Spotify

[polarbears]

Hi all

I've recently been considering purchasing Spotify Premium/Unlimited and just wondered if anyone would actually recommend it? I ran out of minutes to use last month. Do you feel like it is worth the money?

Thanks

 

[bemaniac]

Possibly, I'm deciding to keep or cancel this month because I can't get all the hard to find oldskool rave stuff I want whereas on itunes I can buy a decent compilation once a month for £8 and build up what I like the most slowly that way.

 

[Anonymous]

Definitely.

I have never looked back. In the old days I bought all the music I was vaguely interested in, and it amounted to 5-10 CDs a month.

Now it is rarely more than 2, usually none. So for £10 a month, I'm saving at least £30

You save the ones you like as a separate playlist, and you can now create folders too. So I have all my genres separated.

I run the whole thing through squeezeserver too, which gives me gapless playback.

I also use it on my android phone whilst in the car.

And 99% of the material is now 320 kbps by all accounts...the quality is excellent.

 

[MajorFubar]

Definitely.

It's like joining an old-fashioned record-library with 15-million songs and being allowed to rent-out any number of records, for any length of time, and for any number of times, for £5 or £10 a month. And you never have to worry about being blamed for scratching the record or finding that someone else has rented-out their only copy.

Also, just like an old fashioned record library, it's good for broadening your horizons: I spent a good part of my first month as a member listening to stuff I'd be 50/50 over buying, which was a worthwhile experience in itself.

And 99% of the material is now 320 kbps by all accounts...the quality is excellent.

So long as you subscribe to premium...just worth adding that for clarification, for the benefit of the uninitiated

 

[Anonymous]

Well indeed Mr Fubar.

It saved me a purchase today again... Noel Gallaghers latest. I loved the 1st couple of Oasis albums, and many of their later tracks, and always realised that Noel was the actually talented one...but for my money it's safe, boring and predictable...Many will like it, but it aint for me...

£9 saved today.

 

[John Duncan]

Totally. It's now basically my only source of music, unless a CD comes out that I or Mrs JD wants NOW that isn't on there. Hence owning the Adele album :-D

It has also helped me find stuff I wouldn't normally buy: I saw an advert in the back of Word a couple of months back for an album by some pair called the Webb Sisters which piqued my curiosity but in the past I'd have never got round to buying it. Found it on Spotify yesterday and is straight onto my playlist and am loving it.

I'd go without beer before going without it*

*possibly

 

[Anonymous]

I'd go without beer before going without it

great quote I would consider it also. I have found Spotify nothing short of brilliant.

I still buy albums that I really enjoy on Spotify though, perhaps it is a hard habit for me to shake. I also believe that if it is in my music library somewhere it is easier for me to rediscover it someday.

 

[polarbears]

Cheers everyone!

Think I'll go for it. Any real use in me going for Unlimited? I don't use Spotify on my phone so I was thinking probably not.

 

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't give up beer. Unless I was allowed to use WiMP (which I've been trialling...rather excellent quality, and far better interface, not as big catalogue).

*edit. That makes no sense.

ho hum.

 

[Anonymous]

Cheers everyone!

Think I'll go for it. Any real use in me going for Unlimited? I don't use Spotify on my phone so I was thinking probably not.

Only if you want the high bitrate.

To be honest there is very little difference. It depends on your own feeling and experience. Why not try it for one month and downgrade? Then you can decide for yourself if there is any need?

 

[Anonymous]

Unlimited is probably the one you want then.

It is premium that allows phone use, as well as 320kbps, and use on a lot of streaming devices.

 

[MajorFubar]

Good man.

It's very easily worth the money, though I don't think I could go as far as using it as my only source, as some people do. For a start there's still a lot of artists and albums missing. Some artisis/record labels seem to be holding back just their latest release (such as Adele, no '21' but '19' is on, or Coldplay, no 'Xylo Myloto' but 'Viva' is on) while some just simply aren't on at all (Beatles and Floyd being for me the two most prominent)

 

[gowiththeflow]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that if you don't already have a Spotify account, you can only subscribe now via a Facebook account?

If that puts you off, then it's worth pointing out that Spotify isn't the only service available. There are alternatives out there with similarly large catalogues.

Deezer have recently extended their coverage to the UK, with over 13 million tracks available. Their mobile service is available FREE on certain Orange mobile phone tariffs (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry) and like Spotify, Deezer support is built-in to Squeezebox, Sonos and other streaming devices.

Deezer Premium Plus delivers "up to 320 kbps" streams, just like Spotify. In otherwords, with both services not all tracks are available in 320 kbps. As recently as July this year, Spotify had less that 35% of its content available at the higher bit rate, although it's been reported that their classical section has recently been boosted to 95% plus. Hopefully this situation will continue to improve over the next few months. I've no idea how much of the Deezer content is at the higher rate?

Another service is We7, still lagging behind but growing with an 8 million plus song catalogue. In addition to the regular services, it's also available on Android and iPhone with Premium Plus. Again, identical pricing to Spotify, however streams are all at and limited to 192 kbps on all levels of service, but that's higher than Napster. Unfortunately, We7 is not yet supported directly on Squeezbox or Sonos.

I recently used up my 30 day free Napster subscription via my Sonos system. Although I found it to be generally OK, for my liking far too many tracks sounded very poor from the low bit rate being delivered. I don't think I'll be spending any money there!

.

 

[MajorFubar]

You'd think Apple would be in an ideal position to completely kill the competition dead by offering their own streaming service via iTunes.

(If you're only after songs less than 90 seconds in length, then I guess they already do ).

They probably know however that it would be a knife in the side of their current purchase-only service and wouldn't recoup that service's lost revenue unless they charged an extortionate monthly fee for unlimited streaming. Strange that Apple didn't see this trend coming and had already moulded their iTunes business model accordingly, well in advance. Instead they've been caught with their trousers down, offering a purchase-only service (at least for music) when what seems to be happening is a gradual drift to pre-paid streaming.

 

[professorhat]

Instead they've been caught with their trousers down, offering a purchase-only service (at least for music) when what seems to be happening is a gradual drift to pre-paid streaming.

Well, not yet I'd suggest. Though we talk a lot about Spotify (and other services) on this forum, I'm willing to bet there's still a very large number of people buying and downloading music to their iPods / iPhones through the iTunes store.

 

[MajorFubar]

Oh of course, but Apple probably know that if they started offering a streaming service, that would near enough kill-off the purchasing side. The only thing they could do, probably, is to wave the golden carrot of lossless ALACs to anyone buying an album and 'cripple' their downloads with lossy compression. Trouble is, there'd still be hoards of people more than happy with the lossy compression, even if it was only 128 bit MP3.

 

[Anonymous]

Apple will never do it, at least not in the foreseeable future. Spotify have been trading at a loss for the most part, and have been doing since day 1. Why would Apple try to get into a market such as this when they are doing well enough selling tracks?

 

[gowiththeflow]

IIRC Apple bought out US streaming provider Lala two years ago, fuelling speculation last summer and this year, that they would unveil their own streaming service . Again there was speculation that something would be announced with the launch of iCloud, but as yet nothing other than the iTunes match service.

Although many see streaming services becoming the status quo and replacing purchased music, it hasn't happened yet and is still a long way off. I think I'm correct in saying that Apple's iTunes Store dominates the market for music sales, being the world's no. 1 retailer of downloads, holding more than two thirds the market. Their sales figure are astounding, measured in billions of downloads and netting huge profits for Apple. Other large players like Amazon and Napster (owned by Best Buy) are a long way behind in the download market and everyone else are small fry in comparison.

Compare this with streaming services, where for the present, losses are the order of the day. As already pointed out, Spotify has made a loss since day one and its losses have ballooned as they've expanded. The US launch is a huge gamble they hope will pay off, as is the move to embed Spotify into Facebook.

As yet overall market penetration for streaming services is still comparitively low compared to the purchased music market and the claimed subscriber numbers hide the fact that the majority of users either use the Free services or are transitory. Actual paying punters are a bit thin on the ground.

I've no doubt that at some point "crital mass" will transform this situation and I'm sure Apple will be right there in some way to take advantage. In the meantime, I can't see them giving up a multi-million Dollar income stream just for the heck of it.

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