There’s been a few threads on this recently so apologies for adding another. The thing is – as with so many things in this day and age – I can’t decide if I want it or need it.

Media player – I already have one
Discover new music – I’m already discovering more than I can listen to
The social bit – if I find good music I think friends will like I’m already telling them
My music collection, anywhere – this is the bit that intrigues me. Tell me more. How does it differ to iCloud? Is it just that you don’t actually need any proprietary hardware/software, just a browser and some speakers?

Owt else?

Ta

Sounds like you dont need it at all. And you still need to download the software, so more than just a browser.

for me convenience – its easy just to set up playlists ad let them play as well as an easy search function

I’m one of this people who gets on OK with iTunes. I can already set up playlists and search for music. It may be that Spotify is a solution to a problem I don’t have, but I don’t want to be missing out 🙂

how much do you spend a month on digital music?

if its more than a tenner a month get spotify, if it’s not, don’t!

I’ve been asking myself the same question lately. I still haven’t signed up for spotify but I had a play to see if the stuff I listen to is on there and it seems to be mostly. For me it’s about the price, I don’t want to “obtain” music but I’m not paying the price per album for most albums. However, a tenner a month for all the music I want seems pretty reasonable!

if its more than a tenner a month get spotify, if it’s not, don’t!

Sounds like we’re getting to the crux. If I subscribe to Spotify Premium, does that £10 a month allow me to download as much as I want so I have local copies or is it more of a streaming service with some offline syncing?

It certainly sounds like I’m getting nothing I don’t already have unless I go Premium

Tell me more. How does it differ to iCloud?

Do you need iCloud?
Who am I to determine what I need anyway?

Just download the free version, then it doesn’t matter whether you use it regularly or not.

Sounds like we’re getting to the crux. If I subscribe to Spotify Premium, does that £10 a month allow me to download as much as I want so I have local copies or is it more of a streaming service with some offline syncing?

I believe you are free to have offline versions of anything you like which is in your playlists I’ve been meaning to go premium for a year or so now, maybe i will this week.

Do you need iCloud?

No, but the point is that I can have it (for free) compared to paying for Spotify

Just download the free version

I did that a while back and never used it because I couldn’t see what it offered that I didn’t already have, hence the thread.

Quite amusingly, I’m sat listening to it right now and some absolute drivel has come on. I’d searched for an album already on my PC and when that finished something else in Spotify’s results came on that is absolute poop. Maybe this Spotify is not such a good idea after all 😆

I believe you are free to have offline versions of anything you like which is in your playlists I’ve been meaning to go premium for a year or so now, maybe i will this week.

I may but wrong, but are these offline versions only available whilst you are still paying for the Premium service? This is what worries me; spending £10 a month and then losing all that music if I decide not to renew my subscription.

I like it. It’s convenient and, for the price of a CD, pretty much, every month, you get access to as many CDs as you like, so you can have a nibble at stuff without having to buy it. The listening offline thing is pretty good as well. You can also listen to all sorts of pish that you’d never buy, like Christmas albums at Christmas to make the house feel Christmassy.

It has an offline mode so you can store tracks (for up to 3 weeks *I think*) on your phone and computer.

I love it as I can listen to music on my PC at work all day, then listen to music on my commute, then listen to more music when I get home. I can also stream music when out if I want to listen to something new.

I don’t care about not owning the physical product (although I do miss looking at the design and artwork to an extent).

It also frees up ~100€ a month towards my gig/ festival/ beer fund which is far better than handing over money towards EMI execs IMO.

Having lost my entire digital music collection through hard drive failure, Spotify makes perfect sense to me. Never having to worry about storing my music collection is a godsend, plus I sold all my CDs freeing up massive space in the house.

I can’t see the point. It’s useless on a phone when the stairs cap your monthly data allowance, and if they didn’t I’d still be listening to 6Music anyway, and I now work where I can have a radio on, so I have 6Music on a DAB.
At home I have over 100Gb of high bitrate music on my Mac, played through my Yamaha A/V, with a remote on my phone, and through 6Music and The Word’s free sampler CD’s, of which I have over 100, I can’t afford all the music I’m already discovering. I prefer to own my music, not rent it. If anything happened with Spotify, that £120/year would be wasted. I’d rather buy concert tickets and music from iTunes and Amazon, and I can get a CD signed, a download doesn’t allow that.

I may but wrong, but are these offline versions only available whilst you are still paying for the Premium service? This is what worries me; spending £10 a month and then losing all that music if I decide not to renew my subscription.

This is correct as though you are paying £10 a month that only gets you the ability to sync it to an offline device. You never actually own the music, you’re pretty much renting it.

I’m considering going back to the free version as the app on my phone seems to be ridiculously unstable recently, constantly force closes and tries to force facebook integration on me everytime I log in which because of the frequent force closures is far too much. They very rarely update the app on Android and have no official support mechanism, just some **** forum which pretty much gets ignored.

It’s allowed me to discover a boatload of new music but the actual app itself is a PITA.

How much longer is Spotify going to be with us anyway?
why-spotify-can-never-be-profitable-the-secret-demands-of-record-labels/

It’s useless on a phone when the stairs cap your monthly data allowance

hence the offline mode, so you don’t use any data

It’s useless on a phone when the stairs cap your monthly data allowance

I cane my Spotify on the phone every month and I hardly put a dent in my 1Gb allowance

why-spotify-can-never-be-profitable-the-secret-demands-of-record-labels/

^^^ This makes me wish the labels would die a death. Along with keeping new releases from Spotify in order to try and make people buy them instead.

I can’t see the point. It’s useless on a phone when the stairs cap your monthly data allowance, and if they didn’t I’d still be listening to 6Music anyway, and I now work where I can have a radio on, so I have 6Music on a DAB.
At home I have over 100Gb of high bitrate music on my Mac, played through my Yamaha A/V, with a remote on my phone, and through 6Music and The Word’s free sampler CD’s, of which I have over 100, I can’t afford all the music I’m already discovering. I prefer to own my music, not rent it. If anything happened with Spotify, that £120/year would be wasted. I’d rather buy concert tickets and music from iTunes and Amazon, and I can get a CD signed, a download doesn’t allow that.

Don’t use it then.

It’s worth every penny of the ten pound a month, especially if you sync it to work offline on an I pod iPhone or any of the other smart phones that have the spotify app. Think you can have 3000 tracks on I phone available offline at anytime. I’ll never buy or download another track! One thing with the free version is once you’ve listened to a track three times you have to buy it or upgrade! Why not just go for the fiver a month to start with???

Think you can have 3000 tracks on I phone available offline at anytime

This isn’t really a big deal for me. Like I said in the OP, I’ve got too much music to listen to already. It’s been worth asking this question, ‘cos I’ve not yet seen a big advantage to it so I can carry on as I do currently.

My music collection, anywhere – this is the bit that intrigues me. Tell me more. How does it differ to iCloud?

The important bit is it’s not just your music collection. If you get a sudden urge to listen to something over iCloud, if it’s not in your music collection you can’t. You can with Spotify assuming it’s licenced but to be honest only the old dinosaurs like Floyd, Zep etc are the notable artists that won’t entertain Spotify.

I pay a fiver a month for the same-as-free-but-no-adverts version. I stick my starred list on random while I’m marking; for that alone it’s worth the money.

Have you paid for any albums / tracks recently you wish you hadn’t?

There’s good stuff about Spotify, that’s clear. I do like to buy music though, so I think the best compromise is to just use free Spotify and put up with the ads, then just buy stuff I like if and when I hear it. I generally prefer CDs to downloads anyway.

Knowing me quite well (obviously) my fear is that I’ll pay for Spotify and still spend the same amount on music as I did beforehand, so I can’t see it saving me any money.

Have you paid for any albums / tracks recently you wish you hadn’t?

Not really, ‘cos it’s so easy to review music these days before you buy.

I love it.

I get to listen to loads of new music. I try stuff I probably would not have given a chance if I had to buy it too.

Someone says have you heard so and so, I go and listen to it, its brilliant.

I use it on my phone in the gym and on my squeezebox at home.

I use it for a couple of things:

Sampling albums, if I like them after a couple of listens I’ll tend to buy the album.

Listening to stuff I wouldn’t otherwise buy, the sort of thing you might listen to once every few years. Last week I fancied hearing “Ernie” by Benny Hill. I doubt I’ll want to listen to that again for a while and I certainly wouldn’t have tracked down a copy to buy but I was able to scratch that (slightly odd) itch.

Also quite like the “we are hunted” app for introducing me to new stuff.

If there was an app that listed all newly released singles and albums every week that would be perfect.

This is what worries me; spending £10 a month and then losing all that music if I decide not to renew my subscription.

It’s not your music. You are just paying to listen to it, not own it.
If you want to own your won copies, then don’t bother with spotify.

If however, you just want to listen to just about anything whenever you want, and don’t want to go to the hassle of buying/storing/transferring etc your music, then get spotify.

I use it, as others have said I sync my starred play list to my phone and it’s always there, with new tracks updated as and when.

Sound quality is a bit gash though, might be my phone.

I pay premium. £10pm is a fair bit but I think I get my money worth.

its great for:

– the range of stuff and speed of access
– surfing from artist to artist. E.g. I’ll do something like go from Miles Davis to Underworld via the ‘related artists’ links, picking 1 full albumn from each releated.
– those long lost things you fancy listening to again
– when you’ve got that song in your head, you can just pull it up and listen to it
– new, or at least new to you, music

I don’t care what my facebook friends listen to, none of them who are on spotify share my taste in music.

llama, can’t you get all that for £5 a month?

Sound quality is a bit gash though, might be my phone.

You can change the bitrate quality for both sync and stream> i think the default is low.

I want it on my phone too

Don’t use it then.

I don’t. Precisely my point.

*UPDATE*

For anyone remotely interested, I signed up for the free 30 day Premium trial and it is rather good. I just need to decide if it is £9.99 a month good, but it’s great listening to albums that I have on vinyl but can’t be bothered to rip to MP3 and I’ve discovered some excellent new music to add to the mounting pile of new music to be listened to.

Currently listening to 808 State’s Ex:El for a proper blast from the past (the first gig I went to without parents no less!).

I find it interesting that due to the convenience of MP3 and streaming services like Spotify people are happy to take a massive backwards step in terms of audio quality. I suppose it’s because music is generally “background noise” these days – no-one sits down and just listens any more.