Spotify, Music in the cloud in a timely service

Moving further towards the life in the cloud, I’ve been beta testing Spotify, a new music service, and I’m loving it.

Cloud computing is a term referring to the web as an abstract cloud providing you the services you need without having to rely on a local system for more than connecting to the internet and the services you require.

Spotify is just like that!

They have signed up with several major record labels to create a huge music repository you can browse and play instantly, categorize and share with friends. The simplest explanation I can give you goes like this: “Is just like your iTunes, but with a much bigger library.

Spotify – the story from Spotify on Vimeo.

Why is timely?

First, let me rant a bit about the music industry.

For many, many years, people bought LPs, then CDs and, while tapes have been available for a long time, they were never preferred. Most of us (all?) did record a tape for a friend when asked and moral consequences of that were minimal, if at all. The means to copy and the final quality were rudimentary enough not to cause a deep impact on the music industry.

Since the advent of the CD recorder and music and video compresssion formats like MP3, copying has not only been made easier, but often more convenient than the traditional method. I remember once I’ve seen a comment in the internet of some huge collector of downloaded audio and video saying:

I don’t mind paying for a film or music I want, what I mind is the need to antecipate my film or music choices in a day or more, when technology exists to make it available immediately

Anonymous user on a forum

Now, before anything else, I’m not in favor of piracy, not at all. But having said that, that speech has a point: pirate downloads offer, in many aspects, a better service than the traditional process, labels are still trying to enforce. Of course the price is unbeatable, well at least until you get caught, but I’m inclined to believe a good part of the piracy only happens because of lack of music distribution services that are compatible with the times we live.

What about iTunes store? I hear you asking. Fair point! I haven’t said there aren’t, just that they are in short supply. And what about last.fm? You might add. Yes, they too!

Let’s compare them!

The iTunes Store

The iTunes store is pretty much similar to the traditional method, but with great advantages. You can buy songs individually, you can have them downloaded imediately and start listening. Additionally you keep some, once you downloaded it, the song is yours, you can backup it, synchronize your iPod… it’s yours. Just like a CD. On the shortcomings side, you have to manage your own backups, disk space, synchronization, etc. But probably the biggest problem is, just like CD’s that you have to buy the songs to even try them. If you don’t like them, you have to pay anyway.

Last.fm

One of my favourite features on last.fm is the variety of artists, it is on the cloud, you don’t have to worry about a thing, it is a great service, but not surprisingly, given its name, is more analogous to a radio than to your own music collection.

How Spotify works

You can have either a free or paid Spotify account. The free version will present 30 seconds ads every now and then (not very often, IMO), the premium version will allow you to go completely ad-free for a very monthly fee. And a very cool feature is the 24 hours ad-free pass.

Now, the bad news. Because Spotify is still in Beta, signing up for the free service is invite only. So you need to either receive one from a friend or subscribe to the invite list. To do so, go to Spotify click on “Get Started” and add your email to the list.

And before you ask, I wish I could give some invites, but unfortunately, I have none :(

Once you have your account, you don’t need to keep a music library, the songs are streamed from the server, and because of that you can try and use all the songs you want and you don’t pay extra for songs you didn’t liked or you don’t want to keep. Even with iTunes, if you want to share a song with a friend, your friend must buy if before she knows if it’s worthy.

With Spotify, anyone having an account can freely accept your suggestions at no extra cost. To me, this sounds just like life in the cloud should be.

The problems

Of course, there are shortcomings as well. First and foremost, is not as portable as music you actually have, physically. If you don’t have internet access, you are out of music which is pretty much a problem of cloud computing as a whole. Also, you need a client to listen to songs, and for the time being, that is only available to Mac and PC (and to Linux via Wine), but no mobiles so far.

Having free accounts, you know you will still be able to access “your songs” even if you quit the premium account, which is a good thing.

Conclusion

At this point I should say I’m not affiliated with Spotify in any way, I just like their service but I do encourage you to register either on the waiting list or for a trial on the premium service because I think this is the way music is going and I’m very happy it is.

Spotify, can we have movies too?