Spotify

Now that its available easily in NZ lets comment on the new music service.
I understand it pays the artists SFA, but am not sure how bad that compares with say a radio station royalty. And I assume that would be based on the no. of plays of each track.
And Spotify itself makes money from ads, subscriptions for premium services. Anything else?

I'm finding plenty to listen to havent paid any money yet.
Very much an Itunes interface it seems.
Spotify will presumably be a real threat to Itunes.

Currently loving it I am - the payback to artists is small (not as tiny as some acts pretend - they've just signed stupid contracts or haven't renegiotiated their exisiting ones to take into account these 'new technologies' ....) but has been shown spotify (and streaming services) reduce illegal downloading so its use is more than purely fiscal for artists and labels

Amazed by what I've found and also by that I haven't - found heaps I didn't know exisited which has me very pleased and somewhat addicted to the bloody thing when I open it

I'm on the free - considering upping to premium but in no great rush

I do wonder what impact it'll have on office networks - we've upto 5 peeps using it at any one time here and the nerds been shit (can't tell if its the usual shit or shitter than the norm) - allegedly uses approx 30-40 meg an hour

I hope spotify fucks itunes - always good for all if the dominant player gets some competition...

Much prefer the usability and interface to itunes - figure whomever coded it actually likes music (itunes one can't level the same accusation at)

Radio royalties are significantly higher (In nz) than spotify rates - but one should consider spotify as primarily a promo service not a means in itself to make $$$ - and saying that radio royalties don't capture a HUGE number of songs/acts that get radio play - whereas spotify does

looking forward to seeing the dumb and clever ways acts and labels use spotify here

in short - me like

i noticed some action on my news feed from Bob on spotify today!

Sounds great I was reading about it in the Time magazine today..

I need a new Ipod before I start using it.

I haven't looked into it really, but it's streaming only, right? So if you stumble across something you like, you can't out and out buy it there, you'd have to go to iTunes or some other site to buy a copy?

What are the limitations of a free account VS the benefits of paying for premium?

Sincerely Guy Who Can't Be Fucked Looking It Up Himself

No but seriously, it's already blocked at my work

errr really sowhat's the point.. I'm not gonna stream music dont even know what that means tbh I just want some good songs on my ipod to use for exercise.. so you can't get songs from spotify I'll have to buy them the same way

oh, not for me then.

Free account has ads, premium you can use the iPhone, Android app and listen without the ads via stream. No need to store anything on your phone other than the app.

For me, I'd sooner download music and store it locally on my phone. This way I don't have to pay the extra monthly fee for a premium account + mobile data. Most the music on there is only 160kbps too.

That said, I have found a few cool playlists people have put together and can see the benefits. Maybe when mobile data is a bit more reasonable I'll consider it.

The free version was brilliant when it first came out in the UK now its pretty much one ad per song, you can only listen to a track a maximum of 10 times ever and a bunch of music that used to be on there is gone. If I had an iPhone I might be tempted to pay for premium but for amount of listening I do (on the train mostly) not sure it'd be worth it.

Does no one buy albums anymore?

You can listen to full albums as they were intended on Spotify too.

Pretty sure Spotify was in the book of Revelations.


WE ALL KNOW WHAT COMES NEXT PEOPLE!!

Pretty sure you can download tunes onto your phone at home so you dont have to stream if you dont want to.

I like it. Some people will still want to 'own' a file, but when you think about it there's no real difference save a few MBs here and there (Spotify also has an adjustable cache).

yeh not really a relevant question in this discussion
because this is about not buying (buying as in owning) anything, but paying (or getting ad's) to have access to almost anything (musicwise) any time.
subscription based access negates the need to own.


I do believe ,Spike, that you can synch your playlists onto your portable device , and this kind of sounds like not needing to stream i'e having an offline copy, but I'm not 100% sure - havent tried it myself.

I did when I lived in NZ and I definitely would if I didn't have to consider shipping them all back to NZ one day.....

You're both right. Just tested the Available Offline feature with my 30 day trial

Being freed from having to load music files onto my devices like a primitive savage is killer. Being able to search for just about anything is awesome, and the social side has huge potential, given decent uptake amongst your peers. Well, the peers who have credible tastes in music at least :>

What sucks - being that 95% of my music listening is in the car, and therefore on a mobile device, it's a fair amount of money per money given I'm already paying for iTunes Match.

Streaming performance has been fine so far though on 2degrees. It's incredibly rare that I'm offline anyway and there's always at least *some* music on my devices anyway in that eventuality.

The killer app over iTunes Match is the whole subscription model thing - it's allowed me to check out a few albums I've been keen on listening to, but the iTunes model doesn't allow me to try before I buy. Match however works on a "here's all *your* music, on all your devices" model, and tries to make it as transparent as possible. If the song you want isn't on your device, it starts streaming it. (And retains it afterwards too)


Available offline sync to device is *painfully* slow though. Edit: But then, so is uploading unmatched music to Match for most people with shitty DSL upload speed, so there's that too.

Wireless syncing on iPhones make loading music as fast and simple as making something available offline on Spotify and it most likely won't be as terrible quality as Spotify's library

0nce you start paying you get 320 kbps files - so out with your quality thang

the source files are wav's so there is nothing no argument nada to accuse spotify of with regards to sound

I see the likes of Paul Mcartney is slowly remastering all his music for services like spotify - a clever thing to do - ie master for the environment

my biggest gibble is similar to others, I doubt I would use the offline functionality to make it worth the cost of going premium and with 40k songs in my itunes do i really need a whole buch more - please note thi argument doesn't apply to vinyl

as for albums - I dig how I can add an album to my playlists or create a new one for that album and can listen to it as intended - spotify gets 'fans' not just the casual song meisters

http://www.spotify.com/nz/help/faq/tech/codec-quality/
"Note: not all tracks are currently available in high bitrate."

that doesn't suggest their files are terrible quality, just some of them - this is not a high end service, you need vinyl or wav and serious stereos for that - ie what 99.9% of the population don't have or care about

you're just a hater cause you got a phone with plenty of storage....

and I like it as its better than youtube as my default music player/discovery site

Only heard/saw this when I was London a few weeks back... can't get it in Italy yet

What is annoying is when songs aren't available for seemingly no reason. Smack in the middle of the album and BUH there's a tune missing.

got an example Kris? Curious as I is

compilations I can understand but proper albums... unless its new and the label wants to capitalise on sales before making the single avail to stream

What's this "albums as intended" bullshit anyway? iTunes store sells full albums, iTunes the player supports full albums happily.


Also, when buying, there's plenty of examples of "Album Exclusive" tracks where you only get certain tracks if you buy the complete album. Even Antiform did that:
http://itunes.apple.com/nz/album/city-in-exile/id315756071

Also, if you've purchased a tracks/tracks from an album already, they still offer you full album pricing if you decide you wanna upgrade for the cost of full album price minus what you've already paid for single tracks.

I'm not even touching on the iTunes LP concept either.


Maybe, just maybe, people aren't buying albums these days because the vast majority of pop music is based heavily around singles instead making for shitty albums full of all the same tunes you already bought. The singles are getting released long before the album and people are wanting to buy them then and there. Then, the record company wants to shake you down to buy them all again in album form - don't be fucking stupid, I ALREADY OWN THE SAME FILES. Arguably, iTunes is better positioned to deal with that than anyone else - with the album upgrade I mentioned above. "Hey, you already own 3 singles off this album - for only $X you can upgrade to the full album!"

Look at the way the industry is working before blaming iTunes or listeners first.

I haven't got one to hand no, as I haven't struck it since I started using it again after the NZ launch, but it's usually on older stuff not new stuff, and its a fairly common complaint from long term overseas users.

could be a licensing issue - or a naughty sample... or I dunno, sounds silly and I'll be adding to the hate when I come across it

Albums as intended is a rare concept where an artist makes a album specifically to be heard as its recorded and sequenced on the album - purely an artistic concept and not one that the listener (buyer) will always agree with, especially in todays world

the thing about releasing music is the moment its released the music is used as the listener chooses not the artist - whatever the artists desire - as it should be

exclusive tracks (digital or physical) are purely sales tools, sometimes they add to the package often not imo

me I love albums... but the vast majority of my listening and playing is song based

Right, I know *what* the idea is, I just fail to see how you can blame an particular format or vendor for it's downfall past what I've already covered.

oh, am with ya now - only an idiot blames the format for its downfall assuming the album is dead which I would argue strongly that it is not - like vinyl, albums only appeal to a very very small market, contrary to what some might have you believe

traditionally only 12% of any population brought music.... and of that % the vast majority of people were buying one CD/LP/album/single (refer to xmas) - I'd suggest that figure has grown exponentially since the advent of digital song based sales and will continue to grow - this should be celebrated... its a good thing, a very good thing

but hey lets not facts and logic get in the way of old people bemoaning a ever changing consumer friendlier world

one doesn't have to own music... as the streaming services well know

blah blah blah

Been using it a couple of months.

It's awesome. So good for researching new and old music and re-discovering stuff you no longer own... I used to use Youtube for this purpose but now I can scan through entire albums/back catalogues in high (enough) quality to find what i'm after.

Trust me though, the ads are a KILLER... so fucken annoying/irrelevant. You'll all be wanting to pay premium prices to get rid of them soon enough. ..

I get the ads in dutch... not sure if it's more or less annoying

yeah this bit is choice

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

:rock: Brilliant start to finish concept album

Spotify sounds weird, will give it a crack, but ads will annoy the living shit out of me (it's why I don't listen to radio! That and the terrible music selection on radio! haha)

But I like how it suggests music for you, makes a playlist of stuff you might like based off what you're listening too...seems a good way to (without effort) discover new music...and streaming old/random stuff is nice.

But honestly, 75% of what I listen to are DJ mixes really, so not sure what use Spotify will be really.

you'll prob get lost in some of the dance trax on spotify Insanity - there's plenty there, plus some nice playlists put together by DJs and them that know dance music inside out

I've yet to be driven mad by the ads - painful by accent (aussie) more than anything else, so far

saying that we've just banned spotify in the office for the next week as we near our monthly data cap... which brings me to the WTF is 60 gig being the biggest package telecom offer to business... FFS no wonder this country is fucking backward

apologies to them over the ditch - feel free to get your gloat on

Dump Telecom and select one of the many other providers that offer far bigger caps than Telecom do.

*On a business plan with 325gb cap*

But it's worth pointing out that the desktop Spotify client uses P2P in the background.

Sepultura!!!!

P2p - so not that much data? Or at least localised where possible (read not that clever here)... which won't mean dick to my selections

new ISP... have formed a committee...

Sweet, will give it a crack then...cheers

No, so as in potentially MORE data used than just what you're streaming.

First random good looking like from Google:
http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats-and-how-spotify-works/

ahh cheers Kris - very interesting... I be learning stuff *shakes fist*

Turns out D Jr released an album in 2009 called Farm and it's fucking excellent.

The National, a band whose singles never really appealed but having listened to some full albums, wow! They're awesome.

Dinosaur Junior? Didn't know that, used to love them...will check!

The National are aight, eh?

This kind of thing is what I've found it really useful for, checking out new shit I'm not sure I'll be into.

In all likelyhood once my Ultimate trial ends though, I'll drop back to just rolling iTunes Match instead, it's a bit more than I'm willing to spend monthly for the amount of use I get out of it.

And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, finally got around to listening to these guys last night. Very impressive self indulgent alt/proggish rock.

If only there was some way you could push these recommendations to your friends via Spotify.

Good thing we have this thread until they sort that.

I thought it was fully designed for that.

not using it much tho....but thats just me at this point...

That's exactly what I was getting at peat

My favourite band ever Agree, one song will not do them justice whatsoever.

I quite like the way that a playlist can be provided from a website.

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=1&title=best_songs_under_two_minutes&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

http://open.spotify.com/user/nme.com/playlist/61SIvEl7N46bd26Xil3VVV

what sort of twat has a best of songs under a minute playlist without one Residents song, fuck you NME... you hacks

saying that sharing is the strength and failing of all of these services - ie strength as thats how people can discover and in theory then go on to purchase music... failing because most sites could do it better and easier for the user - ie dumb proof the process

blah blah blah

I was wondering why Black Keys tracks are few and far between on Spotify...

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/black-keys-patrick-carney-clarifies-bands-stand-on-spotify-20120327

retarded rationale

stupid band

there I said it

Does that relentless hating ever get you down Bob D?

hells no it keeps me young and alive

am a little over artists & others attacks on spotify (et al)... it is similar to the musicians unions trying to stop pre-recorded music being played on radio... and music companies vs cassettes, cdrs and a mulitude of other formats and distribution methods - insert several days of ranting, arm waiving and the like

embrace the present, enable fans to enjoy and share your music... find ways to make money, pretty simple really

tbf El Camino is thye only full album I've bought in ages.

So is there really no way to use Spotify w/out a FB account?

nope - stupid really...

Rdio on the other hand you can - same type of service, fees and inherent frustrations

feel like shaking ya fist at something gummi - come join me

Should have got in earlier and signed up back when they allowed standalone Spotify accounts, but NOOOO you people had to wait until it got here officially and was ruined by FB!

Edit: Still not using it tho.

Cheers

(gimme a couple years and I'll be cloud yellin' with the best of 'em)

I dispute the claim facebook has ruined it - given most people have a facebook account.. its a stupid bit of integration I agree... but hardly the end o times - I'm quite the fanboy of the service... and I don't like anything

I can teach you the fine art of shaking your fist GB - its easy if you aren't holding anything but once you add fags a pint and a small child and it takes some mastering

Not really sure how FB ruined it, get fucken real. Its a usersname/password ... not the end of the world.

I use it, signed up for the full $12p/m service and its buzzzzing!!

Yes, I was totally not being facetious at all by referring to FB "ruining" anything.

For fucks sake.

I just wish people would learn Settings > Show On Facebook > No

I love that I can annoy people on facebook with my musical choices...

if you're on that site regularly you deserve all the crap it delivers in spades

Let people manage their own notifications on their end. If they don't want to see it, they can block it.

I know that sounds contrary to my bitching at ennajel about fucking hambeast reposts, but I didn't have a choice there, I couldn't just block hambeast updates, only block enna totally.

Edit: I hate the emails saying "Bob D has added $OBSCURE_FOLK_TRACK to the playlist $BOBS_HOOTENANNY" but that's on me for being too lazy to fire up Spotify and change preferences

It's not notifications is newsfeed spam which as far as I can tell you can't stop if you actually want to use Spotify, much like your hambeast bitching.

Pretty sure I've stopped it.

they aren't obscure

its the fucking mainstream

in my home at elast

:bob dancing emoticon:

and just for you jono I added a song you might just know

fml