Spotify

Anyone else messing with Spotify yet? I like it... it's like a huge free iTunes.

Only thing you have to do is listen to commercials (i think you can pay $4.99 a month to make that go away). In listening to "BadMotorFinger" start to end (inspired by S.O.S.'s post) there were like three or four commercials, half "editorial" commercials talking about diff features of Spotify, and half an actual song with the artist saying "Hey this is Gary Stevenson, check out my new record on Spotify!". If you mute your computer it "pauses" the commercial, so they got you there. There are banner ads promoting music you can listen to on Spotify as well. I actually like that functionality, I saw a few banners for something i was vaguely interested in... click, and you are checking out the full album for free.

If the commercials and banners were tailored to music I was interested in based on my searches or playlists, or even based on my own personal library, I wouldn't mind at all, but it sucks when my BadMotorFinger vibe is suddenly interrupted by a "Drake" song that I'm forced to listen to for 30 seconds. Assuming some if not most of you don't even know who that is, but it's worse than Ke$$$ha. Playing some totally unrelated track is not going to make me buy, or even listen to, that artist and it just fills me with rage towards Spotify.

There is a ton of music there, I'll give it like a 7 out of 10 on obsurity scale: searches for Black Dice and Lightning Bolt were fruitful, for example. A search for Emeralds had hits, but "Imaginary Softwoods" did not. Jesus LIzard and Naked Raygun came up big, but Big Black and Rapeman were absent. Kurt Vile actually had a banner and a voice over commercial thing.

I don't understand the business model... I'm sure that info is out there but frankly, I don't care. In any case, artists are getting a cut, so it is an interesting new alternative and I think that's one reason it is blowing up.

All-in-all, I give Spotify 5 stars, it's nice to have, not a life changer, although I absolutely have been using it all week at work. If they add a Pandora-like functionality so it knows what I like, even better. And I'm assuming content will just continue to grow exponentially.

Carry on.

dc