REVIEW: Spotify
August 3, 2011 Leave a comment
Hello internet people! 😀
I’m starting off my new batch of reviews by reviewing a piece of software that has quite literary changed my life!
That software is Spotify. (Let me point out this review is looking at version: 0.5.2.84.g6d797eb9). For those of you who haven’t heard what Spotify is, I’ll give you a quick explanation, in my own words.
Spotify is a music streaming service, well that’s is main use anyway. Very similar to services such as We7, and Pandora (for the American market); it offers a massive catalogue of music spanning many labels big ones (like Universal, Sony, Capitol etc.) and even those little ‘self-released’ albums found on marketplaces like CDBaby or the Amazon MP3 Market Place. The service when I started using it, was free to use; but since May 2011 there was a dire need for me to buy “Unlimited” with all the limitations been slapped on the ‘free’ membership. There is currently a higher subscription named “Premium” which allows you to stream to mobile devices, and offline playlists amongst other benefits. The service is brought to you through an installed ‘browser’, in which you log in and then it will synchronize you’re saved playlists etc. Okay so to avoid rambling I’m going to segment this review:
The software itself…
Personally, I like the GUI and browser that is provided. It’s very simplistic (at times maybe too simplistic?) with a grey colour scheme which looks rather modern. You are given three basic controls in the bottom left hand side, Previous, Play and Forward. Shuffle and Repeat toggle buttons are to the right hand side, with the seek bar in the middle. The seek bar is rather responsive and of good width – this sounds weird I know but some seek bars I’ve used are about 2px wide and impossible to use. Searching for music is easy, the search bar is in the top left hand side of the screen, with two Back and Forward buttons adjacent to it (which work exactly like those found in any web browser). When a term is entered into the search bar it will search all fields (Title, Artist, Album, Label… can’t think of any other sections), but to refine this, or perform what is usually denoted as an Advanced Search, you must enter a prefix of the field you are searching for (i.e. “Track:The Bay” will show all tracks with the word’s “The Bay” in the title). I think this should be made a bit more easier, with maybe a set Advanced Search screen, or an extra drop-down function. On the topic of screens, Spotify never (well not in my use) has never been more than just one window, as it is designed with frames instead of conventional windows. The software is a bit slow to start on some days, but I know it has an ‘auto-update’ feature that it runs on initiate – the only problem I’ve had was about a month ago, it would crash on log-in – which required a re-install.
The screen-dump from when Spotify last crashed
On the topic of crashing, Spotify rarely crashes, with it only ever crashing intermittently during an update or log-in; which usually disappears on a restart. Another good feature of the software, is that upon closing the browser window, the player rests itself back down in the taskbar with controls being accessed via a right-click. The update at the start of 2011 also saw integration with the aero-peek controls, similar to those you find when using other music library software such as Media Player or iTunes. Playlists are stored to the left hand side of the window, and now with the introduction of Playlist Folders, my never-ending lists can sit looking pretty! To the right hand-side is the social-bar, which will display your friends who have Spotify (i.e. if you’ve linked with Facebook) and you can click on them and delve into their playlists, and send them songs. This can be hidden though, which is how it usually is in my case (I suffer from having a small 4:3 19″ monitor, so I need all the horizontal space I can get).
Spotify front-page
The Content…
I’ve never had any quibbles with the content provided on Spotify. The library is massive, and is expanding every day! I use Spotify to listen to albums before buying/downloading, which has actually stopped all my illegal downloading activity! I make a lot of playlists of music albums to listen to, and dip in and out of them as I please. When trawling through music magazines, tapping in the album titles, Spotify usually has it there to listen to. I have to be careful, sometimes they won’t have the new releases (i.e. it took them about a month or two to provide Wild Beast’s new album “Smother” – but this looked to be a problem with the label, Domino Records) or they will only have half of an album (which was the case with Plan B’s The Defamation of Strickland Banks upon release). Some of the big bands are still a no-show on the database available for the UK, such as AC/DC, Metallica and The Beatles – but maybe one day this will be resolved. The only thing that you’ll be hard to find on here is very old electronic/hip-hop releases that may have only been released as a single; but sometimes these will pop-up on some strange compilation by the record label. Sometimes albums will be available on week and disappear the next , or if you are pursuing an artists discography, some how the 5th album they released is now “not available in your country“. Audio quality is pretty reasonable for my liking, all the music is either quite clearly sent to the Spotify Team by record labels from their ‘digital archives;, or ripped from CD’s – the streaming quality comes in somewhere near 192kbps VBR or something similar (don’t hold me to that!), which is perfect quality for streaming through my ancient mid-market Hi-Fi. 320kbps streaming is available to those on Premium subscriptions. The odd release will be in terrible quality, usually cheap, budget re-issues are akin to this (I found a Buddy Holly album which sounded like it was recorded in a sewer) – although the only album I’ve found to be completely corrupt is Hed P.E’s Only In Amerika album which jumps every odd second. The only last issue I have with the content is sometimes the database is a bit messy, for example if you want to find music by the band Belle & Sebastian, you will have two results Belle & Sebastian and Belle and Sebastian, same band – but really need to be merged. Another thing is when searching for a particular artist whose name is rather common, you may end up with many different ‘artists’ all with the same name in one profile, and example of that is here for the french band AaRON (Artificial Animals Riding On Neverland), who also share their profile with a spanish guy named Aarón, a mass of electronic artists, an ambience group and a pianist.
Mismatched artist profiles in Spotify
The service…
The service from Spotify from me has always been satisfactory. Although I’ve never required to contact their customer support; I’m sure they will be most helpful when I do. As I now am an ‘Unlimited’ subscriber I pay my £5 a month (which for the fact I use Spotify more than I use my television service is a great price!) which is deducted from my account on the first of every month via PayPal. Although my recent dealings with PayPal haven’t been great (attempting to take double payments out of my account! :@) there has never been a problem. The music never splutters or judders around (depending on your internet connection of course!), and the servers seem to always be operational. The only thing that mildly pee’s me off is that if you are playing a track and you want to ‘replay’ it, by double-clicking the track, the first second or two is cut off – but I’ve since gotten used to this minor inconvenience.
Spotify subscription comparison chart (August 2011)
Other little things…
Spotify are continuously adding little things to make the experience all that bit better – lets hope they don’t do a Microsoft or Apple and keep adding stuff that’s not needed, and annoys everyone who uses it *cough*Genius*cough*…. *cough*UAC*cough*! Little things they’ve added, which I haven’t already mentioned include:
Share To.. – found from right clicking on an artist, album, or track – allows you to share it to your Facebook friends, and spam their news feeds with what you’re listening to. There is also a function to add a comment to the post – very useful if you’re trying to promote your new favourite band! This feature has always worked (aside from the fact it doesn’t support carriage return), and can sometimes provoke some interesting conversations on Facebook! You can also choose to share it to Messenger (Microsoft that is, if you still use it of course), or Twitter.
An example of Spotify’s social plug-ins, in conjunction with Facebook
Last.fm – under preferences you can choose to link Spotify with Last.fm (who do not supply a specific plug-in for Spotify, unlike say iTunes or WMP) which I’ve found is a nice little touch.
Radio – although I’ve used it a few times, its been a reasonable experience when I have. Built from different rules you set (you can toggle genres/styles and the decade of the music) Spotify creates a ‘infinite’ list of tracks to play. Although not as powerful as say that provided by Last.fm, as you will find yourself either going round in circles (“hey I’ve just had a song by The Horrors!”) and slightly mismatched styles (The Prodigy coming up in a ‘ROCK’ search)… so you won’t find any new music, and you’re not in to receive the mix offered by a ‘real’ radio station – but it works for some lazy listening.
Spotify radio – mismatched styles?
What’s New – this is what shows when Spotify starts – it displays a wall of about 20 new additions to the database. Usually from big artists (you’ll be overwhelmed with the amount of times you see artists from yesteryear appearing with their ‘Golden Hits’ albums) or big upcoming artists. The wall displays a range of compilations, singles, EP’s and albums. I do owe it to this function a lot, and for an artist to be featured here is extremely great for popularity – for example I found the wonderous Thomas Dybdahl’s debut “Songs” before official release on here – so a quick thumb through is worth it, just don’t bother with what looks like you’d find in a Charity Shop’s 10p bin.
iPod – Spotify is adamant to become a music library program (like iTunes, WinAmp, or WMP) but has a long, long way to go before that happens (seeing as there’s no way of editing your ‘local’ files ID3 tags!). But in a bid to get ahead, it has integrated iPod support. Which personally I HATE. I wish you could turn this off, because if I have Spotify open, and plug-in my age-old iPod Video Spotify being the nimble-footed program it is, gets in before iTunes and goes “HEY, SYNC ME” – which I don’t want to do at all. And iTunes just sits there all oblivious with no clue that I’ve plugged an iPod in. So I usually have to close Spotify, reset the iPod which has since crashed, and then it appears in iTunes (10 this is).
Spotify’s iPod support page can cause problems
Those are the main points really I wanted to cover with Spotify. Aside from the occasional start-up problem, and the dodgy iPod support – I really do recommend Spotify; defiantly to those wanting to find a cheap way to listen to music legally, or find new music. Give the free subscription a try, it’s completely free – you will however have to put up with adverts (which i’ve missed from this review ><), and the occasional “HEY UPGRADE YOU CHEAPSKATE” message.
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