Spotify - First Impressions
The social media hype machines have been playing up the arrival of Spotify in the United States for quite some time. Now that it’s finally made it stateside, I’d like to share some of my impressions of the service after playing around for a few hours with it.
Spotify works by doing two things. First, it allows you to easily import all of your music into Spotify. You can easily sync it with your mobile devices, but that requires premium to use. This allows you to access your music collection on the go, great for anyone with the appropriate auxiliary setup in their car.
As for finding music, Spotify utilizes a great search feature. You can easily find whatever you’re looking for and easily stream it. I haven’t had any hiccups playing any of the songs I wanted to, and it seems to bring up exactly what you want, as opposed to say, Pandora. Granted, the two services were founded on two different principles, but still sometimes it’s nice to be able to listen to whatever is stuck in your head on demand.
However, the difference between Pandora and Spotify is one of Spotify’s problems. You can easily find what you want but only if you know exactly what it is. There is no “similar track” feature to find songs that are similar to the one that you want. This seems like a bit of a blunder, but it’s not necessarily a dealkiller.
Another problem I have is that the music catalogue can be a little spotty. Like with most services that require content, the licensing issues cause for some end-user dissatisfaction, but that’s par for the course. For instance, it’s no problem finding anything on the top 40′s and any remix that’s ever been made of one of those songs, but you might run into some issues if you’ve got a less mainstream taste. Similarly, some popular bands’ older albums aren’t offered by the service. However, if you already have your “obscure” music on your hard drive, then Spotify will be able to bring that into the program for you. All-in-all, it’s a bit inconsistent with what’s available and what isn’t, but it’s certainly better than trolling YouTube trying to find some random poor-quality upload of your favorite song.
The social feature is nice. It’s great to be able to show off as much or as little of your music as you want - just make sure your Valentine’s Day mix-tapes stay private. Sharing is relatively easy with anyone else who has Spotify which is admittedly a fairly small population right now. I’m sure when the service opens up to the public at large this feature will be one of Spotify’s best.
These are just some initial impressions. I haven’t upgraded to premium yet. It seems like a great service, and I’d like to explore it further. I just thought I’d post some of my early thoughts for any of you who haven’t been able to get into the service yet.
NOTE: I did not test out the mobile functionality because there is not a client for BlackBerry. I realize that one of Spotify’s strengths is in mobile.
UPDATE: While I was writing this post, it did play a commercial for Party Rock Anthem totally randomly. Eh.
UPDATE 2: There doesn’t seem to be anything to indicate the last time you listened to a song like in iTunes. Not a big thing, just a little bizarre to leave out.
UPDATE 3: So I just discovered that there is in fact a related artists feature that I had said they had not included. However, as of this moment I’m looking at the iconic Billie Holliday’s related artists and literally nothing is showing up, I think there might be a few kinks that they may need to work out in the system. Ghostface Killah does have a bunch of related artists though, so I suppose it’s a bit hit or miss on it working.
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