Spotify is a service that has lots of music for you to listen. You install a client software on your computer and that’s it, (almost) the whole world is yours!
I’ve been hearing about Spotify for a while now. Finally yesterday I got myself to the point to find an invitation – yes, you need to have an invitation to be able to register. Since it’s now so popular and everything I decided to write a little review.
Spotify play view
After a little googling I found me an invitation at http://spotify.fleo.se/. After this you register yourself on the spotify web site, install the client program and off you go. It’s interesting that you can install the client on Linux, too, with WINE. First install wine (it’s the package wine in your package manager), download the Windows client installer from spotify site and double click it so that it starts with wine and that’s it. Installs easily, works nice. It’s very nice to see that Linux is supported this way – a lot better than no support at all! I don’t know if they really have been thinking of this or did they write the client to Windows and then gave it a try on Wine and were surprised to see that it runs there too. Who knows. Maybe some day we’ll have a native Linux version (that is likely to have only half of the features that Win version has, compare to Skype: The Linux version got video support maybe a year after Windows version got it)
When you start the Spotify client there are still some things that help you remember that you’re not running a native Linux application. There’s something weird when typing keywords in the search field. Typing space by hitting spacebar between keywords sometimes pauses the player and pressing it again starts to play again. I don’t know if this is Spotify or Wine but I guess it’s unwanted action. Native vs. Windows on Wine can also be seen in the menus. Compare the fonts and the menu window in the screenshot below.
Native Linux Firefox vs. Spotify on Wine
I believe that the released Spotify client is only a alpha/beta version because it really is missing the community aspect that about all modern services need at some level to survive – I’m sure you want to share easily with your friends what you’re listening just as much as you want to connect to your friends. Pressing a button could recommend the song you’re listening to to all your friends, if Spotify only supported it. Now you can copy URL:s of the songs and send to a friend but that has to be done manually and it’s a pain.
I’m surprised that Spotify supports Last.fm: it’s able to scrobble = submit your listened track information to last.fm to create charts there, see my top artists here. It’s interesting since I see Spotify and Last.fm as competitors, not as services that serve each other but what do I know..
You can also listen to radio stations that either play music close to an artist (Similar to Delirious, for example) or select the music styles and decades you want your radio station to include, for example rock, jazz and punk from 70′s. I was disappointed not being able to see classical or religious/ christian music styles available.
Spotify is commercially financed and therefore every now and then it playes an audio commercial between tracks. So far I’ve heard Swedish, English and Finnish commercials, sometimes up to two on the row. I don’t like it at all, it disturbs my listening experience. You can also pay 10e/month to be able to listen your music without commercials.
Update: I was pointed that there are already some ‘extensions’ for Spotify, for example to find the latest additions in your top last.fm 50 lists and a firefox plugin to search for spotify music, see Spotify blog. There’s also an open source client available: despotify. You just can’t stop’em :)
Music
To be able to estimate the usability of Spotify for me, I did a little check of my top 40 last.fm artists, how many of those can be found in Spotify. As the results below show, I can listen to less than half of my top40 artists with Spotify. Some of the artists are weird and unknown but hey, it’s me and the music I listen. This means that moving to Spotify would steer me to listen to more mainstream music instead of my own cd collection (that’s where the music comes from, ripped on my computer and listened with the excellent Amarok that submits the tracks to last.fm)
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last.fm my overall top 40 artists
Aki Sirkesalo Yes
Eric Clapton Yes
Turvakytkin No
Tommi Kalenius No
Ruudolf Yes
Delirious Yes
Sting Yes
Jurin Pumppu No
Zen Cafe Yes
Emma Salokoski No, only 3 tracks
Norah Jones Yes
Savonlinnan Taidelukio No
Danilo Montero No, only 1 track
Itse Valtiaat No
Bass’n Helen No
Jaakko Löytty No, only 1 track
Patent Ochsner Yes
Eppu Normaali Yes
Bethany Dillon Yes
African Gospel Celebration No
Charlie Parker Yes
Jesus Adrian Romero No, 3 songs only
Jaci Velasquez Yes
Juli No
Jukka Leppilampi No, 1 track only
Katalena No
Erykah Badu Yes
The Rolling Stones Yes
Petar Valkov No
J. Karjalainen Yes
Plüsch No
Ariel & Supremos No
Placebo Yes
Dino Merlin No, 1 song only
Malpaís No
Jamie Cullum Yes
Takamus No
Claude Bolling Yes
Pekka Laukkarinen No
Shyrete Behluli No
18/40 found
Then I made some random checks from artists I was able to came up with. I was surprised not being able to find music from Glenn Kaiser, Darrell Mansfield, Editus, Bass’n Helen, Lenni-Kalle Taipale, Jamie Walters, Pro Fide nor The Rain there but on the other hand I was very happy to find lots of Theodosii Spassov there.
Of course it matters how big the record company is: the smallest, unknown artists will never be there but hey, that’s the music I listen to and then again you can find Ruudolf there, recording with the small Finnish MONSP Records.
last.fm
Since I think that Last.fm and Spotify do more or less the same, I want to compare these two free music services.The biggest difference is that with Last.fm you can’t pick individual songs to listen but more like a radio stations that play what you want.
Last.fm is more concentrated on their website that has all your charts, friends, radio stations for each artist, tons of artist information, groups, forums, RSS feeds, everything a modern web2.0 needs. It really is a community than a music player, what Spotify is. You also can listen to last.fm on their website, without the local client.
The last.fm desktop player is Open Source so there are native versions for each Windows, Linux and MacOS and loads of extensions available too, like the one abobe. Someone has also written a command line client shell.fm which means that you can use last.fm on any Linux box that can play audio, for example on my Openmoko Freerunner Linux phone (as soon as someone just ports it there). Okay, there’s a version for Iphone, too, if you happen to support Apple. The ‘official’ desktop clients has love/ban buttons to be able to say that you like this track and are happy to hear it again in the future or make sure it’s the last time you hear it as well as many other features to share and tag the music and start various radio stations like the classical and christian mentioned that are missing from Spotify.
I also like to read some details about the band and last.fm makes it easy by always showing it of the band currently playing. Also Spotify shows something but it’s a lot more difficult to find, you have to go a separate view for it.
If you pay a monthly 2.5€ fee, you can create custom playlists, get access to beta features, your loved tracks becomes a radio station, you don’t see ads any more and get a ‘red carpet access’ to servers, this means that you are preferred in case of high server load. They really don’t try to make you do it, I actually had to spend some minutes trying to find the page that has all the information about the subscription. I’d definitely try this before paying the 10e monthly for ad-less premium Spotify.
Last.fm shows a ‘play’ button next to 25 out of 40 artists listed above – Actually better than Spotify!
Native Last.fm Linux client playing Plüsch - can't find it in Spotify
Summary
I guess this means that if you have a specialized taste you might want to keep listening to your CD collection but every now and then maybe check something from Spotify, maybe also to find something new. If you usually listen local radio stations that have about 40 songs in their playlist then Spotify is a good option to experience new music. It’ll be interesting to see what actually happens, if I’ll stick with my CD collection and Last.fm or will Spotify be my choice. At the moment I feel like listening to music of artist I like and around him without commercials instead of exact tracks I want but with commercials. What’s your choice?
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Hey, i use last.fm too. Maybe can i have an invitation for Spotify?.
Another thing, the font thingy is due wine by defaults renders them by 96 dpi, just increase the dpis to 120 or use 12 pt for the overall size of the fonts. Also you can install the windows fonts to your linux. I did that, and looks very good.
Cheers
Could I get an invitation?
You know, there is one thing about Spotify I don’t understand.
Their business-model, as far as I’ve understood it, means they get paid indirectly if the user chooses to endure ads, or directly if the user thinks it is worthwhile to pay to get rid of the ads. So far, so good.
However, they don’t earn money by means of the client. It’s free to download. So…why not release the specs of how to integrate with their service instead or even work together with people writing audio-player software? As far as I can see, that would be a win-win situation. They don’t have to develop the client, and they could potentially get more revenue.
For example, assume they work together with the developers of winamp and amarok (just two examples, others would work as well). Wouldn’t that work to their benefit? Most people I know that uses their computer to play music don’t want to change player just because of _where_ the music is located. Personally, I would be far more inclined to use their service if I could use amarok (at home) or winamp (at work) instead of their own client.
Hi,
You might want to have a look at Despotify – the open source Spotify client:
http://despotify.se/
If you’re interested in helping Spotify to grow their library, read this: http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/02/27/spotify-missing-your-favorite-artists-you-can-help/
@Tate: I’d like to invite you but AFAIK I don’t have any invites – check the site I linked above.
I tried the dpi trick and OK, it made the menu look ok but destroyed all the other texts of Spotify. I’m now installing msttfcorefonts to see if it helps.
@Paul: Sorry, don’t have any.
@Jonas: I agree, it’d be nice to get Spotify ‘open up’ to have it integrated in existing players people use, like last.fm is available in amarok etc. But I’m not sure the developers are interested in including commercial partners in the default configuration but of course Spotify could pay someone to write an amarok plugin or somethin. Don’t know, we’ll see where it goes. As @jmc pointed out, there’s already despotify available – one could guess that other clients will rise soon.
@daoo: Thanks for the link!
Hello,
Wrote a long comment (on why I like Spotify). Submitted it but I forgot to fill in my name and email (it’s placed on the right, didn’t see it). So I got an error, and when I hit Back my message was gone, thanks to this HTTP header:
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Way to loose twenty minutes. :(
@Florent: I suppose my ‘objections not approved’ -filter works :) No, seriously, auch.. I’ll try to search if anyone else has had the same with wordpress and if there’s a solution for this.. Thanks for reporting.
Okay, I have to admit it, Spotify is great to find & listen to the music you’ve always liked but never wanted to pay to buy the CD..
Actually we had this problem on forum.alsacreations.com when switching servers. It’s a server config issue, probably not a WordPress issue.
The problem is with the “no-store” keyword in the value for the Cache-Control HTTP header (you can get headers information using the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox, for instance). It shouldn’t be that hard to fix. You will need to activate mod_header (I think) if it’s not on, then in a .htaccess file at the root of your blog folder you could have:
Header set Cache-Control “no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0″
(Well, that’s if you only want to remove the no-store value. On my own blog and sites I either don’t use Cache-Control or use “Cache-Control: max-age=some_value”, with a value of 600 — i.e. 10 minutes — for HTML pages, ten days for CSS or JS, and one month for images.)
I may comment again on the topic (Spotify) when I have some free time. :)
OK, no prob.
Thanks anyways :)
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Thanks to Spotify, it’s now easier than ever to share music. You’re free to share everything you listen to on Spotify with your friends – tracks, playlists, the lot.