Spotify is here in the US. And it’s either gonna blow everything away or get shut down in a matter of weeks. While it’s still invite only (unless you pay), it seems to marry the functionality of iTunes, Rdio, Pandora, and more in its client software, which smartly detects music on your computer and shares it with the world. Which is good, because that means you can pretty much listen to whatever you want. It’s also bad because… well, for obvious reasons. I think that anything that exists on any of my iTunes playlists is now being shared with other Spotify users, and while I can change that setting, it’s still a little unnerving.
But still! Tons of music. To listen to. For free. It feels a little like the wild west right now, and suffers from the problems that things like Napster and Kazaa had—bad tags, mostly, from other users—but jesus. Everything people said about it is true. Not everything is on there, not even close (and I had no luck finding upcoming, not-yet-released records from Portugal. The Man and Blind Pilot—thankfully, because cans and cans of worms) but there is plenty. The best feature seems to be the ability to send music directly to your friends, which could replace things like Mediafire and Dropbox and old fashioned mixtapes.
If the government doesn’t shut this whole thing down. Which it probably should.
End Hits: Guess it’s time to retire my Soulseek profile, PuddleofNedd.
They have deals with all the major labels. The labels are getting paid…no one is getting shut down.
It’s a paid streaming service; there’s no sharing the actual music with anyone else. It all comes from their servers. That’s why there are still large gaps in availability; if they don’t have a deal with the distributer, it’s not there.
You might be sharing playlists with people on your Facebook friends’ list, but it’s limited to the music they have available. No difference from the newer US-based services like Rdio or Mog.
I still prefer rdio.
Playlist sharing aside, you can also send tracks to your friends. From my experience so far, they definitely don’t have to be tracks on the Spotify servers. This is why I suspect the RIAA may eventually flip.
It isn’t just the major labels, the indie/metal labels are on board as well.
Here’s what Earache Records had to say about Spotify (European version):
http://askearache.blogspot.com/2011/06/spo…
In short, the record label endorses Spotify because the the record label gets paid from Spotify. End of story, really.
Take a Grooveshark, keep track of what’s played, share the profits from ads and subscriptions with who’s being played. And there ya go.