about their claim to have every song ever available. Not true on many fronts--however, somehow they have a song available that I sang for this cassette-only Tucson bedroom band compilation 19 years ago. Bizarre.

i am loving all the sound-alikes

shit! they have my last band's two albums on there, crazy

Spotify doesn't have Kim Fowley's "Sunset Boulevard" or anything by Zoogz Rift or Lisa Suckdog, so I say it still has a long way to go....

so it looks like the 'enhanced sound quality' only comes with the premium package

https://www.spotify.com/us/get-spotify/unlimited/

fuck you spotify!

what streaming services out there do 320 or at least 192?

The free quality sounds fine to me.

it sounded pretty good on my speakers earlier - but just switched to headphones and the dynamic range is noticeably compressed when I compare the stream to high quality mp3s I already have

I mean, premium costs $9.99/month. Is there really anyone out there who doesn't have that?

And really, in 2011 we still can't get the rights to the Vapors' proper albums, or most of Men Without Hats? Really?

it sounded pretty good on my speakers earlier - but just switched to headphones and the dynamic range is noticeably compressed when I compare the stream to high quality mp3s I already have

yup, good for computer speakers and earbuds, not for close listening.

Does anyone know what, specifically, the sound quality differences involve?

spotify premium is 320 kbps, no idea on anything else

from what I've read, it's 160 kbps for regular users, occasionally 320 kbps for premium. Not all tracks are yet available in 320 kbps and the company has dissembled repeatedly about how many tracks currently stream in higher quality and the timeline for full adoption of 320 kbps streaming for premium users.

This is confusing to me because I would think the record labels are providing the files and they're only going to have one version of a given album created using a particular bit rate.

They get the original files in lossless form and make at least two versions of each track available - at minimum, 96 kbps for mobile streaming and 160 for regular users. 320 kbps is available to premium users for some unknown number of tracks.

"Bitrategate" might be a bit much but here's more information: http://www.spotifyclassical.com/2011/07/spotify-bitrategate-story-so-far.html

That is fascinating!

On now.

any of you using this on more than one computer? I'm finding that if I star things at home or make a playlist, the changes don't always show up when I open spotify at work ... am I doing it wrong

I have it on 3 machines and have had zero synchronization issues; in fact, I never close it on my work or home computer and see changes made in one location at the other, seamlessly.

sorry if this is an annoying question, but could someone explain what spotify is exactly... I checked the website but didn't really get what the big deal was. You can make playlists?

It is a gigantic online database of music that you can stream to any computer and many handheld devices. You can also make and share playlists with other users.

Ah okay, thanks.

I guess that could be cool to have a streaming on-the-go playlist instead of taking of space on my phone w/ mp3s...

well strictly speaking I believe it downloads music to your handheld device rather than streaming to it, so for example you can still listen to music on the train etc

really the biggest strengths here are:

- not needing to store gigabytes of music locally to have a diverse music collection
- being able to put together and share playlists with friends by swapping URLs

As I've discovered over the course of the week, this is next to fucking useless at public free WiFi places like coffee shops or whatever, if their connection is anything less than ideal.

xpost
It does both, as it downloads data for offline listening. You can also listen to tracks on the fly, though I'd make sure you have a generous allowance for streaming data otherwise it may be quite expensive.

in fact, I never close it on my work or home computer and see changes made in one location at the other

thx. maybe I'll try leaving it open. might be that my work computer is on a weird network. dunno.

It does show some changes, like playlists I unsubscribed from disappeared off the display, but other stuff I renamed or changed didn't show.

someone invite me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111

sorry if this is an annoying question, but could someone explain what spotify is exactly... I checked the website but didn't really get what the big deal was. You can make playlists?

I would describe it as iTunes music store, but you can instantly play the full version of every song for $5 a month instead of having to pay 99 cents per download.