Spotify the difference (spotify.com)

Member Name: davidbuttery

Product:	spotify.com
Date:	25/10/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Massive free music library, almost instant playback, free and legal

Disadvantages: Some notable omissions, adverts, will it last?

Spotify is, in many ways, the legal music application users have waited for since the emergence of Napster (in its pirate incarnation) more than a decade ago. Whether or not it will last ten years itself is another question, of course. The title of this category is slightly misleading, incidentally, since for the most part it's unnecessary to go anywhere near the website itself once the initial download process is over, unless you want to upgrade to the paid version.

I should say before going any further that I am reviewing almost entirely the computer-hosted version of Spotify here: recently it has become available for smartphones such as the iPhone, but I have no experience of those. The computer-based download page offers native versions for Windows (XP or better) and Mac OS (10.4 or better), but Linux is supported indirectly by running the Windows version together with the Wine compatibility layer; I do this myself and have found it reliable.

Spotify offers either a free, advertising supported service (to which you need an invite from an existing member, though sometimes Spotify drops this requirement) or a "premium" option which costs £9.99 a month and removes adverts as well as giving priority access to new tracks, an offline listening option and better sound quality. (It's worth noting that this is expensive in the UK compared to the Euro9.99 charged in most of Europe.) The smartphone app does not offer the free version. Because of licensing restrictions, Spotify is not available in some countries (most notably the United States) and not all songs are available everywhere, though the UK has one of the best ranges.

Once you've completed the simple registration process and run the client, you see a screen which will look eerily familiar to users of iTunes. On the left is a space for playlists and, at the top, a search box; in the middle is the main window where track lists will appear, and at the bottom and on the right are spaces for advertising to be displayed; this seems to come and go almost at random! Naturally, premium users will not see these adverts.

Spotify's search capabilities are adequate if a little limited. You can use the usual range of modifiers (for example, "Blur NOT Parklife") and you can combine several fields in one request (for example, "Queen year:1983"), but there isn't actually a proper advanced search, which can make finding certain tracks rather a frustrating, hit-and-miss affair. Results are shown in the main window, with track name, artist name, track length and album name appearing. There is also a bar showing the "popularity" of each track and, for many songs, a button to press to buy it via 7digital.

Playing a track is very simple: double-click on the track name and off you go. Spotify works on a peer-to-peer streaming basis, with an encoded cache held on each user's computer and data uploaded at the same time as music is being downloaded for play. This is rather similar to a torrent network, but there is no way of configuring settings: you do it Spotify's way or you don't use Spotify. The advantage of this method is that tracks will start to play almost instantly, without the wait associated with conventional downloading.

Sound quality is perfectly acceptable for most uses, with music streamed in Ogg Vorbis format at about 160 kbps to free users. Those who have very picky ears (so to speak) may prefer the 320 kbps available to premium users, but I clearly don't have that level of discernment and find the free level to be entirely adequate. There is no way of downloading streaming files on the free service (well, not without some fiddly workarounds) and so each time you play a track it streams, no matter how often you have played it before. Premium users on both computer and smartphone now have the option of storing up to 3,333 tracks for offline listening.

The range of music available is outstanding. A search using the phrase "year:0-9999" will return every track available, and when I looked a moment ago there were over five million! This number will vary a bit as artists and labels change their agreements with Spotify, but the general trend seems to be upwards. There is a huge breadth, too: every genre you can think of (including a massive selection of classical music) is represented. It cannot be denied, however, that some major artists are missing: The Beatles are the most notorious omission from the online music world, but nor can you find the likes of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC or Oasis here - though it seems that in Oasis's case, their music *is* available in some other countries.

Playlists are supported with Spotify, and can be linked to using a special spotify:// protocol which browsers can be configured to recognise. Single tracks can also be linked in this way, but there is no provision for exporting a playlist to a simple text file, along the lines of the .m3u files used by the likes of Winamp. Playlists can be shared on a couple of official Spotify sites, but the (seemingly deliberate) omission of a plain-text playlist export is infuriating, and one of the biggest black marks against Spotify's name.

Talking of negatives... yes. it's time to discuss the dreaded adverts. Actually, for the most part I haven't found them particularly intrusive. The visual ads are (obviously) silent and so simply closing the client will get them off the screen. Every so often, though, you will have to sit through a radio-style sound ad (complete with countdown timer) before you are allowed to listen to any more music. These seem to turn up almost randomly: you can go without one for over an hour, then get two in the space of three tracks.

The main concern for the future of Spotify must be whether its remarkable business model can actually make money in the long term. At the time of writing it is by far the best free music player available, and the free service is good enough (and the premium service dear enough!) that there is little incentive for most people to shell out for the upgrade. Some artists have complained that they receive inadequate licensing fees for the use of their music, and there do not so far seem to be all that many advertisers.

However, while Spotify is available in its current form, I recommend it without hesitation. It's not perfect, and the lack of some big-name artists is frustrating, but where else can you get five million tracks near-instantly and for free? Nowhere. In a short space of time, it has become one of the handful of applications that is accepted almost without argument as an essential download.

Summary: Revolutionary music software that everyone should have