David Noël

Spotify Invites →

Still waiting for a Spotify invite? Fear not, click the link above and you’ll be in fast-tracked into Spotify heaven. 

If you’re so inclined, thank @shak on Twitter 

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Spotify gets social, introduces:

• Profiles
• Facebook Connect to add your friends from Facebook
• Subscripion of your friends’ playlists
• A friend feed
• Library feature that imports tracks from your harddrive library via links

More on MusicAlly

On Spotify

A few weeks ago, MSG asked me to write about the “awesomesauce around Spotify”. I’ve been sitting on Michael’s request for far too long.

So what can I say about Spotify other than it has become one of the (web) applications I use most? Not that much aside from: I use it every day, all day. It’s my go-to-place to listen to music I discover here on Tumblr or Hype Machine. To my surprise, 99% of my search queries have returned results, their catalogue keeps growing and you’ll find most of the newer and less-known music and a huge back-catalogue.

The three main features are Search, Browse and Playlists. Here’s how I use it:

Rather than pure playlists, I use them as folders:

• Albums: here’s where I archive albums that I have listened to for a while, just like your main iTunes
• To Listen: this is where I add albums that I come across but yet still to check out in more detail. Once I’ve done this, I move them to the Albums folder.
• Sweets: single tracks I enjoy. This is probably my only real playlist and it’s pretty long
• Tronics: all things electronic, a playlist for weekend nights
• Hardcore/Punk: where I collect albums and tracks I rediscovered from my teenage years.
• Classics: a place for the old-timers
• Steel: if you remember Pedal Steel Week you’ll know I have an obsession for steel guitars and banjos. This is where it’s at.

Additionally, I saved two collaborative playlists with classical music from my co-worker Matas, who knows everything about classical music.

So that’s it, you ask?

At this point, yes that works for me. Spotify has integrated some social features (like sharing links to Twitter, Delicious and Facebook), the most native feature being the ability to create playlists together with other users. Set up a public playlist and let your friends drop your tracks in there, updated in real-time.

Now, Spotify hasn’t officially launched in Germany so at this point I don’t miss the social aspect at all. I’m curious to see if and what way that will change once my trusted musical allies (yes, you Tumblrs!) get to join the awesomesauce (love that word).

The Home screen is where Spotify feature album and artist suggestions but I barely use it. It’s one of the weaker elements of the service but I don’t mind since I don’t use the home screen to discover music.

They offer an offline version which, in theory, is awesome - if you have an iPhone. I’m still on a Nokia E71 and even tough their Symbian app is pretty damn solid, I use my iPod instead.

Recently, they’ve rolled out their recommendation engine ‘Related Artists’. This is pretty cool. I haven’t used it much yet - instead, I’ve been using a cool app named Find The Band that was built during Music Hack Day in Stockholm. Type in an artist name and based on its data on last.fm, it suggests similar artists and links right into Spotify.

All that said, I am a huge fan and even though I received a free “beta” account, I was happy to pay 120€/$160 right after getting the invitation. It has yet to be seen if Spotfiy can scale its business model globally and compete with other cats like Mog or Grooveshark (which I’ve never used) but until then, I am a happy subscriber and want to see them succeed.

If you ask me, anyone who wouldn’t lay down $160 for a year full of unlimited online & offline music is crazy.

Update: hot-linked into some of my folders. If you have Spotify, you can now access the playlists.

Update: an important point I forgot to mention in the first place: Spotify uses a peer-to-peer network to stream content. It is extremely fast and instant. Read more about it here.

Update: looking for more apps & mash-ups, lists etc built with the Spotify API? Check out their extensive resources.

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Now here’s a great app that I personally find very useful and on top of that, what a great tag line:

At last.fm I can spotify similar artists!

Type in an artist name and it will pull last.fm data to recommend similar artists available in Spotify. Check it out.

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Spotify iPhone app is a go. You’ll need to be a Premium user to get it. TechCrunch Europe has a round-up here.