Jul 192011
I got my Spotify account notice this afternoon and set it up about an hour ago (free version). Every song I tried to play was available (including our friends Thin Lizzy) and I have yet to hear a commercial. Sound quality is fantastic. It also went through my iTunes and added all of my music for use in playlists. This blows Pandora out of the water (and I am a big Pandora Fan, my Badfinger Station logs many hours at work).
Dylan was the only artist that had restrictions that I ran into. I could play songs that I had on my computer, but there was very little available outside of these records.
…and no Beatles. George Harrison has just Cloud Nine and Brainwashed…OK, I am finding SOME holes in their collection.
Anyone else have this?
I have it, but I’m almost too tired to try to figure out all of the new bells and whistles. I’m set in my ways and don’t want to have to work to figure out how to best use yet another music platform.
Sincerely,
Old Man
What? Huh? Couldnt hear you over the music from turntable.fm.
I registered for a free Spotify account too, we’ll see how it goes. I can’t bear Pandora for long. It plays weird selections and I hate the ads.
Did I mention turntable? I’m utterly addicted. If anybody else is on, there should totally be a RTH room. Gotta run, I’m DJ’ing.
cher, I tried to get on that turntable.fm site per your recommendation, but the ENTER link, or whatever it was, is never active. Then, after trying a few times I got a virus – probably a coincidence – but my work computer has been especially funky with RTH ever since. Arrrgggghhhh! I hope to one day figure out what all this stuff is and whether it’s for me. I keep getting recommendations to listen to try Pandora – and now I guess I’ll get Spotify recommendations. I’m always afraid with these things that some computer program is going to “read” my tastes and start shoving Tommy Tutone records down my throat because I like that “New Wave” guy, Elvis Costello. What happened to the days when we could be satisfied criticizing new music after 30-second samples on Amazon and eMusic?
I’ve had spotify free for about a year and a half, and moved up to the commercial-free pay version in the spring. It’s definitely a great resource. You can find a lot relatively obscure music on it and that alone is worth the cost of admission. It does have some distinct limitations besides those listed above when it comes to content from the heavy hitters. No Zeppelin. No Pink Floyd. Just to name a couple noteworthy examples. Also, some tracks are unavailable on LPs Spotify otherwise carries. For instance, No “Mountain Jam” or “Whippin’ Post” on any of the Allman Brothers LPs that feature this track. And that’s rough. They’re the reasons I listen to the Allman Bros!
What about Grooveshark?
I made a Rock Town Hall room last night, before I saw your post. Look for it!
A friend of mine reports that she’s found a lot of re-recordings on Spotify, especially 1960s country, not that most here will care about that..
Comcast used to offer ad-free Pandora as part of their internet package, and I tried it for a while. I thought it was OK, but I lost interest after a month or two when I found myself skipping too many songs either because I didn’t like them or because they were already too familiar. Last.fm suffered from mediocre sound quality and too much repetitiveness. If I listen to streaming music now, it’s usually some sort of “specialist” channel, like The Psychedelic Web of Sound for late ’60s rock or Stellar or Starstream for prog. I’ve put in a request to Spotify – we’ll see.
On Spotify you select all your music. There is no set list as such–just what you select to listen to. I usually listen to whole LPs from a particular artist, but I’m sure you can create a list of singles from assorted artists as long as you want it to be. But since I don’t listen to music that way I’m not sure one way or another. One thing I’ll say is that Spotify could definitely work on making the interface more intuitive and efficient. I’m sure there’s lots of features I haven’t discovered because I just don’t have the patience to fiddle around like that.
What is this “internet” thing, anyway? Is there any future in it?
too much of this morning has been spent on Spotify (need to get back to work!)
So far, a 30 second commerical every 5 songs or so. It captured my itunes list, so I can stream anything that is (a) on my home itunes AND (b) in their database from my work computer.
Played The Byrds 5th Dimenson this morning and Neil Young Harvest remastered. Both sound very good on Spotify.
Also discovered that I had opted in on CD Baby for Spotify many moons ago, and so all of my original music (The Luxury Kings, Rocksploitation, The Stonesouls) is available. Not sure how I feel about that right now (how do I get paid?, will this kill the occasional cd I sell online?)
If you are on your main computer (the one with your itunes playlist) it wil inegrate your music into the options (so you would have YOUR Led Zeppelin tracks from your hard drive available in spotify) this is best for playlists.
I’m here now:
http://turntable.fm/tenure_tracks
Current theme is: Songs that mention years that were in the future (or present) when written, but are now in the past. So far we’ve heard:
1985. Month of May. 1984. Heat of the Moment. The Everyday Story of Smalltown. Pop Song 89. Disco 2000.
And I’m not getting much else accomplished…
the itunes capture is just a playlist titled “iTunes”
I am waiting for my Spotify free invite. I was on Rhapsody for years — and then switched full-time to MOG, where I had a free subscription for a year and now pay $9.95 a month. MOG has includes mobile streaming via my Android phone, so it has most everything I need, but I will give Spotify a chance. MOG does not have any interface with iTunes, so I’m interested to see how that works — and it looks like I could save $5 a month.
I don’t think any of the streaming services have Pink Floyd or Zep yet — and forget about The Beatles.
the beatles channel on most of these things is garbage anyway: too much elton john and billy joel in the mix.
but ask it to make a velvet underground or stooges channel, and you’re in awesomenessville.
i’ll be firing up my spotify this afternoon as i do some yard work.
should be interesting.
I got my invite to Spotify last night. Only explored it a little bit. Not sure if I like it. I’m primarily a last.fm person, although we also have Pandora on our new Roku player for our TV, which is cool. I still really miss Lala.com.
https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/index.php/help-me-lala-rock-town-hall/
I can’t connect to it. It says try again, or I might have a firewall issue. Do I have to forward ports or open one up?
I guess I gotta catch up. I use records, cd’s and an mp3 player with my own mp3’s on it. I don’t have a computer hooked up to my stereo very often, just when I’m ripping vinyl.
It doesn’t support Opera.
Asshats.
I would never have guessed you were an opera buff.
I had lost my copy of David Lee Roth’s Eat Em And Smile that was recorded in Spanish (!) and they had it on Spotify (title: Sonrisa Salvaje). One of my favorite hard rock records (not that hard, but you know what I mean) and it’s BETTER in spanish
Deal-killer on the free version! There I was, listening to Supagroup — a hard-rockin’ band that will cause EPG to hate me even more — and an ad for some total fluffer singer-songwriter came on. With 30 seconds of awful music to sit through! No dice!