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Spotify Becomes More Social

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Online music service Spotify has just rolled out several social features which the Spotify folks hope would bring their product into the full mainstream of the still growing social music niche. Spotify version 0.4.3 happens to be one of the largest feature upgrade for the online music service since its inception in 2008.

Kicking off its social features are editable Spotify music profile, ability to publish playlists, top artists and top tracks and a relevant move to connect with Facebook. In addition to its new social features, Spotify is also evolving itself to become a full music management platform by adding the “Library” folder which lets you combine your music library with other Spotify members.

Here’s a brief rundown of the new features of Spotify version 0.4.3:

  • published your Spotify profile on Facebook, blogs or personal website
  • share and publish playlists that you select as you create them
  • one-click subscription to playlists within Spotify or Facebook
  • display subscriber numbers and subscribers’ names in the submenu
  • star tracks or albums or group them into folders
  • drag and drop tracks for recommendation

What’s good about the new Spotify is the fact that you can now import any MP3 on your hard drive to your Spotify library via a link within Spotify pointing to its locaiton on your hard drive. You can also import iTunes playlists into Spotify.

Once you’ve setup your account, you can now start browsing, searching, playing and sharing your whole music library.

Overall, a pretty update that is worth checking out. Do you you Spotify? How do you like these new features?

Originally posted on April 27, 2010 @ 10:15 am

MP3Tunes Founder declares online music streaming death

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In a guest post for Techcrunch the founder of MP3.com and MP3Tunes, Michael Robertson, declares the actual online music streaming climate death.

The music selling and radio business is increasingly being commoditized. Profits are being squeezed to the point of unsustainability. This spells pending doom for imeem, Pandora, Myspace Music, Slacker and the newest entrant Spotify unless there is an industry-upheaving royalty rate change.

After analyzing both the massively hyped Spotify and the under Best Buy rebooted Napster he mentions that most similar sites, such as Pandora and MySpace Music, so far have failed in making a paid subscription model a viable solution. Music streaming services world wide are living a hard time and UK-based, but CBS owned Last.fm also switched to a compulsory subscription for users outside of the US, UK and Germany because so far they have failed to monetize ads sufficiently in other pats of world.

These may seem dire times, but unless streaming platforms can become more global, it seems that they will struggle to sell ANY real advertising at all and if, the question is will it be sufficient to pay royalties and the rather high wages developers benefit in startups.

Read the complete TC entry here.

Originally posted on August 8, 2009 @ 1:14 pm

Spotify to offer 320kb/s Ogg Vorbis support

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Much hyped music-streaming service Spotify has announced in the support forums that they will be rolling out CD quality streaming for premium users.

This is a new feature that we will be rolling out later this week. We will offer premium subscribers the option to stream in 320 kb/s using Ogg Vorbis q9 codec.

This certainly will continue to grow Spotify’s popularity and will probably also boost the uptake of premium subscriptions.

Originally posted on June 22, 2009 @ 1:14 pm

3 Ways to Find Good Music Online

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Even if you have an extensive music collection, there’s still nothing better than discovering a new band and instantly falling in love with them.

Anyone who says there isn’t any good music being made nowadays just isn’t looking. In fact, finding new music is super-easy with all the music sharing websites there are, and it’s made it easier for smaller bands to find a large audience.

There’s an entire world of music waiting for you to discover — a lot of it available for free — as long as you know where to look.

Here’s three great ways to discover new (and free) music.

1. Explore Bandcamp
Bandcamp is a great site that lets musicians share and sell their music and retain a lot of control over the pricing. By searching the site by genre, you can see which singles and albums are being downloaded, and most of it is high-quality and independently produced or on a small label.

One of the best features of Bandcamp is their pay what you want model, which allows musicians to choose to post their EPs, singles, and even full albums and let their listeners decide how much they will pay for them.

If you like what you hear, you can support a band as much as you want, both monetarily and by sharing their music on your social media profiles.

2. Try Spotify
If you aren’t already on Spotify, you can get a free account through Facebook. With the radio function, you can create a station based on a song, artist, or playlist and get related tracks that you’re likely to love.

You can also see what your friends are listening to and subscribe to their playlists to see what new discoveries they’re making.

3. Search your local music scene
Rather than blindly searching for specific bands, check out sites dedicated to the local music scene. Not only will you find shows that you can actually go to, but it will direct you to the best up-and-coming bands in your area. Or just check out sites for other cities known for having a great music scene.

There are hundreds of sites and blogs that are in the know about which bands have the potential to be big; then you can say you knew them when, and be the one to introduce your friends to great unknown bands.

Originally posted on September 16, 2013 @ 10:11 pm

Legal ways to get music online for your mobile phones

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Mobile phones have developed and evolved into such powerful machines that it is now packed full of features and capabilities that used to be handled by separate devices. For example, many mobile phone owners have ditched their dedicated digital audio players and now use their phones to listen to music instead.

There are many sources online to get music that you can then download to your mobile phone. We’re not talking about illegal means of getting files but rather the legal sources for getting music. Below are some of the best sources for getting legal music files online: [Read more…]

Originally posted on December 15, 2012 @ 11:45 pm