elwoodicious, do you do much of what you'd consider "exploratory listening"? I mean, in the sense of exploring music you don't own/know. If so, it seems to me that the streaming services are the main game in town allowing that activity. Bandcamp, netlabels, and the like can cover a small bit of territory, but even for the most avid listeners, surely the amount of (worthwhile) music out there far surpasses one's ability or interest to own. If one wants to sample that unowned music set - that's where the value of streaming services lie, I think.
I'm signed up. The preview Linux client is crashing on me at startup. I just noticed its only for paid subscribers as they haven't figured how to run ads reliably on Linux so it wouldn't do me any good anyway.
Got the Windows client working in Wine. Key seems to be to ignore the config Spotify suggests & use the ALSA driver. I also left HW acceleration on. It's useful to know that when you close the Spotify window it doesn't shut down, it goes to the tray.
@kargatron, Nearly all my listening is exploratory so I'll likely keep using it to hear an album before I buy if I'm on the fence or really have a hankering for something not in my collection. It definitely is not a place to explore within, though, you need to come in pretty much with what you want to hear in mind (unless I am missing some awesome feature).
Ok, in that case, I guess I just don't understand why it doesn't excite you much. I view the option to conveniently stream almost anything on demand as kinda revolutionary for listeners (streaming's important there - illegal downloads were way too inconvenient to fulfill that function). I think it's fucking great! I would scarcely have believed it possible 10 years ago. And it doesn't even impact my buying habits much, it's really a separate functionality for me.
I think I found myself wrapped up in elevated expectations for the service. I was hoping for the potential of Six Degrees of Separation, something like Pandora but without the continual slide towards Top 40 and Classic Rock. I'll admit, though, I didn't read too much about the service and have only played with it enough to come to the conclusion that the ads are obnoxious.
Woohoo, I'm in! Thanks to the folks who sent me invitations!
elwoodicious, too funny. I also thought it was going to suggest stuff to me. I didn't realize I was going to HAVE TO WORK at seraching for my own songs and builing playlists!
WTH?
I'll spend a bit more time with it, but honestly turntable.fm is a lot more fun - at least, to me. I get the part about being able to listen to full tracks before decided to buy something. Since I rarely buy music any more, I don't really care about that.
I'm a longtime Rdio (and Lala, before it) subscriber and, like kargatron, an admitted streaming enthusiast. I didn't get an invite until yesterday, so I went ahead and paid for a month of Spotify last week so I could compare it with my 4.99/mo Rdio subscription. So far, it's a wash. I think Spotify has some content that Rdio doesn't (so does MOG), but the overall experience with Rdio is still my preference.
My main gripe with Spotify is that it's all search based... even the new releases. You can search for "tag:new" (there are no other tags supported), but the results are practically unusable. Also, Spotify supports label search, but again, only through search (ex. "label:merge"). Rdio recently enabled label browsing, and it works much better for my purposes. I'm also an album guy, and Spotify seems optimized for track listeners: for instance, that label search gives me a long list of popular tracks from that label, with a short, truncated list of albums up above it. I'm usually looking to see what albums recently came out on my favorite labels.
Spotify (and Rdio) will automatically match your local music collection with their library, which is a good feature: unlike Lala, Amazon and Google, you don't get the option to upload stuff that doesn't exist in their library. Unlike Rdio, Spotify CAN natively play those local tracks not in its library, which gives you a single application source for music listening. For that matter, you can even sync your iPod using Spotify, though I'm not about to try that anytime soon.
I should point out, I am not judging these services either on sound quality or the mobile capabilities - I'm no audiophile, and I don't have a smartphone.
Also, If anyone knows of a way to compare the catalog differences between the services, I'd be thrilled to know about it. I saw a blog post showing that Spotify has Soul Note/Black Saint, and I know Rdio doesn't.
Am I missing something in the spotify player? Why is it that sometimes when I navigate to an album and play the first track it continues on through the album, and sometimes it just plays that track and makes me click on the next one to keep going?
If anyone knows of a way to compare the catalog differences between the services, I'd be thrilled to know about it
To quote an old aphorism: "If not us, who?" Why don't we start one? It's one of those cases where the value increases linearly with work - a little comparison helps a little, a lot a lot. I think I'll start a thread.
Why is it that sometimes when I navigate to an album and play the first track it continues on through the album, and sometimes it just plays that track and makes me click on the next one to keep going?
I dunno, but it just happened to me. In all fairness I must say, that's the first time I was attempting to listen to an album. Something by Amos Lee that was served up in an ad - I added it as a playlist I named "Spotify Ad Suggestions" and started looking around at other stuff, so that album was no longer in the view window but was supposedly in the "Play Queue" (near top left, just under What's New). Not sure how it got there, as I didn't do it on purpose ; )
It played the 1st track and stopped. I don't' know, now it is going through all the tracks on the album without pause. There is a green speaker icon next to the "Spotify Ad Suggestions".
I am liking Spotify better since I found some pre-made playlists. LOL, when you guys say you don't like the ads, do you mean the onscreen ads? I thought you were talking about sound ads that interrupted the music like a radio station.
Anyway the onscreen ads dont't bother me, as they are mostly for playlists.
edit- Oh hell no, I just got my nice mellow album interruped by an obnoxious Tine Tempe sound ad. Boo!
I definitely dislike the track orientation of Spotify. I also dislike the mixing of their catalog results with your matched library (which was done automatically). At first glance it's hard to tell what's yours and theirs in a search result (yours are not clickable, but it looks confusing).
I am worried Spotify will do something to my files. A person on musicgourmets.com (another music-centric chat forum like this one) said it dumped a bunch of his tracks into an "Unknown Album" folder on his hard drive. WTF? Well, I do not haev itunes set to organize my library content. I can't see that it's changed anything. YET (she says, darkly). It better keep its paws off my tracks. - edit: I worriedly turned off Spotify's volume leveling option.
Yeah, I'm having a bit of trouble finding stuff, but I figure that's a given with any new software.
Spotify crashed in the background last night when I playing turntable.fm. Wait. Was I even playing anything? Dunno. Today when I fired it up, Spotify asked if I wanted to send a crash report. I like when I get to choose, or at least have the illusion of choosing.
What I found reading the forums is that the Linux client crashing is a problem in the release. I've been using the Windows client in Wine. Last night a couple tracks into an album it just stopped playing. Clicking the play button changes it to a pause button, but the time marker doesn't move and nothing comes out the speakers. Closing and restarting didn't help. Now today I started it up and it's working (no intervening reboots or system stuff).
update: Spotify in Wine seems to play for 5-8 minutes then stop working until it's closed down and reopened. I've seen a rec to replace one of the Wine DLLs with the Windows DLL. For the moment I've installed Spotify on my mini laptop (XP) and it seems to be working fine.
You know when those spotify audio advertisements are supremely annoying? When you're playing drifty ambient music with the volume turned up and all the ads are for rock bands, that's when.
Spotify is crashing fairly regularly for me on Win 7. It does it while it's sitting there, not playing anything. If I neglect it, it pout crashes. tee hee
Given that ads are a necessary evil, how hard could it be to better target them? What's the point of pitching a rap album to someone who's listening to jazz, or vice versa? If you don't have a relevant advertiser, you'd be better off playing a neutral "house" ad, if anything. Dear Spotify, I'm available to consult on your ad strategy at competitive rates.
I had similar problems on Win7, but actually haven't used it in a couple days. It comes back to my basic issue with streaming, which is that I already own more music than I have time to listen to.
Absolutely. Annoying me with things that my listening choices suggest I have zero chance of buying does not seem smart.
ETA: so I'm listening to Bon Iver, and it tells me to click on the banner to listen to the top of the charts playlist and get Britney Spears. Makes emusic look good at marketing.
I don't like the way the visual ads rearrange the layout. (Figures I won't have any when I'm writing this to check against). They seem to rearrange when I interact with the window. Sometimes it seems they are moving out of the way, e.g. I start scrolling vertically, the ad moves from the bottom to the side. This messes up the scrolling. If they do move out of the way it's just a matter of getting the hang of the way they behave.
Given that one of the ads' purposes is to provide an incentive to upgrade to a paid subscription, they have a counter-incentive to targeting your ads, except to deliver them to the demographic the advertiser wants.
True to a degree; but there's a thin line between motivating me to upgrade to a paid subscription and just leaving me feeling annoyed with the whole experience and so more inclined to turn to a competitor. The annoyance strategy only works if I already significantly value the service and want to remove the annoyance to get at it more purely. If I'm still on the fence it's a more ambiguous strategy. Motivating does not need to be all punishment.
An odd result of using streaming to sift my emusic SFL: I'm finding myself listening to stuff on Spotify and actually hoping that I won't like it, almost feeling a little disappointed when I do, because I'm wanting to shave down my unrealistic SFL list and liking everything makes purchase decisions no easier...need to get back to just listening.
Anyone used Spotify on a mobile device? I would like to try it on the iPad, but not sure I want to buy a subscription only to find out it is an iPhone app, rather than a fully functional iPad app. So far streaming to my desktop has been great, no glitches or drops, although the ads scared the bejebbers out of me the first time.
@germanprof - that is exactly how I have been u?ing Spotify, to preview things I was thinking about buying anyway.
Plong, you can get and use the app before subscribing. I did so just to play with it. It is an iPhone (-sized) app, but functionality seems pretty good...search, etc. Obviously can't stream w/o a sub, but you can see and DL playlists from your computer on the network.
Interesting about adverts. Over here they are quite targetted, even local. They regularly play one for the university where I work. I cannot imagine that been used more than in our area, along with adverts for fairly local businesses. Perhaps after a while that will happen too in the States? Certinly there is no reason why adverts are not linked into the demographics that the music you play suggests. Maybe, it is settling down for you all - eventually it'll get 'better'? I certainly don't find them intrusive at all.
OK, here's another reason to love spotify ads. I'm streaming gentle ambient music in a genteel office environment with open doors onto colleagues' spaces. Suddenly my computer is loudly broadcasting some pop song with sexually suggestive lyrics...
Comments
elwoodicious, too funny. I also thought it was going to suggest stuff to me. I didn't realize I was going to HAVE TO WORK at seraching for my own songs and builing playlists!
WTH?
I'll spend a bit more time with it, but honestly turntable.fm is a lot more fun - at least, to me. I get the part about being able to listen to full tracks before decided to buy something. Since I rarely buy music any more, I don't really care about that.
My main gripe with Spotify is that it's all search based... even the new releases. You can search for "tag:new" (there are no other tags supported), but the results are practically unusable. Also, Spotify supports label search, but again, only through search (ex. "label:merge"). Rdio recently enabled label browsing, and it works much better for my purposes. I'm also an album guy, and Spotify seems optimized for track listeners: for instance, that label search gives me a long list of popular tracks from that label, with a short, truncated list of albums up above it. I'm usually looking to see what albums recently came out on my favorite labels.
Spotify (and Rdio) will automatically match your local music collection with their library, which is a good feature: unlike Lala, Amazon and Google, you don't get the option to upload stuff that doesn't exist in their library. Unlike Rdio, Spotify CAN natively play those local tracks not in its library, which gives you a single application source for music listening. For that matter, you can even sync your iPod using Spotify, though I'm not about to try that anytime soon.
I should point out, I am not judging these services either on sound quality or the mobile capabilities - I'm no audiophile, and I don't have a smartphone.
Also, If anyone knows of a way to compare the catalog differences between the services, I'd be thrilled to know about it. I saw a blog post showing that Spotify has Soul Note/Black Saint, and I know Rdio doesn't.
Here's a very sensible comparison I found elsewhere on the web: Spotify vs Rdio vs MOG
And another: spotify vs rdio
I dunno, but it just happened to me. In all fairness I must say, that's the first time I was attempting to listen to an album. Something by Amos Lee that was served up in an ad - I added it as a playlist I named "Spotify Ad Suggestions" and started looking around at other stuff, so that album was no longer in the view window but was supposedly in the "Play Queue" (near top left, just under What's New). Not sure how it got there, as I didn't do it on purpose ; )
It played the 1st track and stopped. I don't' know, now it is going through all the tracks on the album without pause. There is a green speaker icon next to the "Spotify Ad Suggestions".
I am liking Spotify better since I found some pre-made playlists. LOL, when you guys say you don't like the ads, do you mean the onscreen ads? I thought you were talking about sound ads that interrupted the music like a radio station.
Anyway the onscreen ads dont't bother me, as they are mostly for playlists.
edit- Oh hell no, I just got my nice mellow album interruped by an obnoxious Tine Tempe sound ad. Boo!
Yeah, I'm having a bit of trouble finding stuff, but I figure that's a given with any new software.
Spotify crashed in the background last night when I playing turntable.fm. Wait. Was I even playing anything? Dunno. Today when I fired it up, Spotify asked if I wanted to send a crash report. I like when I get to choose, or at least have the illusion of choosing.
Anyway, start that thread! I will post what I find, too.
update: Spotify in Wine seems to play for 5-8 minutes then stop working until it's closed down and reopened. I've seen a rec to replace one of the Wine DLLs with the Windows DLL. For the moment I've installed Spotify on my mini laptop (XP) and it seems to be working fine.
Spotify is crashing fairly regularly for me on Win 7. It does it while it's sitting there, not playing anything. If I neglect it, it pout crashes. tee hee
I had similar problems on Win7, but actually haven't used it in a couple days. It comes back to my basic issue with streaming, which is that I already own more music than I have time to listen to.
ETA: so I'm listening to Bon Iver, and it tells me to click on the banner to listen to the top of the charts playlist and get Britney Spears. Makes emusic look good at marketing.
Given that one of the ads' purposes is to provide an incentive to upgrade to a paid subscription, they have a counter-incentive to targeting your ads, except to deliver them to the demographic the advertiser wants.
@germanprof - that is exactly how I have been u?ing Spotify, to preview things I was thinking about buying anyway.