Spotify – it’s the future!
What a marvellous invention Spotify is! There are times when I feel that only a particular song will do for the mood I am in, so I fire up iTunes/WinAmp/FooBar/WMP/Audiorack (Audiorack? Really?) and search my library for it…and find I don’t have it. I’m pretty sure I have the track on a CD somewhere. Or at least I did before I moved house. So it might be…somewhere…
Chances are, that track is on Spotify. Now, there are quite a few audio streaming apps out there – Pandora and Last.fm to name but two – that you can choose a genre or artist to play as a radio stream, but not so many that let you choose an individual track or album. Spotify does just that, and does it extremely well – plus you can scrobble to Last FM as well!
The latest version of Spotify integrates with your existing media library, so should you find a track that is not on there, you can revert to your local file.
Add to this (with the paid-for versions) the ability to sync your playlists with your mobile device, and you are on to a clear winner.
There are also two forms of radio available on Spotify – one being “Artist Radio”, which like other services will play songs by artists similar to the seed artist you choose, and a very special form of genre radio – you pick from a combination of around 20 different genres, and move sliders on a timeline to choose tracks from any decade (or decades) between 1950 and the present. Techo from 1960-1980 should be interesting…
However, those used to the lumbering Windows version of iTunes may be surprised by how responsive the whole experience is – playback is virtually instant, regardless of whether the track you are playing is local or streaming – an amazing achievement.
If Spotify does not go some way towards killing off MP3 piracy, there is something seriously wrong – because Spotify is AWESOME.