Wowie Zowie! OK – we are talking kid in a sweet shop here 🙂 but Wow! Spotify is a free music streaming service that changes everything. Imagine your own personal radio station. You select the playlist without the inane disc jockey and (so far) minimal advertising. The music is presented in an [W:iTunes] like interface with a wonderfully eclectic selection. There are a few glaring holes… of course [W:Gail Zappa] has missed yet another boat so there is no Frank Zappa although there is a little Dweezil (pass along nothing of interest here 😉 ). There is no Beatles (but there is an interview with their hairdresser!) nor Pink Floyd. In general you can find what you are looking for. Sometimes you are spoilt for choice. With over one hundred versions of [W:It Don’t Mean a Thing] which do you select? Let’s listen to them all – It’s free!
How they are going to make this pay remains a mystery. There is an option to upgrade to an enhanced (advertising free) Premium service for £9.99 a month. Hmmm… 120 quid a year to listen to the radio (even a personalised one – did I mention [W:Escalator over the Hill]) seems a bit steep. Right clicking on a title does reveal a Buy From… option but this is always greyed out; perhaps I am clicking on the wrong tracks (no commercial potential 😉 ) or this is a feature to be added later. But with such an extensive library available would you bother to buy anything anyway? I guess only if you needed to stick it in your [W:iPod] and take it away with you.
Right clicking also allows you to add a track to your Playing Queue or you can copy the address of the track and send the link to someone else with a Spotify account to enjoy.
Fun things to do…. Type random words into the search box and listen to everything that comes up. Cabbage = 86 tracks. Browser = 1 track.
Explore. Enjoy.