I have been an avid user of Spotify since it launched. I was lucky enough to get in on the early launch and it quickly replaced my previous source of music last.fm .
I loved being able legitimately listen to a massive selection of music without paying for it. We used it in work to build a radio station with only the music that web liked listening to. It wasn’t so bad early on the adverts wernt too intrusive and often they were so bad they were good !
In the last couple of weeks Spotify changed their terms and it really brought to an end how I could use its service. I did think about subscribing for a while – the access to music would be great – but the thought that if I stopped paying all that would go away just didn’t seam right.
So I started to look in to alternatives – as you probably know I’m not an Apple man so I dont use itunes. I’m also picky enough to get to play music through some really good soundsystems – so I can usually tell the difference between cd and mp3. The thought of converting my cds to mp3 didn’t fill me with great joy either on the practical front or the audio purest side of things !
But then I spotted that Spotify had just launched something new – the ability to purchase mp3s and sync them to your Android phone or idevice. I then spotted that you could also sync any music you already own as well. It really is like itunes for Android or for those poor souls with an idevice it is a viable alternative.
The Android player itself is really nice – basic but actually that’s all you need really – lots of nice extra bits and bobs that I am just figuring out – quite a lot of it is only really useful if you have a Spotify premium subscription but its still more than useable if you don’t.
I haven’t actually bit the bullet and purchased any mp3 bundles through them yet – but the process looks painless enough – and the thought of being able to buy a whole carefully crafted playlist with a couple of clicks is quite appealing.
Of course there are drawbacks… to get the best pricing (50p) a track you need to buy a bundle of 100 mp3s … and if you don’t use that 100 within 30 days they vanish … BUT if you buy another bundle your unused tracks roll over for another 30 days…
I had the rather geeky joy of listening to a playlist upstairs that was still syncing from my computer downstairs. Very cool!!
Yesterday Google threw something else new in to the mix – the long awaited Google music – how this will actually change stuff for me I don’t know yet. The product is going to be in closed beta for the US only for a bit. It also talked about being free during the beta …. If it launches over here it will enable users to upload 20,000 of their music tracks up to Google music – Google will then stream them out to your devices and enable you to sync stuff locally if you need offline playback. It will also do lots of other clever stuff – but to be honest just having the ability to dump all my music there and not have to worry about backing it up / moving it around would be brilliant.
Anyway I have been drafting this on my phone for a few days now – time to publish it!! Wonder if will make any sense …
Might be geeky blogging again soon as I am probably going to root and install a custom Rom on my phone soon … could be interesting ….