Spotify next generation explained

It's a shame that it isn't available legally in the US of A. I have to VPN into Sweden every couple of weeks to keep my account active. I'd be more than willing to pay a premium fee... but even that won't work, your address has to be in the country of your account.<p>Reasons I enjoy Spotify so much...<p>* Their client is super quick and simple<p>* Songs load essentially instantly, it's like they're local.<p>* They have an Android/iPhone client.<p>* You can create playlists and sync them for offline play.<p>Unfortunately, for those last two items, you need a premium account. I want to give them my money, why won't they take it! =(

Spotify doesn't seem to work where I live, so I use Grooveshark instead.<p>Grooveshark has a gigantic library of music and instant streaming. Recommendation engine works well, and you can explore the playlists of other users to discover new music. I'm not sure how Grooveshark can stream music to everybody for free (or almost free for pro users), but as long as it exists I'll be a happy user.

I love Spotify and think it's an amazing service, but have recently started wondering if it's just as bad for artists as AllOfMp3. After reading about Lady Gaga earning close to nothing for 1 million plays, I'm not sure if it's a service that we should continue to support that much. If 1 million plays don't earn you any money, what's the incentive for less well-known artists?<p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/spotify-1-million-plays-163108-return-1944051.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/s...</a>

I won't be using Spotify. Spotify is partly owned by the music industry, who acquired their shareholding not by stumping up money like the other investors, but by threatening them with lawsuits unless they were given free shares. (As an aside, wanna guess what percentage of profits the music industry make out of this will go to musicians? I suspect fuck all).<p>Iniquitous as that is, it's not my reason for boycotting Spotify. The reason is that the music industry want to destroy my freedom, and helping them in any way makes it easier for them to do this. They want to be judge, jury and executioner over anyone's right to have an internet connection, and they want all computing hardware to be locked down like the iPad.<p>Well I don't want that future. And if you don't want it too, I suggest you never buy anything from the RIAA/IFPI, and explain to all your friends why it's in their interests not to either.

It seems like quite a lot of tracks has disappeared in this update as well. :/

been playing with the new features for the last 20 minutes. it's amazing. most importantly, you can stop using itunes except for podcasts

Very nice update, but local files don't work on linux/under wine: <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/spotify_under_wine_unable_to_playback_local_files" rel="nofollow">http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/spotify_under_wine...</a> That's a bit of a letdown, especially since it's intentional.

Something I noticed while running the new version the first time: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanhalin/4556877903/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanhalin/4556877903/</a><p>In other words, uncheck that if you don't want Spotify modifying your tags in your audio files.

One thing that I noticed in your inbox is the filter option, "Only show items from people I follow". Does that mean that you can send songs to other peoples inboxes that your are not friends with? Opportunity to spam music?

Well, it's really too bad they haven't introduced better playlist-management. That's the one thing their client is lacking the most.

I dislike Spotify for the following reasons:<p>* The music industry is a major shareholder. Spotify is great for them because they can continue as gatekeeper and make Spotify a worse proposition to artists not signed to any of the big four.<p>* Artists not signed to the big four does, in fact, get a lot less per play than the big four get when their music is being played. So if I am a premium subscriber, and only listening to "indie" artists, the big four will still get my money.<p>* Artists have to go through digital distribution channels such as RouteNote and DittoMusic to get their music onto Spotify. Why not let them upload their own music directly?<p>* The big four bought their share in the company (around 5% each) for chump change.<p>* It is a lot easier to censor music when it's all in the same streamlined interface.

With no Mac at hand, I'd like a native app for Linux, instead of wine stuff.

Great looking update. I'm very excited to try Spotify once it comes to the US (hopefully sometime this year?).

Great look at the new featureset. Thanks! Can’t wait to try it out

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