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Thoughts on Spotify
After holding out for an Internet-eternity, Rob and Tyler have convinced me to give Spotify a try.
I’d used a free account occasionally over the past few weeks, but I signed up for Spotify Premium ($10/mo) last night and decided to go 100% Spotify (no iTunes/Pandora) for at least the first month of my subscription.
Things I like
I made a “stuff to listen to” playlist of all of the bands people have recommended in the past few weeks (and I never got around to listening to) and it was super fast and easy. The catalog had everything I needed, and playlist creation was a snap. The friction that keeps me from trying new music is gone entirely.
Being able to send songs to people / having an inbox of songs from others. If network effects get going this (and collaborative playlists) could be what make me stay on Spotify despite the complaints below.
Things I loathe
- Syncing music to the iPhone (for offline/bandwidthless play) can only be done from a desktop/laptop - it can’t happen over the Internet. This seems like a silly place for Spotify to cut corners on bandwidth costs (once I sync a song to my phone, I won’t have to stream it), and is a giant pain in the ass - my laptop is asleep 90% of the time. EDIT: The wifi network restriction only applies to local sync - you can cache files using any old wifi connection.
- The iPhone app is rough around the edges. It’s not hooked into the iOS music API properly (i.e. artist name/title of song don’t show on the Lock screen). It’s forgotten where I am in a playlist on multiple occasions. It wants to gobble up a ton of space (6 GB for ~300 songs?) and doesn’t have decent space management options. EDIT: The lock screen issue seems to be a restriction of Apple’s API’s - not a Spotify problem (Pandora has the same issue).
- Licensing issues for tracks are handled poorly (error message that essentially suggests pirating the song and transferring it locally). This is especially embarrassing for the 30+ unavailable tracks on the “Spotify Top 100”.
- The catalog is a mess for something licensed from labels - slightly more organized that a BitTorrent tracker, but significantly less organized than iTunes/Amazon (tons of duplicate albums, “local” music confusing things, shoving multiple artists with the same name into the same artist page).
Things I’m not sure about
- I’ve decided to throw privacy to the wind and embrace the Facebook integration. The sharing has been mostly cool (a FB friend writing on my wall re: the song I was listening to), and a little scary (will I listen to Britney in “public” mode once and suffer massive loss of man points?).
- The social playlist sharing is even more promising, but not there yet. I have a gajillion Facebook friends, but only ~30 have musical taste I’d like to mooch off of. Spotify’s “shove your entire friend list on the app” approach results in a useless jumble for me. Additionally, there’s no easy way (that I could find) to find playlists created by tastemakers. I stumbled onto Bob Boylan’s profile (of NPR fame) - but only because I had a friend who subscribed to one of his playlists. I would kill for the ability to subscribe to a Pitchfork “Best New Music” playlist and have it sync automatically to my phone.
- UI is frustratingly un-mac-like (i.e. window close buttons on the right, instead of the left of the title bar), but it’s not terrible.
- Am I supporting the bands I like with my $10/mo to Spotify (vs. buying 1-2 albums for ~$10/month beforehand)?
Photo reblogged from Victor Wong with 1 note
Dilbert’s take on “acquihiring” and the problem with at will employment.
Source: victorwong
