Monthly Archive for August, 2009

Come closer, let me whisper something in your ear – the future of music is here and it’s called Spotify. The desktop music player that Lifehacker calls “the best they’ve ever used,” is currently only available abroad but I am lucky enough to beta test it here in the States.

The download and install could not be more straightforward. When you first launch the application, you may be underwhelmed. I know I was. It reminds me of other desktop “browser” type players but it’s simplicity is deceiving. Throughout today, I discovered so many little gems that are so obvious, you wonder why other players haven’t thought of them.

But before I get to them, let’s talk about what Spotify is. It’s a streaming P2P music player. All the music lives “in the cloud,” which means it’s available anywhere you go. In fact, the iPhone app was just approved which means if you are traveling abroad where 3G or wireless might be spotty or expensive, you can just create a playlist prior to leaving and the music will actually cache in your iPhone. Perhaps the most important thing about Spotify is it’s completely legal. They worked closely with record labels to add these tracks to their library. Right now, it “only” has about a quarter of the tracks that iTunes has but they are added lots of tracks constantly. So far I have only not found one track I was looking for. I stacked the odds against them though; I was looking for a song that was released today and is a remix (and probably won’t make it to any pressed CD’s).

Spotify offers three subscription models. First and foremost, you can use the player for free. I read that you get audio ads occasionally but I have not heard a single one. I also don’t see any visual ads or banners. Then, you can buy a 1 day pass for 99 pence or a monthly pass for 9.99 a month. I read somewhere that Spotify has basically taken over college parties in the UK. For 99 cents and a laptop, you can have ad-free music of basically any artist you can dream up. Who needs a DJ?  At my next dinner party, I plan on running Spotify on my Wind netbook and encouraging guests to search for tracks they want to hear and add it to the queue. I thought I was pretty hot with my Xbox Media Center but my 10,000+ tracks don’t hold a candle to Spotify’s 3.8 million songs.

The quality is superb. For a streaming service, there is no lag between songs or during startup. There is obviously buffering going on but I can’t tell. I told it to use up to 10% of my disk space to buffer so I know it’s probably downloading constantly but I can’t see where this is taking place. My emails, web browsing, IM’s, and even Youtube video streaming work without a glitch. Lifehacker reports the free version streams at 160kbps. Way better than the 64kpbs I was used to in college and Shoutcast. Don’t worry, it apparently streams over 3G just fine.

As for the UX tricks I was talking about earlier, Spotify is chalk full of them. For example, you can right click any artist, song, album, or playlist and copy a link to it. You can also drag them to your desktop. Clicking on the link brings up whatever it was linked to. You can post the link to your Facebook, Twitter, in an email or IM. Say you want to create a road trip you are taking with your friends. You can send them a link to your proposed list, then each member can edit them in a collaborative fashion. But it doesn’t end there. Before Spotify, if I suggested some songs to my friends they may or may not own the tracks on their computer so they would never be able to listen to it. Since Spotify’s music all lives in the cloud, each of my friends can play the entire playlist upon receipt.

My friend Dave mentioned a children’s song called Rainbow Connection. I’d never heard it so I did a search. It came up with all sorts of results. I sorted by song and thought “it’d be nice to sort the results by popularity.” Before I could look around for a way to do it, I notice it already did it by default. I am a huge fan of good sorting algorithms (look at Patagonia’s online store for a good example) so when I saw this, I couldn’t help but grin. It’s not a perfect sort but the popular songs do gravitate toward the top.

When you search for an artist, Spotify gives you a biography of the artist, their albums and all the tracks in descending chronological order, and a list of their Top 5 popular tracks. What I have been doing is just searching for artists I like and queuing these 5 tracks into my playlist. Essentially creating a greatest hits playlist of my favorite artists. Speaking of searching, there are no duplicates. That’s right. Even on my own music library, which is meticulously sorted, there are plenty of duplicates. Is it The Beatles or Beatles? Or Beatles, The? You don’t have to worry Spotify.

Everyone is looking for the answer to the holy grail question – how do you get people to pay for music? This is the answer. The idea is so simple yet revolutionary. Nobody has ever thought about it and delivered it in this manner. Sure, Zunepass and Rhapsody give you unlimited (DRM locked) monthly downloads but that takes a lot of patience and time copying to your device. Paying 99 cents for a party or 10 bucks a month for pretty much unlimited access to any track you can think of is a no-brainer.

Spotify isn’t without cons. For one, you cannot add your own tracks to the player. And their library is finite. If it’s not there, you can’t listen to it. I think the UI could be a bit more polished but right now it works fine. Lastly, to queue anything you have to right click, move your mouse to “Save to” then choose your playlist. I know it sounds easy but the action repeated dozens of times for a playlist is very inefficient.

Remember when Pandora came out and none of your friends really knew about it? Now, even the most unsavvy people talk about Pandora like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Spotify is just like that. Except ten times bigger and better.