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Spotify Makes U.S. Debut With Paid Plans and Invite-Only Free Service

I found out about Spotify when I was in Norway for the Inferno Festival this past April. The quality is great, the library is huge, and $9.99 a month for unlimited streaming is an amazing deal. This is like the Netflix of music, only with a much better selection.

I just signed up for the $9.99 plan. Nice knowing you Pandora.
 
hexonxonx said:
I was able to log in to the app after creating my account using my computer.
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Thanks, maybe I will restart my phone and see if that fixes it. I created the account on my computer also (premium account) but I can't enter my username or password into the iPhone app.

edit... ah nevermind it just started working. I guess I was thinking the whole thing was a button, but you have to tap the spot where you are supposed to enter the text
 
dalrok said:
Since invites are useless in Sweden these days and I still get new ones each month I pay for Premium, you can have them! Send me a PM if you want one...
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Well... I withdraw my offer for the time beeing. Seems you have to be a member for at least one day and have posted 5 or more replies. I just signed up this very moment to be able to give away these bloody invites... That's what you get for trying to be nice. :)
 
L I G H T I N G said:
I don't see this service catching on. Paying over 100$ a year to gain access to music online...

Youtube already does that....for free.

Youtube music is available for download for offline viewing too.

Sorry Spotify, you are just going to fall like the Berlin Wall.
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Are you high? Searching for individual songs of varying quality on Youtube, which will likely be removed once they are found, equates to a legal on demand library of 15,000,000 songs?

Enjoy your Youtube music, lol.
 
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I think this is one of the best offers you can get legally. It's cheap, you get more songs then you can ever play and with the premium you can even listen to music offline (sync up to 3333 tracks, that time your iPhone/iPod is pretty full anyway) and it's more then enough to listen on a vacation.

In my opinion this is the very best deal to get all the music you want and more then you will ever be able to listen for a flat rate. Who wants to own a hitsong that you won't listen to in 6 months time? And if you would still like to play that song you can! You can put it permanently on your desktop/phone by making it available offline. Only downside is that your songs are gone after you stop the spotify service. But if you are like me then you probably already own the music you really care about by ripping the cd or bought them via iTunes or spotify (Spotify also plays all your bought songs of iTunes and you can buy them via Spotify, which is basically the same. Songs you buy in Spotify will always be yours to keep). To be honest I don't know how Spotify have closed the deal with the record companies. This is the way to go. I just wonder why Apple couldn't make a similar deal with the record companies. It's the missing link of iTunes and the iCloud service. Maybe Apple wanted a too big piece of the pie.

Only offer that might be even better is iTunes Match. Download the music illegally and make it 'legal' by iTunes match. It's not something I would recommend but it is a possibility as it seems. But then again, if you really care about your favorite artists this is not the way to go.

Spotify is legal and the best deal then!
 
jayducharme said:
Though I like Pandora, it's nice to see more competition -- as long as it doesn't drive the prices higher (which seems to be happening more often in the US).

I don't understand the Spotify tiers. "Free" obviously has ads, which isn't really a big deal. But what's "invite only?" Does someone currently using Spotify have to invite you? That seems like it would automatically slow down Spotify's adoption rate here.

I don't see much difference between "Unlimited" and "Premium." They both allow unlimited access. "Free" allows mobile syncing. Does "Unlimited" restrict you to just your computer? That would be absurd, paying for a service that gives you less than the free version. I would imagine that most people would want music-to-go, not be restricted to their desktop (or laptop).
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Free is invite only so they can gauge interest. That way they can scale up the services at a slower rate, rather than have 100,000 people all sign up for the free tier this morning and overload their servers.

The mobile syncing is a bit misleading, because it says you can sync "your own music". Which means whatever it finds in your iTunes library. To sync tracks from spotify you need a premium account which means the only way to use Spotify mobile is with a Premium account as the other tiers don't seem to offer anything for mobile.

I am currently trying the $4.99 service and it has quite a vast library of songs available. The one thing I am not liking is that it's music discovery seems limited. It has added random things to my music queue but they don't seem to have anything to do with the songs I was listening to before. It would be nice to have a Pandora like feature where you choose a genre or song and have it queue up songs for me as while I am working I don't want to be actively managing a playlist.
 
L I G H T I N G said:
I don't see this service catching on. Paying over 100$ a year to gain access to music online...

Youtube already does that....for free.

Youtube music is available for download for offline viewing too.

Sorry Spotify, you are just going to fall like the Berlin Wall.
Click to expand...

Seriously, comparing Spotify with Youtube? Are you even aware of what Spotify is?
 
chachawpi said:
Are you high? Searching for individual songs of varying quality on Youtube, which will likely be removed once they are found, equates to a legal on demand library of 15,000,000 songs?

Enjoy your Youtube music, lol.
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From experience

EVERY song that I have ever listened too is on Youtube.

Then again my music library is around 5GB but a free service is always good. more music just complicates the choices.
 
spaceywilly said:
Thanks, maybe I will restart my phone and see if that fixes it. I created the account on my computer also (premium account) but I can't enter my username or password into the iPhone app.

edit... ah nevermind it just started working. I guess I was thinking the whole thing was a button, but you have to tap the spot where you are supposed to enter the text
Click to expand...

Glad you got it.

Just to see how diverse the selection is, I searched for Godflesh. I saw them as the opening band for Skinny Puppy back in the 90s. Everything is there from what I can tell, cranking up a few of their tunes now.
 
I use MOG. It's 9.99, has an iPhone app, streams in higher quality than iTunes or Amazon MP3, and allows downloads to phone. Haven't had any problem finding anything, and I've searched for some pretty obscure stuff to test it. Surprised no one has mentioned them here, is there any significant difference between MOG and Spotify?
 
now that i dont have to pay $100 for mobileme anymore i can look into this. :) it looks very well done and promising. waiting for the invite request i sent about an hour after it was announced.
 
dekadent said:
Seriously, comparing Spotify with Youtube? Are you even aware of what Spotify is?
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Music streaming services.

One is free, one requires subscription and fees.

Your point?

Just because you pay for something, or pay more doesn't automatically make it better, just a placebo effect for unsuspecting consumers out there.
 
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nunes013 said:
now that i dont have to pay $100 for mobileme anymore i can look into this. :) it looks very well done and promising. waiting for the invite request i sent about an hour after it was announced.
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Same thing that I was thinking!
 
Just installed on both iPod touch and iPad. Amazing catalog, I can't believe what I am finding. Almost instant playback. Started to cache songs to both devices. This is it for me, exactly what I have been looking for.
 
jclardy said:
I am currently trying the $4.99 service and it has quite a vast library of songs available. The one thing I am not liking is that it's music discovery seems limited.
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Yeah, this is my only (relatively minor) complaint about Spotify, too. It could sure use a recommendations system to help you find new music ("users who like the song you play also liked yyy", or whatever).

It does, however, support scrobbling to last.fm, so you can get recommendations from there and feed them back into Spotify.
 
Reason077 said:
Yeah, this is my only (relatively minor) complaint about Spotify, too. It could sure use a recommendations system to help you find new music ("users who like the song you play also liked yyy", or whatever).

It does, however, support scrobbling to last.fm, so you can get recommendations from there and feed them back into Spotify.
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On the artist page you should see "similar artists" links at the top, if that helps.
 
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L I G H T I N G said:
dekadent said:
Seriously, comparing Spotify with Youtube? Are you even aware of what Spotify is?
Click to expand...

Music streaming services.

One is free, one requires subscription and fees.

Your point?

Just because you pay for something, or pay more doesn't automatically make it better, just a placebo effect for unsuspecting consumers out there.
Click to expand...

What about: one is illegal the other is legal? There is a reason why music that isn't posted by the artist themselves is being removed. And it was never intended to capture the flash file and convert it to mp3 or whatever file you use. Then again you don't need YouTube. You can use newsservers or any download service. The real difference is that Spotify has got the legal issues covered and is a respected company with is backed by the industry and more important the artists. With a fair price and good library of music. All free stuff you suggest are not real alternatives for fair music.

And spotify can be free too! Legally. Just with some adds.
 
when I first launched spotify it asked me for a free 7 day trial of the premium I just closed that box and now I want to accept it but cant find it again anyone know where I can start the 7 day trial I want ot test the offline mode with spotify and 3 devices.
 
WvB22 said:
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What about: one is illegal the other is legal? There is a reason why music that isn't posted by the artist themselves is being removed. And it was never intended to capture the flash file and convert it to mp3 or whatever file you use. Then again you don't need YouTube. You can use newsservers or any download service. The real difference is that Spotify has got the legal issues covered and is a respected company with is backed by the industry and more important the artists. With a fair price and good library of music. All free stuff you suggest are not real alternatives for fair music.

And spotify can be free too! Legally. Just with some adds.
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You do know that Youtube pays fees to the music labels to host the music on their site.

As for download from youtube it is still in the gray area, similar to when Apple proclaimed jailbreaking was illegal....but it became legal.
 
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Would be great to have something similar for movies/tv series too!
 
Nobody complained when the dollar was worth a lot more. Do you think £4.99 is too much or only start hating it when you found out the yanks pay less?.

the question is: is it worth £4.99 or not? If so, wtf cares?

rich2000 said:
When are people in the music business going to get it into their heads, we need consistent pricing

$4.99 is nowhere near the same as £4.99!

at current exchange rates $4.99 is the equivalent to £3.10, even with 20% VAT it's £3.72, so the UK has to pay 25% more than the USA! Rip off Britain as usual!
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Jerome Morrow said:
Show me where i was talking about failure? I'm asking how this is a sustainable business model that's all. Quit smoking, pal..
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Maybe a conclussion that an un sustainable business model = Failure. And from your post you conider it to be un sustainable.

Though they might be hitting the markert to loose money, so therefore success!!!
 
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