Spotify – Free Streaming Music Done Well
I’ve long been a fan of the celestial jukebox idea and with bandwidth growing, connection costs dropping and wireless/mobile coverage increasing it seems the only people holding this back are the record companies with their inability to all just sign on with one decent service.
There are now quite a few options for streaming music for free or at least “ad supported free” which I’m happy to put up with if the service is easy and quick to use and provides a decent selection of music to choose from. Spotify has the “easy and quick to use” part nailed. It really is a lovely interface and compared to the behemoth that is iTunes it runs like a dream, probably because it has taken an iTunes-like interface and simplified it down so that it does what it needs to do well and nothing else. You get a search box, a radio interface for creating custom radio channels, some playlist features and a little bit of artist info and thats about it, all wrapped up in a tidy looking grey GUI. The ad support so far is pretty inoffensive with ads cropping up only occasionally, whether this will change I can’t say.
Unfortunately the “decent selection of music” part is obviously still being worked on with some big names notable by their absence. Don’t let this put you off though, the selection is big it’s just lacking some names due to licensing issues no doubt and that’s a shame but I’ve still found plenty to listen to and I’ve seen quite a few big name releases so not everyone is dragging their heels.
Thoroughly recommend it for anyone who likes to stream music via their PC. I’ve only tested the Windows XP version but there is a dedicated OS X 10.4 or later client and it is possible to run it in Linux using Wine. There is also talk of a mobile client, which probably means iPhone but I’m hoping means other devices too even though I know iPhone makes most sense for them in terms of the success of this.
Currently the free ad supported version is only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain although I think it may be possible to sign up for the paid version elsewhere. I’ve a few (and I mean a few) invites if anyone would like to check it out but please don’t bother if you are not in the countries listed above, it won’t work though you may be able to sign up for a premium account directly.
