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Spotify - Free music for the molasses.
232430
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Spotify
So then, what is Spotify you ask? (Taken from FAQ and Wiki)
"Spotify offers you legal and free access to a huge library of music. All you need to do is create an account and download our streaming music player."
The catch, you say? Why, there is no catch, it's all ad-supported (You can also pay for a premium account to remove ads).
Some stand out features:
A "radio", you choose 1 or more decades and 1 or more genres, you are then played any track that fits these terms. (An excellent way to find new music.)
Artist pages: Each artist has a page with biography, album listing and their own "Radio" (Related music)
Each track/album/artist is rated by popularity so you can check out what's hot by region.
And of course, loads of FREE music.
At the moment it's still in beta, invite only and has limited availability.
Premium is available in: Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Spain and the UK.
Free is available in: UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and France.
You can register to receive an invite (took about 5 days to get mine).
And of course, here it comes.... Who want's an invite!? I have 3 available, but I think I will receive more as time goes on (I didn't have any yesterday). Post here (so people can see if any are left) and send me a PM with your email address. Plz make sure to check whether it's actually available in your country first.
Edit: Just heard an advert, I was listening to the "radio" and an audio advert for Vodafone started playing (After the track I was listening to had finished, before a new one started playing.) There was also a picture for the ad that appeared in the area where the tracks album cover would go. The ad was no longer than 20/30 seconds and is the 1st one I've heard, although I have only had about 20-30mins of playtime.
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Some questions:
-What kind of music is in this "huge library"? Does it have recent music? Is classical music on there? How about Alpha Blondie?
-How do those ads work? Is spyware a problem?
-Why should I pick this over Deezer? Only difference appears to be that Deezer is not very legal.
-Why should I pick this over Last.fm? Only difference appears to be that I can look up particular songs.
Alternative, Blues, Country, Disco, Funk, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Hip-Hop, House, Jazz, New Wave, R&B, Pop, Punk, Reggae, Rock, Soul, Techno.
(Doing a search for "classical" shows that there are more genres of music available then those listed above.)
I found Alpha Blondy, but no Alpha Blondie, with 130 tracks available.
Doing a search for classical brings up (4000 hits) - London philharmonic, Mozart, Sydney Orchestra, Bach etc.
Rock - 27000 hits, Pop - 9000. I'll provide more info on what's available/how much is available of certain artists if people want.
As far as recent music goes, It has Coldplay's Viva La Vida.
Deezer and last.fm I haven't used so I can't answer I'm afraid.
Edit: Just found this in the FAQ -
Unfortunately some artists have opted not to be added to Spotify at this time, some frequently requested artists that are not in Spotify include Metallica, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, ACDC and Led Zeppelin, etc.
Also, 2 invites left now.
Could you send me one of those invites, 232430? I PM'd you my e-mail address.
If nothing else, this seems pretty excellent for finding new bands.
*e: could I pass this invite to someone else somehow?
Then again, it has a few bits that Deezer doesn't. So I do use it.
Was there a definitive list of availability in the forum?
I can resend or send to a different address invites that have been unused. So, there are still 2 left!
I'm glad the invite didn't evaporate.
I want to listen to some Unter Null or Front Line Assembly. The only two genres they could possibly be under are "new wave" and "techno".
Techno? Hello? I can't think of anything done after 1995 that I'd call techno.
Edit: Just noticed it supports scrobbling, if this means anything to last.fm users. Blog post with more info here.
That's good news. Now, the question is why do I hear this from you and not from Spotify?
Also, the "techno" tag is now playing rock from 1971.
I get Swedish ads. On account of being a Swede and all.
Guess they haven't made ad deals elsewhere yet what with it still being in beta.
Good point. Now I feel a tad stupid.
Failing that, I have invites if anyone wants one
I've also got a load more (10) invites as well.
A search for music from the years "1920-2009" returns 2,186,066 tracks, I think it's safe to assume that every song has been tagged with a year and that this is currently every song available.
If each of these tracks is 4MB, this is (2,186,066x4) 8,744,264MBs of music, which is (8,744,264/1,024) 8,500GBs or 8TBs.
If you think 4MBs is a bit of an overestimate of average file size, at 3MBs this works out at 6,558,198MBs or 6,400GBs or 6TBs.
I thought the point of this was that I wouldn't have to deal with the Bullshit "we'll play music that you havn't heard similar to what you like" format. I want something where I can say "I want to listen to this band" and it plays THAT BAND. Fuck you music industry if you can't give me that.
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
Me neither.
I've never used Pandora (no UK coverage), so this service looks pretty amazing to me. You can just search for an album and then play the whole thing.
Actually, you can also just search for a band/album, and select the album you want to play. The radio thing is an extra.
Oh, and 232430, how long did it take for you to start getting invites? I'm just wondering, as there may be one or two people I know who might be interested in this.
2) That is exactly what this (And Deezer) does.
I received my invitation at 21:00 on a Thursday. I then received 3 invitations Friday morning and 10 more in the evening. I've used 7 and haven't received anymore. A friend requested an invitation the same day as me, but I don't think hes even got that yet.
Yeah, the audio ads could get annoying... I can't imagine them appearing anymore frequently than the average, standard radio station though. (Not that they're directly comparable)
Is there any good reason whatsoever, or did they just go "Okay, let's make our music available on an online music platform and see it fail horribly so we can continue to bemoan piracy... wait, what? It's getting popular? Shit, that wasn't our plan! Quick, kill it!"
Music companies...
Anyway, I apologize for necroposting but would like to know if anyone around here has a spare invite. Apparently they are pretty rare and even though I asked for one on the official website about a year ago I still haven't received one.
Interestingly, in the time since this thread was made, Spotify has become the defacto source of music streaming in the UK and Spain (not quite so much in France from what I can tell). Like, if you go into a bar you'll likely notice they have a computer somewhere which is playing music from spotify (although with a premium account to avoid the ads).
The music library is now quite hefty too, but with some odd omissions. That said, we get weekly news articles in the press about how this just can't work as a business model. So essentially, it's the bars and cafés which are supporting this by paying as the advertising route isn't working for them (most likely because their pool of ads is tiny and targeted, so you'll only hear about a half dozen different adverts each week).
And yes, the radio on Spotify is awful. Last.fm is good for random music (assuming you're in a country where you don't have to pay for subscription, like the UK) and Spotify is good for listening to specific albums.
I'll probably give it a shot. Does it have pandora-style preference sorting?
edit: I failed to realize how old this thread was
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I bounce between this and last.fm and am pretty happy with lots of music for no money.
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