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Spotify vs the US Competition

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Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#81

Post by parbo »

socksy wrote: post #51

Out of interest, does Spotify (the free version) for US have the 5 plays limit on each song? Having limited numbers of hours I can deal with, but after they introduced limited plays on Spotify, I practically never used it again after my premium account ran out. The 5 plays doesn't appear to renew at the end of the month like the number of hours, and it just means that my playlists have more and more holes in them (as…

The 5 play limit doesn't start until after six months. So all new US users have unlimited plays.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#82

Post by parbo »

joeguilmette wrote: post #26

I signed up for Spotify and was pretty disappointed. I have years and years of Data in iTunes, and the only thing Spotify does is pull out tracks. It won't even sync my SmartPlaylists. So it's kind of like starting over. Not something I'm willing to do.

I'm a Spotify dev. What sort of data would you find most useful to have extracted from iTunes?

The reason we don't do the smart playlists is that we just take a snapshot (the lists aren't kept in sync) and the very nature of smart playlists is that they are dynamic.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#83

Post by parbo »

jonknee wrote: post #35

I was very unimpressed with Spotify when it launched in the US this week. The app (at least on a Mac) seemed very non-native and used a lot of resources when it was inactive. It apparently uses Flash, so that may be it. It can't connect to my speakers, though that's Apple's fault more than Spotify's (AirPlay). I saw some top music lists, but not much else. My iTunes Playlists sort of came over, but not the Smart Play…

The ads are shown in an embedded browser (Safari on OSX), and they might use flash. The app itself does not use flash in any way.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#84

Post by parbo »

chrischen wrote: post #24
parbo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also friend's playlists, which I find very useful to discover stuff.

Amounts to browsing random peoples' music. Compared to MOG's discovery features, MOG's is much better. You might get lucky if a friend just happens to find lots of new music you like though.

You can add Spotify-users to your friends list too, you don't need to be Facebook friends.

To add me, go to spotify:user:parbo or http://open.spotify.com/user/parbo and click the "Add Pär" button.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#85

Post by xentronium »

zavulon wrote: post #30

Where is Last.FM on this list? It's actually the best (in my opinion) service out there. Their "discovery" feature is the best, and simplest to use - just choose "Play artist/song/tag XXX radio", and it will play related songs for you. Their catalog seems immense, and I listen to some of the most obscure stuff out there (/hipster joke). And it's completely free.. the only thing it doesn't do is play music "on demand"…

> And it's completely free

Am I missing something here? I've got 30 plays on my trial account and after that it asks me to pay for subscription.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#86

Post by chrischen »

parbo wrote: post #81
socksy wrote: post #51

Out of interest, does Spotify (the free version) for US have the 5 plays limit on each song? Having limited numbers of hours I can deal with, but after they introduced limited plays on Spotify, I practically never used it again after my premium account ran out. The 5 plays doesn't appear to renew at the end of the month like the number of hours, and it just means that my playlists have more and more holes in them (as…

The 5 play limit doesn't start until after six months. So all new US users have unlimited plays.

10 hour per month limit still means you get about 20 minutes of free listening per day.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#87

Post by tallanvor »

thebandrews wrote: post #5

I just started playing around with spotify and the one major feature missing is something akin to itunes genius. I wonder if anything like this is in the works?

Not really. In Europe Spotify does have radio features - both genre and artist-based versions. But to be honest, neither option is very good. My music tastes don't seem to fit in well with the genre options you have on Spotify, and the artist-based radio plays that artist way too much, so you don't get a lot of variety. --Hopefully this is something Spotify will try to do better on. Right now you really have to know what you're looking for.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#88

Post by mmahemoff »

chrischen wrote: post #55
mmahemoff wrote: post #17

Spotify's discovery is better than a 4. Since a playlist can be represented by a URL, sites have emerged to share playlists, which is actually awesome, one of those living in the future moments. Even better, these can be dynamic, like a top 40 list, and also curated by everyone. That said, Spotify could certainly do much more in this area (a lot of their energies have been focused on getting the US launch, it seems).

These discovery services are not integrated into Spotify so I don't really consider them Spotify discovery features. Is a site that lists Spotify playlists really different from a site that just lists playlists? Most of these sites you can play the music. If I were to go to a website to do discovery, there are plenty of other options too like the Hype Machine and it does not require Spotify.

Without arguing definitions, I'd say the net effect is that discovery is good for advanced users (who will use those third parties) and not for basic users. Integrating this kind of thing into the actual service would be a good move.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#90

Post by mmahemoff »

nikcub wrote: post #74

does anybody know what these apps, such as spotify, are written in, and any hints on resources used? itunes is good at not spiking CPU usage, which means listening to music while running servers, doing dev work etc. is possible, while some fat clients (especially thinking of Adobe AIR here) are just terrible

The only API is in C, and there's no REST API, which probably tells you where the developers are coming from.

http://developer.spotify.com/en/libspotify/overview/

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