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February 16, 2009
The future of music?
At this very moment Bleeding Edge is listening [by means we're not going to reveal] to a new [still in Beta] Swedish service called Spotify. It's available at the moment free (advertising supported) in the UK (since February 10), Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and France. A Premium (paid) version is also available in most other European countries. And it is unbelievably good. The interface, as you can see from this screen shot, is simple but elegant. 
Install the client, and you’re listening to music over your broadband connection as if by magic. The speed and quality is breathtakingly good.
In our opinion, this could change the way we listen to music, turning it into a social networking experience. Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends. You can collaborate with them to produce playlists that, could mean, as the developers say, “Friday afternoon in the office might never be the same again!” And the whole thing is guilt-free, because Spotify has paid for the rights to use the music. Imagine being able to drag and drop an album or a track on to your desktop or into an IM message or email. That sets up a link, which when clicked, plays the music.
It works on Windows XP, Vista and Mac.
You can get a good idea of the content, and the energy behind Spotify through the Spotify blog. We’re going to keep checking it out and we’ll let you know when you can listen to it. [We’re listening to a Norwegian jazz group called the Tord Gustavsen Trio, to which we’ve been addicted since they appeared at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival a few years ago. Perhaps we should have chosen Abba!]
Posted by cw at February 16, 2009 10:49 PM
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Comments
My initial thought was how does Spotify compare to http://Last.fm which is what I use and discover great music through last.fm as previously I did with Pandora until we were locked out.
So the quock read on the BBC - Spotify vs Last.fm and the comments still leave me out and will have to fire up 'my thing' which I presume is similar to what CW is using and check out Spotify and make my own comparrison.
Posted by: Stephen ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://bleedingedge.com.au/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 17, 2009 01:09 AM
Cool,
Works on my old Powerbook G4. Superb. I'd pay for the ad free service in the same way I subscribe to public radio.
Superb sound.
Posted by: Dale at February 17, 2009 08:33 PM
And an update may have just fixed "my thing" workaround so that it no longer works...
Posted by: Dale at February 25, 2009 06:40 PM
Hackers get user information from Spotify. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7925455.stm
Posted by: Fred at March 6, 2009 08:48 AM