As many of us music lovers may have realized by now, Spotify has entered the US. Spotify is a DRM-based music streaming service. Spotify, instantly gives me a flashback to my days of Napster. It has similar qualities, although the look is different, and they are also taking a different approach. Spotify requires no downloading, and your favorite song is just a click away. Instantly, I notice some pro’s and cons of using Spotify.
After submitting my email, a few days later I got invite. I am glad that I waited, since I almost immediately purchased the Pro version. I usually like to try out the products I am using before I make any purchase, especially when it comes to music applications. Spotify was an easy download, doesn’t seem to affect my computer too much, and has a nice looking icon that sits in my dock. The design looks like a mixture between old school Napster, and iTunes. Overall, I think it looks good. It is very simple to navigate, and I pretty much picked up on the all features within a few minutes. The best part about Spotify is the immense library they have to offer. You can search virtually any song you can think of, and start  playing instantly. Of course this music is streaming, so you do not worry about download times and taking up space on your computer with large libraries of music. Spotify will actually load all of your music stored in local files as an extenuation of your music listening experience. Very cool! Spotify lets you have your own library and if you are feeling sick of your own music, with the click of a button you can have virtually any song that you like. This makes Spotify a very dynamic music program.
As for the cons, I do not have that many thus far. The free version obviously has advertisements, but they are not overly obnoxious, and a lot of them have to do with music. Other than that I only have one concern. As a Pandora listener, I am so used to having songs pop up due to my initial station, that using Spotify was a little awkward for me at first. This is one drawback for me. I do not really have, or want to to take the time to make extensive playlists. One idea I thought of was sharing a similar idea of pandora, and maybe if you like a song that comes up, you can simply click an “add to playlist.” If they can implement something along the lines of Pandora’s predetermined music stations, I think they could really grab a firm hold on on this market. It really is the only thing they are missing.
As for pricing it is pretty straight forward. I might eventually upgrade to the Premium version. It runs $9.99 a month, but hey thats less than the price of an album a month, for all the music you can possibly ask for. You can also get the “Unlimited version” but this will not include an offline mode, enhanced sound quality, and exclusive content. This version will run you $4.99. If you still don’t think you will want to pay, just go to Spotify.com and submit your email address. You will receive an invite in a few days.
Spotify has some really great features. You can get a lot of music for free, and even more outstanding features for a little bit more. For only 10 bucks a month you can be listening to any song, anywhere, any time. Not bad, huh? Spotify is definitely the premier music sharing program on the web. It has some great features, and in my opinion could use a little bit more. I think a Pandora-like station system would be great! Other than that, I highly recommend Spotify for all music lovers.
This article was written by Ben Anderson. Ben is a huge music fan. During the day he help run and maintain www.inetzeal.com, providing white label link building services.
Originally posted on September 26, 2011 @ 6:34 am