Friday 5 December 2008

Spotify ... just wow

I recieved my invite for the free (but with ads) version of Spotify the other day and all I can say is wow.

For a person that love music but has a pretty low income I have been batteling with rising prices on music for years and so I've ended up listing mostly to internet radio and youtube to get to new music. It was probably almost 10 years ago that I actually bought a new album (except for the occassional gift for somebody). This is where Spotify comes in, at the moment I can listen to it free of charge and I can search through tons of tunes and listen to them how ever much I want. Only downside is that it's still a bit like listening to radio in that I get ads stuck in between the tunes.

Considering it's only about €10 per month (actually less now since it's 99 SEK wich is less than €10) for an ad free subscription I can definitely see me getting one as soon as Spotify moves out of beta, or more likely when I can afford it. So yes, Spotify is currently in beta but so far I haven't noticed it to be honest. I quite often use beta software (granted it's mostly computer games though) and most of them have bugs which prevents you from using them from time to time. However this flows really good and I've yet to have any issues what so ever with it. Although I haven't had a chance to try it on any other device than my stationary computer which is running Windows.

Anyway, one can only imagine how companies that still want to sell tunes for €1 or more with heavy drm protection can survive when services like this show up. As long as I have an internet connection, a device able to connect to it and the ability to produce sound I can now get to all my favourite tunes. Which pretty much means if I have a phone. So in the words of a famous American General, all I have to say to the big record labels that hasn't caught on to the fact that the market is changing yet is ... Nuts!

Oh and one last thing, Spotify seems only to be available to the Swedish market so far but hopefully they'll open it up to the rest of the world soon enough.

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