Spotify - anyone heard of it?

youre _so dumb_

i love everything you hate and more

I don't like the colors either.

2 against 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5jsa1lR9c

fun fact: light on dark is the second most popular contrast choice, after dark on light.

http://www.mobile-phones-info.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/iphone-dial-retro-cool-nice-old-mobile-phones-pic-pics-img-hot.jpg

Are ppl still getting defensive about how this is missing lots of stuff?

people are the absolute fucking worst

this thing that didnt exist three weeks ago isn't a complete and comprehensive database of every piece of recorded sound ever, FUCK THIS SHIT

it's been around for three years but w/e

not in US

oi maties did u hear the newsie wewsies, this bloke invented a musickal machine called spotify

sb

that is not how they talk in swedeland for sure

It's been around three years but I'd imagine the licensing issues are unique to the US so it might as well be brand new.

What's the mobile app like for draining phone battery by the way? Will have a good data package so will be streaming a lot I reckon...

rhapsody more like RAP CITY amirite deej

I finally got around to "going deep" on messing around with this last night and I'm supremely disappointed. Very limited selection (of course this will always be a subjective call) and the suggested/related artists thing is, in a word, broken. The whole thing feels very low-rent...saw lots of overlapping artist pages, etc. After all the "it's so fast and slick" proclamations this is not what I was expecting. The social/playlist sharing aspect is very cool, will probably keep me coming back for a while. Anyone else feel like, "Uh, this is the future of music? Pass."

Guys, its not as if the artists that are locked in are going to be the only ones there forever. I mean, when it launched Sub Pop was a notable omission, but its already put up a huge chunk of its catalog now too. Be patient. As this thing gathers more popularity, more will be added.

I have no issues with the selection, seems pretty good so far. Just the software. Does not work as an iTunes replacement. I really like iTunes, unlike many people.

Which, that is fine, I'll just run both programs.

What's the mobile app like for draining phone battery by the way? Will have a good data package so will be streaming a lot I reckon...

― Matt DC, Sunday, July 31, 2011 4:22 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

If you're doing proper streaming over 3g then it's a pretty big drain but not unusably so. My phone has generally shit battery life tho, so I'm used to recharging during the day anyway. If you're playing stuff you already synced then it's no different to any other mp3 playing app. Most efficient thing is obv to sync over wifi before listening, if possible.

Spotify mobile is basically the best thing ever invented and it really has 'changed how I consume music' forever (or until their business model is revealed to be a bust).

Weird, I joined up but I apparently can't invite other people.

think only Premium users get any invites, as far as I can tell.

Ah, I see.

I gotta say, they don't make the social aspect of the site terribly intuitive or simple.

I'm still finding it strangely complicated to download tracks for offline use on the iPhone App. I wish they'd streamline it a little. And the app crashes when you try to save an album as a new playlist with the album name, though I can't believe they won't fix that soon.

Not sure if this has been discussed in this lengthy thread, but what do you all make of the preponderance of "re-recorded" hits from the days of yore? Is this a way for Spotify to pay less for the rights, comping the artists only and not the record companies? I know many artists (Squeeze, for example) are re-recording their old hits, faithfully, so as to exercise more control over them. Strikes me that we are entering into a Karaoke Age, in which you can get the original work for X, and a "faithful" simulacrum for X - whatever. I mean, listening to Walter Egan's re-recorded "Magnet And Steel", he still sounds fine, but the production is just a bit off, and when you lose Stevie Nicks on backing vocals, you lose everything.

Any way to divert money away from labels and to artists is ok by me.

Fair enough. But it does present an aesthetic problem. Whilst listening to the 50s poll playlist I tolerated/lived with the various rerecord versions of the old hits but really want to hear the original records- in rock and roll "the original is still the greatest" usually holds true.There's no way a live recording of The Coasters for a PBS special is going to sound as good as the recording made by Tom Dowd in the Atlantic studio with King Curtis on sax, Gary Chester on drums and Mike Stoller on piano.

Is this a way for Spotify to pay less for the rights

Oh, I really don't think so. There's a lot of this stuff on iTunes as well.

Spotify is owned by the majors so nothing they do is going to be even remotely "a way to divert money away from labels and to artists." The mechanical rate for a download of a cover is something like 9 cents. For streaming like this, it's probably much lower but I don't know the exact figure. So if anything, covers are a way to divert money away from the original artist, paying the songwriter a tiny pittance for the use of their IP.

Yeah iTunes does this too. I downloaded a Jim Croce song a while back only to realize it wasn't even Croce singing.

but really it's not iTunes or Spotify doing it. It's other artists doing it. anyone can record a cover without permission by simply paying the statutory rate for a compulsory license. This goes back at least to those '60s hit cover collection LPs but probably earlier as well.

this whole no songs >10 min is really starting to get to me

will probably kill the subscription because of it

is that a us thing only? i haven't noticed it.

I listened to the Hatchback album yesterday and that's got a couple of 10min plus tracks that played with no problem, so it's either a glitch or a US-only thing, but that would still just be bizarre - would take out a lot of classical music for one thing.

I'm pretty sure its a U.S. only thing. Was listening to some Allman Brothers yesterday (the urge hit me, what can I say?) but it wouldn't play anything over 10 minutes. Super annoying. I was hoping that it would go away with the paid subscription, but judging by what diamonddave85 is saying, that isn't the case. Sounds like I may keep my wallet in my pocket for a little while longer to see how this shakes out. I listen to way too much music where the 10-minute plus track is fairly common.

http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/long_songs_are_missing

Second post here blames UMG

Yeah, it's only UMG stuff over ten minutes.

^above from a few months ago and before US launch so might not be same issue. I've never had any issue playing long tracks.

Affects the UK too, The Orb's 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld' is about an hour shorter because of it.

from what I understand, when tracks aren't available it's because the label or rightsholder hasn't licensed the track for streaming. The Orb album is missing tracks on Rdio as well, although they aren't the same tracks and all of the tracks are available on Mog, so I'm not really sure how all of this works.

I'm in the us, "shatterhand" by nightblooms is (just) over ten minutes and plays fine. Premium.

Pretty sure Nightblooms weren't ever on UMG, that appears to be the common link here. That link omino posted makes a lot of sense, on iTunes a lot of those lengthy tunes are only available 'Album Only' (meaning you can't purchase them individuall) and somehow the metadata transferred over for Spotify in a way that makes them not allowed to be streamed either. Seems Spotify is looking into it though, so hopefully it will all be available soon.

uforb and adventures are on Big Life, a UMG subsidiary

UMG is such a huge conglomerate that even though it's an issue with only ONE content provider, it's a problem imo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Universal_Music_Group_labels

I've been kinda "whatever" about people complaining about things not being on here but now that something I've been listening to for a week is suddenly unavailable (Iceage "New Brigade") ... yeah it's annoying.

the interface really kinda sucks; there are a bunch of little navigational things that would make it so much easier to use

plus they really need to clean up their "artist" pages, figure out what to do about two artists with the same name, etc.

that said im using this as much as itunes atp

the interface really kinda sucks; there are a bunch of little navigational things that would make it so much easier to use

THIS. Starting with multiple tabs, so I can have one with the currently playing album while I go browsing and searching in others.

Appearance of ads in the free version is very haphazard, and seems to depend on time of day maybe? Last night it seemed like there were ads after every other song, but this morning I listened to a whole album without hearing any.

pretty shitty that you can't play it on two devices at the same time as i found out when i got kicked off this morning while my wife was using it.

Starting with multiple tabs, so I can have one with the currently playing album while I go browsing and searching in others.

You can search all day and click back to "play queue" any time you like.

Tabs would be nice though.

plus they really need to clean up their "artist" pages, figure out what to do about two artists with the same name, etc.

yeah, not just that but I've seen lots of cases of one artist with multiple slight variations of their name (capitalization or punctuation differences, with or without "The" etc) which is super annoying. And I've seen a bunch of cases where the "related artists" tab doesn't even include side projects or related solo acts.

But my biggest gripe is that they need to let you select multiple playlists so you can put them into a folder all at once. That, and it would be nice if they indented the folders a bit more like itunes does. Even if you organize everything into folders, the playlists still look like just one huge long list.

listening to incubus, counting ufos, signaling them w/ my ladder tbrr y'all!