Spotify opening up for the US
polycounter lvl 14
I just saw that Spotify finally opened up for you guys in the US. I've been using it for almost three years and been a subscriber for two.
If you don't know what it is, check the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify It's a music service that lets you stream music, and for us in the EU (well some of us) there is a free alternative and two subscription based ones. 5 and 10 euros a month for unlimited music. The more expensive one will work on you phone to.
I'm not sure but if it's possible to use European invites for you guys i'll be more then happy to hand some out! For some reason they've put a limit to how many you can stack. So i only got five.
Drop a post here with you email and i'll send you an invite.
You other Spotifyers, join in!
If you don't know what it is, check the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify It's a music service that lets you stream music, and for us in the EU (well some of us) there is a free alternative and two subscription based ones. 5 and 10 euros a month for unlimited music. The more expensive one will work on you phone to.
I'm not sure but if it's possible to use European invites for you guys i'll be more then happy to hand some out! For some reason they've put a limit to how many you can stack. So i only got five.
Drop a post here with you email and i'll send you an invite.
You other Spotifyers, join in!
Replies
Few people in the office like Grooveshark but for me Spotify is better at giving you access to your tunes. I just make playlists out of albums and have them stored.
I have built up a ton of invites so if it is possible to transfer EU>US I will happily throw some down to Polycounters.
I haven't used any of my invites so I am happy to dish them out too
Anyway, it's a great service. A minor nitpick is that they don't always have an artist's full back catalogue. This is quite rare in my experience though.
I used to used it constantly when it was free. I was disappointed when they decided to limit things for free users. So I decided to look at what else was available before paying a subscription.
I use grooveshark now. Searching for songs and creating playlists isnt quite as nice as spotify. Groovesharks search only seems to look for artists so if I want movie soundtrack for example I have to google it first, which is good in a way as i'm learning who composed them. I also miss the related artists function in spotify.
I do think grooveshark has a much bigger library though. I found a ton of stuff that wasnt on spotify. Especially things like audio books and OST's.
Spotify is good but for my tastes Grooveshark has more of what I like. Also spotify (free) had adverts, grooveshark doesn't.
EDIT: Vofff, the last studio I worked at also blocked spotify.
I just checked and I have 0 invites
Although I kind of wish they'd just add podcast feeds into it as well.
Is Spotify is killing music? It takes over 4 million plays a month for an artist to earn the US minimum wage! It's a great service but we all bitch about piracy and used sales harming our industry and then use a service which is possibly ripping off musicians!
What does everyone reckon?
Also, why would it be forbidden at work, except for bandwith issues ? You can have it on smartphones too i guess.
Until game devs can earn money performing live, it's an apples to oranges comparison.
I was in a band when I was younger, the profits were so little on even self published stuff, we primarily made albums because it was cool to hold a record in your hand and go "we're a real band!" - yeah, I said record :P
I'd also like an invite if possible. =]
Which I guess means grooveshark might have more bands/music but not sure if everything is completely legal there.
Grooveshark rely on there users to upload music. It's actually kinda shady, but yeah. Sometimes Grooveshark have an album that Spotify don't have (All the Beatles albums, bob dylan, pendulum aso) But one thing that Spotify have over Grooveshark is the bitrate of the music. On spotify there is a constant 320 kbits quality no matter what, but since Grooveshark rely on there users it's not very common with that could bit quality.
I haven't used Grooveshark that much, about 20 hours maybe. And i never used there playlist feature so i can't say anything about that.
In the long run Spotify is better, more constant.
When i used Pandora a few years back when it was still working in Sweden it didn't have playlists and shit like that. You just wrote an artist and you got very similar artist playing. I really loved it, to bad they blocked it here
Send me you email and you'll get an invite
I've been waiting a long long time for this. And I'm waiting some more on the invite... I hope its as good as everyone says.
Spotify has very few ads, I'm not sure the distance between each, but I've only heard 3 so far since I've had it, which has been about 2 hours.
For those wondering how it compares to Pandora, or even Itunes : Just try it, the app is awesome, and in many ways waaaay superior to having files on your disc the oldschool way. I have a Premium account, aound 15E a month and it is awesome!
The interface is very responsive too - faster than Itunes actually!
the related artists thing is great for finding new artists.
about the royalty fee- I've got mixed feelings about it. On the one hand yeah the fee is tiny, but also I've listened to many acts who I wouldn't have bought the cd for, so that's money they never would have seen otherwise.
"Hi, i'm jonathan from spotify"...AARRG!
Honestly, I've been known to rage close spotify because of the ads.
Seriously? I haven't had it that bad..
Granted, I now have an Unlimited account for ease of use.
Thanks again, sltrOlsson. :]
It's a great service, if you can tolerate the adverts.
I'll stick with last.fm.
I'm also little disappointed with the way they're rolling it out.
First, to even get access you have to wait 24-72hrs for them to send you an invite or hope you know someone "on the inside" already. They make sure to tell you that you could get instant access by signing up for it! Oh gee really start paying for a service I haven't tried out yet and know very little about? Sounds great where do I sign...
Then the lack of a radio feature (stripped out of the US release)... come on even itunes has it.
I'll be back on GrooveShark until they get a radio feature.
Want to try it out? pay for one month and see if you like it, if you dont? Then cancel the subscription. one month subscription is equal to what, 3 beers at the pub? Thats fucking great deal for unlimited access to a buttload of music.
Do you demand unlimited access to magazines aswell before subscribing? what about gym memberships? games? movies? They are not a charity, but a business that needs to be profitable to survive
With a magazine you can flip through its pages in a book/grocery store before buying it or even signing up for it.
With a gym you can tour the facilities and know exactly the condition of the equipment.
With spotify I get a silly little "yea its that good" animation and quick flash at an interface followed by some rave reviews "spotify saved my cat from a burning tree!" "Spotify converted to Islam just to be my friend!"
Calm down, holy balls.. lol
I was fairly upset with the lack of Radio feature too, but 'least I looked that shit up.
http://textpattern.kurthanson.com/articles/1277/rain-719-pandora-like-radio-feature-missing-from-spotifys-us-launch
Because Spotify wasn't out in the US we got used to other music streaming services that have radio & no audio ads on the free version.
I'm quite sick of hearing this tbh.
If you guys want to pay for music that fine. Don't get all high and mighty when others don't want to pay for it. I've got enough bills to pay as it is. Theres a shit load of options for listening to music online, paid and unpaid subscription, streaming radio, youtube playlist, etc. I'm one of those that choses not to pay...Get over it.
*Rant over...just had to get that off my chest.
On the other hand, Spotify is actually paying the artists, its the Nr 1 income for artists in sweden now, it pays more than the record industry does. Im using Spotify, because for the very low cost that I pay I get more or less all music i want available, at all times, and it also pays well for the artists.
"If you guys want to pay for music that fine. Don't get all high and mighty when others don't want to pay for it. I've got enough bills to pay as it is. "
uuh...w t f? :P Im actually gonna get high and mighty and say that i prefer that people listen to music in a legal way.
"With spotify I get a silly little "yea its that good" animation and quick flash at an interface followed by some rave reviews "spotify saved my cat from a burning tree!" "Spotify converted to Islam just to be my friend!" Except the free trial, then. You dont get to read a magazine, keep it for a month, and THEN pay for it if you want to keep reading it :P And you dont get to work out at a gym for a month and then pay for the following months. :P
Well. I prefer that people listen to music legally as well. I didnt say I was listening to illegal music, I just stated that there are alternatives.
I do buy music as it happens. I still prefer to buy CD's but on a day to day basis at work and when I'm looking for new bands I use grooveshark, lastFM, youtube, etc. I also go to alot of gigs as well. So, I pay my way imo.
On the spotify paying artists thing...Are you sure its paying artists well? This evidence seem to say otherwise. An artist need to have a song played 4 million times to get minimum wage.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/
also this
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-fair-dos-a-million-spotify-streams-earned-gaga-167/
If anyone can supply more recent evidence about what artists make on spotify. I'd be interested to see how the changes in spotify has effected how much it pays out.
Artist hardly make any money off of record sales unless they're multi platinum selling or they get their song picked up for a major advertising campaign. I'd like to see these numbers that show that Spotify is paying anything that's an actual living wage to the artists - last I heard it's pennies. Putting out albums is more of a marketing plan to help you book shows.
Maybe Grooveshark is on some shaky grounds but it's closer to youtube with licensing deals than to Napster. It's still up despite armies of RIAAA lawyers who would happily sue an old granny for everything she has.
GrooveShark has passed quite a few legal challenges and while it does have the potential for people to upload music they don't own they still pay for the music they play and take down anything that anyone thinks is questionable. It's not piratebay or some other P2P network, at worst its as murky as youtube.
The radio feature in both of those apps actually drives me to buy more music because I'm introduced to new stuff instead of just playing things I know exist. That's why I would use a service like Spotify, to find new music and buy it. Without that functionality its useless.
I wasn't trying to "game the system" or wrangle free shit out of "the man". The only way they let you explore their app is to download it. Their site is lousy for details, one fuzzy screenshot and DERP video about how it has changed the world.
What I was asking of Spotify was to flip through the pages and see if there was anything I liked. You do the same thing with a book, a car, a bike even itunes lets you listen to a sample of the song before you buy it. Their response was wait 72hrs to see or... you could buy it now without comparing it to anything!
Bottom line They're trying to best something I already get for free (LEGALLY).
I'm not opposed to paying for spotify, I was all ready to check it out and dive in but I will pass as long as it doesn't have a radio feature. That's a deal breaker, it's why I can't love it like you guys do.
15 million tracks on demand at the price of a 1 CD a month - on my work PC, my home Mac, my occasional use laptop, my ipad, my iphone with no syching. Shared playlists, so this morning I got on the bus to work and listened to Joe Gideon because a guy I knew with his finger on the pulse had added him to a playlist.
I'd pay double if I knew it was going to artists.
http://open.spotify.com/user/rickstirling/playlist/5NPE7Sh4iWTgUhv2KAKnu5
http://open.spotify.com/user/rickstirling/playlist/3G66In8HIbYO2144DPNctr
http://open.spotify.com/user/rickstirling/playlist/2ysaZEZQS6h34TfxtRe3Gf
Spotify is a swedish company, what you are talking about has been talked about alot in swedish media earlier before real data surfaced. Recently some swedish music industry-whatever organisation went out and said that spotify was the biggest source of income for them, thus making it official that they are NOT paying pennies.
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=4536307
there you go, not the article i was thinking of, but still, its a dude from universal that says its their biggest source of income in sweden.
Anyway, spotify is NOT murky, it is not pandora. It is the only 100% legal alternative to streaming music (the exakt songs you want, not some radio feature like pandora) there is, right?
so what about that graph showing that Spotify pays the artist $0.00029 per play?
If you actually READ the artictles, and the articles that the article is based on, you do not find any hard data. All the spotify numbers are based on speculation and data from before it had any paying users. Who would you trust more when it comes to numbers, some guy on the internet who made a graph based on what they could make of the little (unofficial) data that they had, or a representative of universal music? :P
edit: oh, they do, I have like 37 invites, so poke me if you want one :P