Firstly, a very Happy New Year to anyone who has read any of my posts over the past year!
This Christmas period I saw for the first time what the fuss about Spotify is actually all about! I've posted before on Last.fm and how I instinctively preferred a web-based model for music streaming and would persevere along that route. Despite having an invitation for Spotify, and even signing up, I hadn't really ventured near it.
That changed when it came to putting up Christmas decorations. As usual, we knew in the flat there was a Christmas album or two of debatable quality and that we'd like to dig it out to accompany the putting up of Christmas decorations. However after a brief search no CD was forthcoming. It occurred to me that there would probably be an album or two on Spotify so I dug the laptop out, hooked it up to the aux port of the iPhone speaker system and searched.
Searching was simply. 'Christmas Music' brought back a host of differing results; traditional to contemporary, some really good, some awful! The lead time between search and playing is extremely quick and the more familiar I became with Spotify, the better the music I was able to chose. A search for 'Traditional Christmas Music' gave an instant playlist of Carols and other choral numbers. Similarly 'Rat Pack Christmas' was a good search as it found all the Christmas numbers recorded by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby et al.
These simple searches gave hours of play that were really effective as background music around the festive period, especially when we had people round. The vast back catalogue of music Spotify has allowed the laptop to be passed around and other music selected which was also a nice touch. It's not a new concept; going through friend's music collection from vignal to CD or the iPod is a common past time, but with Spotify the choice is impressively wider.
The second use I found for it was for a family party at new year. I was informed a younger contingent had requested amongst others Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Pixie Lott. In my defense I'd heard of two of the three and even walked past Taylor Swift at V Festival during the summer! Spofity was excellent in accommodating these requests. A search of each artist gave an impressive list of songs which could be dragged into a playlist and set to shuffle and repeat. Job done. Later in the evening once again the laptop was passed around and songs added to the queue in the playlist. I'm not sure Pixie Lott will following The Smiths in many people's playlists!
The positives of Spotify have genuinely impressed me and I will use it more in the future. I can see myself checking out new music there before buying it as being a traditionalist of sorts I like to own music and believe it's important to buy music.
There were, however, some notable drawbacks of Spotify. Regardless of the standard line that the adverts 'aren't very noticeable and don't come along very often' I did find them intrusive and annoying. I'm minded that I'm not a fan of commercial radio because of the adverts so I know I'm not particularly objective. I also found the visual adverts that would occupy the entire screen were extremely annoying because there didn't seem to be any obvious way to deal with them. Again maybe I was just missing something? In Spotify's defense there is a premium subscription for people like me who don't like the adverts, and the iPhone application that comes with this subscription is attractive, but at the moment I can not justify the expenditure. I guess that means I'll put up with the adverts.
Again I'd reiterate that a web-based application would be ideal and would greatly improve the appeal of the service. However the quality of continuous playback over WiFi using a client application is exceptional so I guess that is a price worth paying.
My friend who introduced me to Spotify was right: Last.fm does seem so 2008 (said in 2008)! It's got a lot of work to do to either catch up or significantly differential itself. One note on Last.fm, it does now incorporate copious adverts so at least a commercial platform is being established.
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