Spotify Arrives: FAQ About The New Service

I thought someone told me this was free? What are these paid tiers you are talking about?

Spotify offers three tiers of service. The basic level is absolutely free but there are limitations. You will have an occasional ad, you will not be able to sync for offline use and you will not be able to sync to your mobile device. Additionally, after six months of account creation, your account is limited to a maximum of ten hours per month of music streaming. Individual tracks are also limited to five plays each.

Are there any additional benefits to the premium tier? Do I need it?

While the free and unlimited plans may satisfy many users, the Premium tier offers additional benefits. The stream quality is increased to a high-fidelity 320 kbps from the standard of 192 kbps. You will also be able to use Spotify with music services like Sonos and Squeezebox. Apparently there’s additional exclusive content and new releases available quicker than the other plans as well. And to reiterate, if you want to be able to sync songs to your computer so they are available offline, and to sync to your mobile, you will need the Premium Plan.

There’s the catch. I have to pay, it must be expensive.

The Premium Plan is $9.99/month and the Unlimited Plan is $4.99/month. We will let you decide if the cost of buying eight tracks from iTunes or one album is worth having millions of tracks available at your fingertips.

I’m just figuring out how to use Google+, and this sounds great but I really don’t have time to set this up and learn how to use it. Am I out of luck?

This may be one of Spotify’s major strengths. The setup download is literally a couple of KB and takes a second or two to download and installation takes an additional five seconds. You will be hard pressed to find a simpler program to download and install.

Sounds great, but won’t it be a hassle switching back and forth between iTunes to listen to my music and Spotify to listen to that music?

Another major strength of Spotify and what separates it from other on-demand streaming options is that it integrates your existing music with Spotify’s so that there is no need to use two different players (except for lossless files, more on that later). Click on the graphic below to view player and the integration of Spotify Library tracks and your own locally owned music. The yellow arrow points to the small music note icon differentiating the two.

Spotify Player Interface

I’ve tried on-demand music listening before but I can’t stand the buffering, skipping and lag.

Spotify uses a mix of server side music storage, P2P technology and utilizes your computer’s cache to create a streaming experience that is literally indistinguishable from playing a track from your existing music player. Select a song and in less than 10-milliseconds (literally) it starts playing. After using Spotify pretty heavily for four days and listening to 250+ tracks (according to Scrobble statistics from Last.FM) the author has had zero instances of lag, buffer, skip or any other digital anomaly.

So, what’s all this with being able to sync and save locally with the Premium account?

Really one of the game changers here as compared to rdio, Grooveshark, Pandora and other streaming services. Again, Spotify is an application on your computer or mobile, and not a web interface. So for those times that an internet connection is not available, you can load up as many tracks as you want on either your computer or mobile device. The process, like the initial setup simply could not be easier. Select the playlist or track that you want to listen to when off the grid, and simply ensure “Available Offline” is selected.

Context Menu to Allow for Offline Use

Do I need to use Spotify from the same computer?

Another major benefit. You can install Spotify on as many machines as you want: Apple, PC, Linux, etc. Once you log into any machine, your entire library, playlists and friends list is completely synced. So you can add tracks to a playlist on your laptop during the day, and listen at home from your desktop.

I heard you can easily share music from Spotify as well?

Another absolutely fantastic feature of Spotify. Once you create a playlist or find a track that others would enjoy, there are several ways to share them. First, you can highlight the track or playlist and get a URL link to email, tweet, blog, share or post anywhere. For example, we created a playlist with a couple of tunes from  each of the albums off of Hidden Track’s Best of 2010 Albums list. While in the past, it would be difficult to share these legally, sharing to another Spotify user is a snap! Once another user opens the share link, all the tracks are instantly available. And again, with a Premium account, you would be able to take this playlist, save to your laptop or mobile and listen to them as if you owned them – even without an internet connection.

Facebook integration is also built into the Spotify player. While linking your Facebook account gives you an easy way to post to your wall and share a track, it is certainly not required. However, currently the only way to change your profile image, is linking it to your Facebook account.

Finally, you can share directly to Spotify “friends” by dragging the track or playlist to the user name in the “People” column. Finding friends is not very intuitive right now. Without knowing another user’s name, it is difficult to find people. You can use the search box using a syntax of “spotify:user:username” (for example: spotify:user:tmwsiy) ensuring that user name is all in lower case. Once you find the user, you can “add to friends.” Or, you can see who else is subscribed to public playlists and add users that way.

So how much music is available?

As with most services, there are a few notable omissions. Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin are a few of the bigger ones. However, the catalog is impressive. Twitter user @ericwyman endeavored to duplicate Phish’s online radio station, The Bunny, from their recent SuperBall IX Festival. The Bunny DJ’s played an impressive, expansive and eclectic mix of music crossing many genres. So how did Spotify’s catalog stack up? From the first two days of the playlist, Eric has already added about 80% of the playlist encompassing over 300 tracks and 20 hours of music. Check it out here: Phish’s Bunny Radio. Likewise, from Hidden Track’s Best Albums of 2010, we were able to find 21 of our 25 featured albums. Supposedly there are about 15 million tracks available today with 15,000 being added daily.

So you said I can use Spotify on my mobile device?

Absolutely. There are mobile clients for virtually every phone including Android, iPhone, Symbian, Windows Phone 7, and Palm. While you will need a Premium Account to stream over WiFi or 3G or to listen to your music offline, everyone can sync your already owned music. The sync feature, again, like most of Spotify’s interface, is dead simple. One click, as long as you are on the same WiFi network, syncs your selected playlists wirelessly. Nothing to figure out, nothing to setup and nothing to have to read and learn: Sync that simply works!

These playlists are great – where can I find more?

A few ways. Find some people whose music taste you like and simply see what lists they are subscribed to and subscribe to that playlist as well. As more tunes are added, if any to the list, yours will constantly be updated. Of course, you can create your own and encourage others to add to it by enabling “Collaborative Playlist.” That way, anyone with the link can add to your list.

Spotify also tweets out some interesting lists from their Spotify twitter account: @spotify.

There is an interesting site, Spotibot, that can create playlists on the fly from a seed artist much like Pandora does.

What doesn’t work or could be improved?

With any service, not everything is perfect. Like previously mentioned, finding people is difficult and not being able to update a profile picture without Facebook is a hassle for many. But perhaps one of the most glaring omissions right now is the support for lossless files like FLAC and ALAC. As many users slowly migrate towards lossless as the cost of storage and the barriers to use have decreased, that portion of your existing music library can not be played through the Spotify player. While offering lossless files through Spotify is certainly not necessary, being able to play your own would be a welcome addition.

Search, while blazing fast, can be improved. When searching for an artist name, or song title, you are presented with 30-40 matches that fit on your screen, seemingly in random fashion. Once you click a column header to search your results by Track Name, Artist, Album, or Popularity, you lose the ability to scroll down for further results. More granularity for search results needs to be added as well.

Additionally,  a couple of other minor annoyances. The “Share to Twitter” feature is relatively useless as there is no link-shortener built in rendering a long title or artist name coupled with the length of the URL file impratical to share on many occasions.

Also, while Last.FM scrobbling is built in to the player, it seems to be a bit buggy, prone to error codes and in need of lots of improvement.

Finally, while there is a small icon noting the difference between local files and Spotify files, the differentiation needs to be a little more distinctive. This is especially the case when creating published playlists to share with your friends. I imagine most people do not intend on creating a list that consists of many tracks that are not listenable to the people you are sharing with. Then again, the way that Spotify is able to seamlessly integrate your library with your locally owned music and the tracks you have selected is also a plus at the same time.

So there you have it!

Early impressions give Spotify an extremely high rating for user experience, music catalog, discovering new music, sharing and value proposition. Have you tried it yet? What did you like or dislike? What’s holding you back from trying it? We’d love to hear your comments or feel free to share some links to your created playlists in the comments.

Here’s my personal playlist of some tunes I enjoyed from 2010, parker’s 2010. We’ll be back in several weeks to get further feedback and reactions as more users try out Spotify and share a list of 2011 New Music.

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21 Responses

  1. I’m confused – can I easily move the music I have locally to my mobile device if it is not available in spotify’s cloud?

  2. PG: Yes, you can easily move MP3s that you own to your mobile device. Make a playlist, connect computer & mobile to same WiFi network, open Spotify on you phone & mark the playlist “Offline Playlist”. They will sync now to your device.

  3. Wow, looks so cool, using an invite and downloading now. Looking forward to the HT playlist and others. Hard to believe that you can get all you can eat music, for offline and mobile use too for just ten bucks a month. Wonder why I’d need to keep buying individual tracks when I can fetch the whole album? Hope this is as good as advertised.

  4. Great post. So far I’m really enjoying Spotify. It feels similar to Rhapsody to me in that you can access just about anything from anywhere. I personally believe this type of paid-subscription-for-music-access will be a lasting business model for the future. It certainly helps that when someone mentions a band you can instantly pull it up and listen.

    Spotify works very well as a music catalog, but is a little lacking when it comes to the social aspect. It seems tacked-on, non-intuitive, and just about impossible for those without a Facebook account. I love the idea of sharing playlists and collaborative playlists, but finding people is really difficult. If they have integrated Last.FM scrobbing, couldn’t they import some of its social features? It’s easy to find people with similar musical taste on there.

    As someone who predominantly listens to bluegrass, important artists like J.D. Crowe, Alison Krauss, and the Seldome Scene have little to no albums available, it’s mostly stuff from compilations. So they could use some more “back catalog” material. However, I suspect that only affects a niche genre listener like myself and most rock fans will probably find everything they are looking for

    Overall, it’s a valuable service and a promising business model.

  5. Scenario: I join spotify for 6, 12 months…whatever… Download all this music for offline use… I quit spotify or they go out of business… Do I get to keep these files I have downloaded? What format are they in?

  6. Parker, great review of Spotify and you definitely taught us newbies about the great features that come along with Spotify. One great site that I’ve found in researching is http://www.pitchify.com. This site has compiled Spotify playlist links (which you can subscribe to/add to your library) of all the top rated albums on Pitchfork. A great way to find new music from a reliable source. Share any other good sites you guys find too and keep up the good work!

    Ben

  7. aburtch: great points, while 15Million tracks is a lot, certainly not nearly complete with everything. Though I have found the catalog impressive as the Bunny Radio list per example.

    mrMinorOG: great questions. No, once your subscription lapses, the tracks will be unavailable per the DRM that is built into the proprietary software. Though, you will still have access to all your playlists with the online player. Spotify uses the open source Vorbis codec. q5 (~160/kbps) for standard tracks, and q9 (~320/kbps) for premium subscribers.

    ben: great link! that Pitchify site looks very interesting and another way to find new music.

  8. 1) I use iTunes primarily as an organizer (rarely a music store, never a streamer, and not a music “discoverer”) and I’m perfectly happy with the way it functions in that respect.
    2) If I decide to purchase entire albums, I still want the physical product (LP or CD) over digital download. Credit them for streaming in 320kbps, but it’s still not 16bit/44K.
    3) If I want to download tracks individually, I use eMusic. Cheaper than iTunes, but artists still get reimbursed fairly. (They do not, as far as I have read, with Spotify. In fact for only $10 a month, I don’t see how there can POSSIBLY be enough revenue to compensate artists and labels fairly)
    4) If I want to stream stuff I DON’T own, I use Pandora and am perfectly happy, in fact thrilled with it. The online chatter seems to be in agreement on this. Spotify does not as of yet offer customized “stations” that can compete with Pandora’s. I suppose this could be a doable “fix” though.

    Maybe music in the cloud is an unavoidable future, and for a young person getting into music, maybe it’s appealing. I just don’t see why I would want to jump in now at this point. I’m happy with what i’ve got. Even just dumping my CD collection into iTunes Lossless, or something like SONOS or SOOLOOS would take far more time and hard disk memory than I’ve got right now. It seems the primary motivations for this technology are INSTANT access, and DIRT CHEAP music. Neither of these motivate me. I have never found myself wanting to hear a song instantly. I know Grooveshark does this…but, so what??? I think I went to their site once because I was curious if it really worked. It sure did….but I never came back to the site.
    And again with the economics aspect, I’m surprised anyone would consider $10/month TOO MUCH!!!! You made a good point in the article – it’s the same price as ONE album on iTunes. But THAT’S a problem in my opinion. The record companies that have given us “Dark Side of The Moon”, “Who’s Next”, “The Joshua Tree” etc. simply have no incentive now to invest in the creation of masterpieces like these anymore. I look at what’s out there right now, and what the QUALITY of the productions are, and it seems disappointing – I can’t help but conclude it’s a result of the economics of digital downloading (legal AND illegal). Fleetwood Mac was known to spend over $1,000,000 just to record one album!!! And it PAID OFF! That’s not gonna happen in 2011 unfortunately. I know it won’t change things just because I buy the stinking CD, but it feels better to me.

    Many or most of these issues I suppose can be sorted out eventually. It would be more compelling if they did.

  9. Got is up and running yesterday and I was very impressed… to point of being ready to throw out itunes? Perhaps! I didn’t really mess with the streaming functions much yet, but Spotify was able to rebuild my itunes library in about 2 hours. If I were to do this in itunes it would have taken 36-48 hours… no lie! I’ve done it.

  10. Regarding Last.FM scrobbling the last few days, Last.FM had some server issues that did mess up scrobbling totally. It’s now being fixed.

    Some Spotify pointers, first off try the hidden contextual search which saved my day like artist:scarecrow title:”black door” find all the types in Spotify.com under FAQ section

    About the discovery aspect. There are many other sites that generate suggested songs in a Spotify playlist from any artist you enter or from what you played by using Last.FM and also one (truShuffle) that generate suggested songs on the fly from what you play in Spotify in a auto updated collaboration playlist as you play tracks. 🙂

    Here’s a few links to truly awesome Spotify tips:
    1. http://pansentient.com/2011/02/ten-top-spotify-tips/
    2. http://pansentient.com/2011/05/another-ten-top-spotify-tips/
    3. http://pansentient.com/2011/07/ten-more-top-spotify-tips/

    There are many sited that use Spotify API and I’m sure more will come.

    And finally, here’s an possible new service to create:
    As Spotify does have Last.FM scrobbling it’s quite possible to build an service that build collaboration playlist for each and every genre the user have listened to, by decade, by previous played tracks and so on. Might be an idea for someone to build and eventually sell. Is such case the service would be a awesome discovery/personal radio feature. Might even be possible to have such a service in a business deal with Last.FM for a small subscription fee like 1$ a month. If I was Last.FM I’d go for such a deal as it don’t require any licensing fees to payed to the labels at all, money straight in the bank. 🙂

    I would love such a service and I think many others would as well.

  11. twistedrat: thanks for the info! that trushuffle service is great, already up and running. I will do a follow up on Spotify in the coming months, and definitely include this and the other great tips you linked. Thanks so much for the details.

  12. I’m on board as os this morning. I added my info to the Twibe list. Still trying to figure out some things though. For instance, there is a musical note icon in b/w the Album column & the Added column. What does it mean when the note icon is replaced with an icon that looks like a ripped sheet of paper?

  13. Bryon,

    the ‘note’ icon means that it is a track you own, on your computer, and not a track streaming from Spotify. Should you add that to a playlist you intend on sharing, Spotify will attempt to match it with what they have in their library so others can listen. If there’s no match, it will be unplayable.

    As far as other icon, do you meant the one that looks like a link? I’ve not seen a ripped paper icon.

    the link means that you added something that was unavailable due to licensing restrictions in your country and was replaced with the exact same track that is available. The PROBLEM is that those tracks do not work if you attempt to stream from music systems like Sonos or your iPhone. You can select track, and “Goto Replacement” and add that to your playlist if you want available on all devices and systems.

  14. Thanks for the response, Parker. If you get a chance, take a look at my playlist called From The Work Library (username bryontreece). You’ll see the icon I’m talking about next to the 2nd song. It’s a cover of Sweet Child O’ Mine by Taken By Trees. It’s pink and looks like it signifies something that’s broken, but I can still play the song.

  15. bryon:

    I don’t get that: http://goo.gl/2xR47
    It plays perfectly for me too. Let me see if I can figure out what that icon means. It is very frustrating that Spotify does not have better documentation. Having to piece this all together from different sources.

    By the way: I loved that track!

  16. Interesting. I figured that you wouldn’t be able to hear it. It IS strange that they don’t have some sort of Legend explaining what different symbols/icons mean. Another thing is, when I go to my profile, to the right of each line item under the Playlists heading, there is a rectangular box that appears to be some sort of on/off toggle. The 1st 6 entries show a black vertical line on green background on the left side of the rectangle, but the bottom 6 entries have a black circle on gray background to the left side of the rectangle. I’m just wondering what that means. Any idea??

    And yes…that version of the song is beautiful. Glad you liked it!

  17. Bryon: That symbol indicates if your playlist is available offline or not. If you make them available for offline use, you will not need an internet connection to listen to them in the future. You can toggle back and forth. You need to have Premium membership to enable offline use of Spotify tracks.

  18. Ahhhh….thanks for clueing me in. I’m not ready to make the commitment to paying $10 per month just yet. Just diggin’ on the freebies until I can really get a grasp of it all. Thanks for all of your help, Parker!

  19. “Additionally, after six months of account creation, your account is limited to a maximum of ten hours per month of music streaming. Individual tracks are also limited to five plays each.”

    I have the free account….these limitations don’t exist, in my experience. I don’t know if they changed it since this article was written, but just fyi.

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