Spotlight on Spotify

One minute its all about Twitter, the next everyone is raging on about some exciting new technology that will bind us together and save us from impending doom whilst simultaneously evolving the consumption of music as we know it.

This month it is Spotify, a new proprietary music streaming program developed in Sweden that enables a user to immediately listen to specific tracks or albums by a huge range of artists from major and independent labels.

Using a search engine, music tracks and albums can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists alongside direct searches for artists, titles and genres.

Furthermore, users can set up playlists and share them or edit them collaboratively with other users.
There are a number of websites set up for the purpose of sharing playlists and songs, such as Spotylist.com, where users can share, rate and download compiled lists giving the whole process a sense of community and interaction.

For obvious reasons, it isn’t possible to legitimately save the streamed music for use outside the application, so you must have Spotify open in order to effectively use it as an extensive online jukebox radio. However, a link is provided to allow the listener to directly purchase the material through partner retailers.

At their website, users can download a free version of the software which has periodic advertising played in-between tracks. For a monthly fee of £10, a subscriber becomes a ‘Premium user’ with an ad-free version and a chance to listen to news and previews before other users. A user may also purchase a ‘day pass’, costing 70p for 24 hours of the premium service.

The application features Last.fm integration and there is currently a version of Spotify being developed for the I-phone.

Spotify recently featured a streaming preview of the entire new U2 album in conjunction with The Guardian newspaper website one week in advance of the official release date.

Have your say! Have you used Spotify yet? Will the fact that you can stream tracks as many times as you like discourage illegal downloading? Does Spotify reflect current consumer trends, with people wanting instant access to individual tracks without concern of actually owning the music? Is this the future of listening to music online?