I've always been more of a radio listener than a tape/CD/mp3 listener and I think the main reason is that I enjoy the variety. If I did listen to cds I would tend towards soundtracks or greatest hits to better ensure that I got a good mix of good songs. Then a few years ago, thanks to some of my younger friends at ASB, I discovered Pandora and it was/is great. I love the variety and not having to make a decision/remember what album my favorite songs are on. Or for that matter the name of them. I've never understood how Jimbo can just walk up to our HTPC and rifle through the nearly 1500 albums we have on the server and just instantly decide what to listen to. It honestly amazes me! Pandora was perfect, just tell it what you like and it plays other stuff like it. Genius! The only downside is that if someone asks you "have you heard that great new Adele" song? You can't just go punch up the name of the song on Pandora and have it play THAT song. You might get another Adele song but not THE song you're looking for. This is where my conversion to Spotify began.
What makes it so cool? Here's the [not so] short list of the things I love:
- What I want, when I want - Spotify describes themselves as a new way to listen to music. Millions of tracks, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it. There are so many things that I love about it, but their motto "all the music, all the time" sums up the main reason pretty well. You can literally listen to [almost anything], anytime you want, on multiple devices. The average, radio-listening music lover will be able to hear anything they want. Folks like Jimbo who have eclectic tastes may have a bit more trouble, but even he has been able to discover some new music that he likes.
- Artist Radio - very much like Pandora you can pick an artist and Spotify will play tracks by other artists with similar styles.
- Your work is transferable - One of the things I never liked about iTunes is that you did all the work to get your play lists organized, but when you opened iTunes on another computer they weren't there. Maybe I was doing something wrong and maybe this is different now with iCloud. Regardless, you can definitely take your work with you with Spotify.
- Shared Playlists - You can both statically share a playlist that you've created with friends (or the world for that matter) but even cooler is your ability to create "collaborative" playlists so that multiple people can contribute. We have a list at work where we can add "motivational" songs.
- Organize your personal stash - You can use Spotify to import your local music files, create playlists from them, sync them to you mobile device...basically everything you can do from iTunes to keep them organized.
- Mobilize your music - Not only can you use Spotify's mobile apps to stream content on your Apple and Android devices, you can listen to your local music. To take it one step further, you can even make playlists available "offline" so that when you're not connected to wifi you can still listen to your tunes. Love this!
And a couple of new things I haven't played with too much:
- Shazam integration - Shazam is on of my favorite apps. I never know who is singing a song, much less the name of the song. So now not only can I use Shazam to find out the name and artist of a song, I can add it to Spotify instantly. Love it!
- Apps - We'll see where this goes, there are only a handful now and most are jsut different ways to discover new music or grab some public playlists, which is always good. I do liek the "top 10" and "Billboard" apps, I bet Jimbo would like the SongKick Concerts app since he likes going to live music. Let me know if you find some cool ones.
Have you guys tried spotify? You can try premium for free for 30 days, but even the free version is awesome. What do you think of it? I'd love for you to share your favorite playlist with me and in honor of Valentine's Day, here is one that that made me smile.
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