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

There's a lot of misinformation in this thread, gonna try to clear some things out. (Based on EU clients, assuming the US ones are the same(?))

Their business model is completely stable because they are largely a subscription based service, the free version is pretty limited in the amount of music you are alowed to listen to as well as with the ads, you pay 5$ for premium desktop service and 10$ for additional streaming quality as well as a mobile app.

You can browse genres through advanced search.

You get to album view through clicking on the album title in search/artist/radio, if you want to "save" the album for easier access or to download it if you have premium(/unlimited?) through dragging the album/all the songs onto the add playlist button.

Starring is a favorite feature that adds it to the top of your profile as well as the starred tab over the playlists, it's basically just a playlist to hold your favorites.

The social part works like this: you have a profile, you can link other people to your profile and other people can search for it through typing spotify:user:yourusername in the search bar (only desktop afaik). Your profile displays all your playlists, what it automatically thinks is your favorite albums/tracks (works crappy though) and your favorites. You can choose to hide these if you want. Facebook connect just gives you a list of all your facebook friends profiles.

Comparing it to youtube is laughable, spotify is a replacement for itunes and is miles better than both of them when it comes to music.

Playlists are incredibly dynamic, examples:
-sharing playlists is easy, as well as sharing tracks/albums, just right click on it and select copy HTTP.
-You subscribe yourself to other peoples playlists.
-You can create collaborative playlists for everyone to edit.

-Radio features are available, at the top of the left bar for genre radio, in the top tabs in artist view for related artists radio.

The prices ARE unfair for europeans, but we always get higher prices on everything so just deal with it. (we have healthcare so we're better anyways :p)

Bottom line, spotify is an extremely powerful online music service and a good offline music player, better than anything else i've tried. I've been a premium subscriber for over a year now and i've used it for two, during this time it has developed immensely and except for the fact that they crushed the previously "too good to be true" free service (Restricted amount of time/month, restricted amounts of listens/track) they've never let me down.

Also, i guess i probably have some european invites, pm me and i'll get back to you in a few hours or so.

Stuff that i kinda dislike:
A bit to much focus on playlists, would like to have a better view over albums and artists for my local files.
The mac client has a laggy scroll. (a la steam)
No social on mobile.
No ipad app so far. (iphone works OK tho)
 
Tom359 said:
Maybe I don't understand what "starring" an item does. When I star a song on the desktop app, it does not show up on my iphone even after syncing and vice versa. If I add all the starred items to a playlist called "All Songs", that syncs to the iphone. I know it's seems like a small thing, but why do I have to go through the extra step of creating a playlist just to get these songs on both devices, especially since the "starring" feature is on both apps. I see that it will do this if I have offline syncing on, but I don't want to physically copy the song to my phone, I want to stream. Am I missing the point of the stars?
Click to expand...

Do you mean sync like wanting it to show up on your phone or offline sync to your phone, the starred playlist is a default spotify playlist, if you set that to "available offline" you can star any track and it will be offline synced to your phone.
 
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!
Click to expand...

Believe or not, this pricing mis-match goes back to the vinyl era. I remember visiting the UK in the mid-80s, and found that the standard price for a record album was consistently 20-30% more than what I could buy it for in the US. Never figured out why.
 
Spoony said:
1. Holy Copying the itunes interface batman. I mean it looks exactly like iTunes. Not that i'm complaining b/c I understand it all and it's a squeeky clean interface but wow they "samsunged" the crud out of iTunes. Even the scroll bars look like a Mac and i'm on a PC.
Click to expand...

spotify_1.jpg


itunes500.jpg

Spotify is clearly a shade darker, AND the progress bar is on the bottom instead ;)

(Incase my attempts at sarcasm were lost over the internet, yes it does look pretty similar, especially when you enable the iTunes Album cover in the bottom left)


Rantipole said:
Believe or not, this pricing mis-match goes back to the vinyl era. I remember visiting the UK in the mid-80s, and found that the standard price for a record album was consistently 20-30% more than what I could buy it for in the US. Never figured out why.
Click to expand...

Ive pretty much accepted that everything is cheaper in the US, hence why Im going to pick up a 15 inch Macbook Pro when I go to New York in September. To keep it around and see if it grows on me, the only real exposure I had with Macs was with Tiger on the Mac Pro's at College. And they crashed repeatedly, generally giving me a bad first impression of them.
 
socal23 said:
I've got 25 invites to share with you. Just drop me an email at gmail.com and I'll send you one.
Click to expand...

15 invitations gone in 20 minutes. 10 left. Send me an e-mail at ... for a personal invitation right away. Spotify should pay me for this :)

...and they are all gone.
 
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Shanesan said:
While Grooveshark can't even get into the AppStore, you will most likely not see Spotify there. You will probably have to Jailbreak, just like for Grooveshark's mobile app.
Click to expand...

It's already on the UK one, no jailbreaking will be needed.
 
kurzz said:
Had it for an hour and here's my comparison of Spotify to Rdio:

-Spotify desktop app doesn't require Flash like Rdio does.
-Spotify doesn't have Artist Radio feature like Rdio does.
-Spotify uses Facebook for social. Rdio social is much better.
-Spotify is fast and probably has better bitrate for premium.
-Rdio let's you subscribe to dynamic playlists. Can't find that feature in Spotify.
-Spotify has a free account with ads. Rdio doesn't, you have to pay.
-Rdio has a web interface. Spotify doesn't.

I haven't tried ipod/iphone synching yet.

So far I'm liking Rdio more. Spotify seems to be lacking for me.
I especially miss the radio feature in Rdio.
I thought Spotify had genre browsing? That feature would put Spotify ahead for me but so far neither service has that.
Click to expand...

There are quite a lot of sites that offer dynamic playlists. I don't use them personally so I cant recommend whats best but a Google search of 'Spotify Playlists' will show you a lot of sites. You essentially click on what playlist you like, its opened in your spotify app and you can subscribe. When changes are made to it by the creator, they are reflected in the playlist you are subscribed to.

One example is the Official Spotify New Releases playlist:

http://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/3Yrvm5lBgnhzTYTXx2l55x

Hopefully that is what you meant by dynamic playlists.
 
MartinAW said:
There are quite a lot of sites that offer dynamic playlists. I don't use them personally so I cant recommend whats best but a Google search of 'Spotify Playlists' will show you a lot of sites. You essentially click on what playlist you like, its opened in your spotify app and you can subscribe. When changes are made to it by the creator, they are reflected in the playlist you are subscribed to.

One example is the Official Spotify New Releases playlist:

http://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/3Yrvm5lBgnhzTYTXx2l55x

Hopefully that is what you meant by dynamic playlists.
Click to expand...

Thank you, yes, that's exactly what I was looking for. :)
 
What crap. My extremely vague and remote interest in Spotify was totally demolished by the false advertising and "invite only" nonsense.

Next.
 
kurzz said:
Had it for an hour and here's my comparison of Spotify to Rdio:

-Spotify doesn't have Artist Radio feature like Rdio does.
Click to expand...

Yes it does. Click on an artist and look for the "Artist Radio" tab at the top.

-Spotify uses Facebook for social. Rdio social is much better.
Click to expand...

I agree on that one. I find Spotify's social features fairly awkward too.

-Rdio let's you subscribe to dynamic playlists. Can't find that feature in Spotify.
Click to expand...

Spotify does have dynamic playlists. ie: you can create a playlist, make it shared, and give a URL link to that playlist to whoever you want. Any changes you then make in the playlist will be seen by whoever has subscribed to it.

You can also make collaborative playlists which can be edited by more than one person.

I thought Spotify had genre browsing? That feature would put Spotify ahead for me but so far neither service has that.
Click to expand...

Not exactly "browsing" I guess, but click on "Radio" and you can select by genre, release year, etc.
 
Has anyone here used Audiogalaxy before? It is a free service that lets you listen to your personal library of music anywhere, on computer or phone. I really like it for that purpose. As for new music consumption, I've been a member of Emusic for about 3 years and have really enjoyed the editorial aspect of it. However they have been raising prices steadily. After I try Spotify, I may ditch Emusic simply because it is so much less expensive. The advantage of Emusic though is that you get to keep the tracks you buy.
 
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.




If it checks just location and doesn't require US credit card then buy some cheap VPN (~5 USD/month) and problem solved.
Click to expand...

Just because Spotify won't ask for a 30% cut doesn't mean that it won't be a sustainable business model.
 
So, how is this service? I've never joined one of these all-you-can-stream services and I've been anticipating Spotify. I'm willing to dive into the Premium account just to try it out.

How is the selection of music? Is it mostly top 40 BS or is there a pretty wide range of stuff - like some more obscure jazz and electronic stuff?

And am I able to keep MP3s downloaded for offline mode if I end up canceling the service down the road? Or do I lose access?
 
Nausicaa said:
So, how is this service? I've never joined one of these all-you-can-stream services and I've been anticipating Spotify. I'm willing to dive into the Premium account just to try it out.

How is the selection of music? Is it mostly top 40 BS or is there a pretty wide range of stuff - like some more obscure jazz and electronic stuff?

And am I able to keep MP3s downloaded for offline mode if I end up canceling the service down the road? Or do I lose access?
Click to expand...
When you enter offline mode you will have to go online within 30 days. after the 30 days you have to go online to activate it again else you cant use your music. So in short, no.

You can find some more info on https://www.spotify.com/se/about/features/offline-mode/
 
John.B said:
Spotify is owned in part by the record labels themselves. What they appear to have done is develop an alternate revenue stream with a loophole that pays the actual musicians a mere pitance compared to the going rate for other broadcast or internet media outlets.

Pretty slick to have the same record labels that sue individuals for MP3 piracy (via their RIAA front organization) paying almost no royalties themselves.

Source: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/comment-page-3/
Click to expand...

Considering that the artist will be paid only once if you buy a song, and each time if you stream a song through Spotify, it's rather obvious that the amount paid will be lower.

Now, how much the artist is getting paid through Spotify seems to be unknown, the numbers that graph uses has been disputed by Spotify and the link (that the numbers are based on) in the spreadsheet accompanying the graph is dead.
 
Nausicaa said:
How is the selection of music? Is it mostly top 40 BS or is there a pretty wide range of stuff - like some more obscure jazz and electronic stuff?
Click to expand...

There's millions of obscure tracks on there. They don't have as much as itunes but there's a hell of a lot.
 
Thanks guys. And thanks for the many, many invite codes. I'm going to try it for free and get a feel for the selection and streaming quality.

$10 seems like a really good deal for premium though.
 
Nausicaa said:
So, how is this service? I've never joined one of these all-you-can-stream services and I've been anticipating Spotify. I'm willing to dive into the Premium account just to try it out.

How is the selection of music? Is it mostly top 40 BS or is there a pretty wide range of stuff - like some more obscure jazz and electronic stuff?

And am I able to keep MP3s downloaded for offline mode if I end up canceling the service down the road? Or do I lose access?
Click to expand...

Spotify is way better than any other streaming service, but unfortunately you do lose access to the offline songs you have if you cancel. But if youre like me you already spend more than $10/month on mp3s so its a no brainer for me. I was using Rhapsody, but it sucks compared to this.
 
if Spotify actually was run by the record companies, then they could actually pocket 91% of the revenue and the rest would still be enough to pay as much to the artist as the artist would get for each dollar used to purchase an iTunes song.

Removing middle men and all that.

Now, I doubt that the record companies, owning only 17%, are running Spotify.
 
As I believe someone has already said, if you created an account via proxy in the past, you can use it and change your country to the US. No invite needed.

The Free account is much more limited than it used to be, though. 10 hours and each track can be played a max of 5 times.
 
Cougarcat said:
As I believe someone has already said, if you created an account via proxy in the past, you can use it and change your country to the US. No invite needed.

The Free account is much more limited than it used to be, though. 10 hours and each track can be played a max of 5 times.
Click to expand...

Free accounts had to be severely limited since Spotify pays as much for a song listened to through a free account as through a paid account. Ad revenues weren't enough to support the free accounts.
 
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