10 reasons why Spotify rocks
First of all, what is Spotify?
I always describe Spotify as a kind of cross between Pandora, Last.fm and iTunes. It’s a music application that you download and install on your PC. It does many cool things but primarily it can either (a) act like a radio station and play you random songs based on your preferences, i.e. “Alternative”, “Soul”, “Country” etc. Or (b) it can also act as a stand-alone music player. So let’s say you want to listen to the latest album my Ne-Yo, just do a search, you’ll find it on Spotify, press play and there you go, the whole album is there and plays for you. The main difference between Spotify and something like iTunes is that you don’t have to either own the album in the first place and load it onto your PC for playback or - even better- you don’t have to buy it! Yes you can listen to the whole album for free!!
That’s a very general overview of how Spotify works but after using it now for a couple of months I’ve come up with 10 reasons why it’s completely awesome and is giving their competition a real run for the money.
1. It’s fast
I live in an area where I can only get 512k broadband. Yes it’s 2009 and I’m on bloody 512k while the rest of the country is enjoying 8MB, 16Mb and higher I feel like I’m on dial-up. As such I find that I can’t really use other streaming music services, when I do try the songs constantly get interrupted and stutter due to my slow connection. Not the case with Spotify! I don’t know what type of magical technical voodoo they employ but it streams absolutely seamlessly. And I mean that, it’s never ever once stuttered or dropped out. Never. There is no buffering, no waiting for the stream to connect, it’s instant. And remember the service is still in Beta! Seriously for me, this is one of the biggest achievements I’ve seen in streaming from the web.
2. The pricing model is realistic
At the moment there are 3 ways to use Spotify:
Free: Supported by advertising, it’s completely free to join. You have to listen to the occasional short ad now and again but other than that its free. At the moment Spotify is only available if you live in the UK, France and Spain. You can sign up for free here…but this page may be taken down at any time as Spotify are keen to make sure the platform is fully stable before full public launch, so they may limit the number of new users to ensure they don’t creak under the strain. If that page does get taken down get in touch with me and I’ll send you an invite to join.
24 hour Day Pass: For 99p you get Spotify ad free for 24 hours.
Premium: For £9.99 a month you get the full service, with no ads.
Currently I’m using the free version and while I have to listen to the occasional ad it doesn’t bother me one bit. I would say on average I have to listen to 1 short ad every 10 tracks or so. But this does vary, sometimes I can listen for a few hours with no ads. I dare say however that as the service grows, the frequency of the ads will increase. If this becomes the case then tbh I won’t have a problem paying the £9.99 a month for the premium service, in my opinion it’s well worth it.
3. I can listen to full albums for free
I still can’t come to grips with how I’m able to do this. I mean, I can listed to a FULL album, which I don’t even own for free!! This totally blows my mind. I use this to check out new albums that I’m thinking of buying. For example, I’m a Keyshia Cole fan so thought I would check out her new album “A Different Me” on Spotify. So I found it, listened, liked it and have now purchased the CD. I always like to own physical CD’s of music I like, none of this MP3 nonsense for me.
4. Spotify URL’s
If you clicked on the Keyshia Cole link in the above paragraph and you have Spotify installed you will be taken straight to the album on Spotify. Cool. You cal also use it to link to individual artists such as Ne-Yo. Very cool. In case you’re wondering, Spotify URL’s look like this spotify:artist:21E3waRsmPlU7jZsS13rcj and spotify:album:0uXiie7MeDzL9Em5ywSaip.
5. Spotify Playlists
You can also use Spotify URL’s to share your Playlists with other Spotify users. For example I’ve created Kieron’s Awesome Funk/Rare Groove/Soul Playlist Volume 1 and Kieron’s Old School Hip-Hop/Dance Mixtape Of Awesomeness Volume 1. If I say so myself they’re both fantastic collection of funky stuff from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s including The Jackson Sisters, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Tom Browne, Maceo and the Macks, NWA, LL Cool J, De La Soul and many other classics. The first is a compilation of 23 tracks and the second, 35 tracks, all of which I’ve lovingly put together from my all time favourites. The beauty of creating playlists in Spotify is that I can share them with other users and vice versa. So if you know someone with similar tastes to you it’s a great way of discovering new music or even old music that you haven’t heard in years. So if anyone has any cool playlists to share, let me know.
A real sign that a new site/app is going to be big is the amount of other sites that spring up around the main site to support it. Even though Spotify is still in Beta there are already a number of third party sites springing up to showcase Spotify Playlists. More info here, YourSpotify is one of the best.
6. Spotify Search and Interface
The guys at Spotify have got their search engine so right. It’s easy to use, intuitive and is a great way to discover music by your favourite artist. For example, let’s search for Prince:
You get an immediate list of artists who match your search.
You also get a list of albums and tracks which match your search.
If we then click on the first artist from the first search we get a page like this: (btw all screen grabs are heavily cropped so that the text can be read in this blog post, there is much more info available on the actual Spotify screen). As you can see you get a brief bio, some similar artists to check out and then the search results below. The “top hits” are the 5 most rated tracks from the artist. Then following on from that you get pages and pages of all the albums and singles released by the artist, in date order. In this instance some of Princes old singles have been re-issued, which is why they are displaying at the top of the search.
You can also click on the “Biography” tab at the top of the page and get a really detailed biography of the artist. The bio for Prince was so long I couldn’t fit it all ina screen grab. Fantastic way to learn more about your favourite artists or new artists.
Then you can click on “Artist Radio” which is a very, very cool idea. Basically Spotify selects random tracks from the artist’s catalogue as well as other artists who they have connections too. So in this instance it’s picked Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, Michael Jackson etc. All artists in the same genre as Price and/or who have collaborated with him. The idea is if you like Price then there’s a good chance you will like these artists too.
Wait, there’s more. Going back to the Artist search results page, if you scroll down past all of the original recordings by the artist you searched for you come to a list of other albums that the artist has appeared on. Maybe a compilation of a movie soundtrack. Take this result for example, Prince recorded an orginal track called “Song Of The Heart” that was only ever released on the 2006 “Happy Feet” soundtrack. As I said above, Spotify is a great way to discover new music.
On some of the more popular albums and new releases, there are even reviews too. See screenshot below which also shows the whole Spotify interface, sleek eh?
7. Spotify Blog
Like all good startups, Spotify are keen to interract with their users and keep us informed of new developments. The Spotify blog does exactly that and can be found here.
8. Spotify Exclusive Pre-Releases
The music industry is certainly sitting up and paying attention to Spotify. Already some artists are releasing albums early on Spotify like Anthony Hamilton who released “The Point Of It All” to Premium Spotify users in Sweden a week before it’s general release. It has also just been announced that Spotify will have the exclusive scoop on the new U2 single “Get On Your Boots” just before its release now. That’s a big deal, right?
9. It’s released in the UK/Europe before America
Yay! Doesn’t stop thenm trying to get it though 
10. Future innovations
Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a Spotify app for the iPhone? Wouldn’t it? 
What I’m listening to right now: Kieron’s Awesome Funk/Rare Groove/Soul Playlist Volume 1 and Kieron’s Old School Hip-Hop/Dance Mixtape Of Awesomeness Volume 1
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Original post by Kieron