I really like Spotify, I understand why there is so much hype about it. That hype is well deserved.
I’ve been on other cloud based music services and all of them had at least one thing that made me go back to collecting mp3s. Last.fm had a somewhat limited catalog, Slacker was the same. The main deterrent always seems to be the fact that although I could skip songs on playlists, I couldn’t choose specific songs. It was almost like a mandatory party-mix mode with no repeat functionality.
The Spotify catalog is impressive enough that I can forgive the few holes I found. I quickly found music I hadn’t heard in years (Wire – Pink Flag album for example) which made me smile And the best part of the service is that I can easily choose specific versions of songs to play immediately.
Another thing that I think has been done well in this roll-out of Spotify is the ability to actively tie into today’s social networking apps. Facebook users can easily tie into their friends public music lists, and info about tracks can be posted to Twitter and Facebook. One thing that I hope is developed at time moves on is either a WordPress.com widget or the ability to export recently played tracks to a RSS feed (Last.fm holds edge there for now), either of which would push Spotify into even more information channels.
Spotify comes with different pricing plans including the free plan which I am currently on. Paid services removes ads, can increase audio quality, provides mobile support, and allows storage of playlist tracks on either computer or mobile platforms. I have a link to bypass the invite process (which has a several day queue at this point), contact me and I’ll shoot you the link.
digifiend 