Spotify

hint

party record with a siren
It's a new ad-funded music streaming service (subscription for ad-free).

Anyone else checked it out?

http://www.spotify.com/en

Very slick - an extensive catalogue, no sign of buffering and the ads only appear once every 5 songs or so. Sure beats going to Youtube to hear songs / bands you're curious about.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Yeah in terms of a streaming service it's very good.
The fact that you can play whole albums in decent quality makes
it the top online streaming site.
The ads every 20 minutes or so I can live with.

Not sure how they will monetize this, I think it might be
a matter of major-label fatigue in terms of online music.

Goodbye last.fm.

Edit - just did a quick check versus the youtube videos linked in
Simon Reynolds' piece on sampling in The Guardian today,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/feb/26/sampling-epiphany-massive-attack
the three tracks that are linked to YouTube are all on Spotify.

And when Naxos come on board it will become even better.

 
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Tanadan

likes things
I love the service. What Reynolds says in that article about the intertextuality of sampled pop music is reasonably closely paralled in classical music by models and 'parodied' pieces (meaning pieces simply arranged for different instruments or given different lyrics and given a new name). There are hundreds of classical-era (1750-1810) pieces that are extremely closely based on another piece by an earlier composer, and if you know the earlier piece you can easily hear the resemblances, or even entire melodies that are reappropriated or slightly altered. And the 'baroque' composers would use the 'parody' technique, usually rewriting or adding one or two lines, to create entire pieces - most of Handel's Messiah and Bach's B Minor Mass are made up in this way, for example - Bach stuck to his own music, but Handel, like many composers of the time, beg borrowed or stole from anything he liked. And of course, musicology has spent its whole 100-year existence arguing that Handel's alterations make them better pieces than the originals, just like samples in pop music.
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Spotify is brilliant! Just discovered it, its an absolute godsend for playing tunes at work. Definitely makes any other streaming site, legal or otherwise, look shit.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Good for finding old pop curios and stuff, not so good for dance music, more geared towards album artists. Not bad for a free service obvs, I just turn the speakers off for a few seconds when an ad for Kings of Leon (every meathead in the world's favourite band after the Foo Fighters) or whatever comes on.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
BD - I have a spare invite. PM me with your email address if you want.

Anyone interested in a playlist thread? I think there should be one...mainly because there's a lot of people here with great taste, as opposed to the Spotify playlist sites where you have to wade through a load of shite in order to find something good.

Anyways, here's one I made recently. I call it 'Shadows - A Noir Soundtrack'. Tried to avoid the obvious 'jazzy' noir stuff and opted for atmosphere sourced from various artists.

 

Lichen

Well-known member
Looks moody.

The speed and ease with which I opened it in my free Spotify app. reveals what an amazing thing it.

My 7yr old daughter loves it (Spotify, not Slim's Noir mix - she's zeroed in on Britney & Cheryl in an flash).

I look forward to an avalanche of list links from other Dissensians.
 

Client Eastwood

Well-known member
BD - I have a spare invite. PM me with your email address if you want.

Anyone interested in a playlist thread? I think there should be one...mainly because there's a lot of people here with great taste, as opposed to the Spotify playlist sites where you have to wade through a load of shite in order to find something good.

Anyways, here's one I made recently. I call it 'Shadows - A Noir Soundtrack'. Tried to avoid the obvious 'jazzy' noir stuff and opted for atmosphere sourced from various artists.


Cheers Slim. you have pm. Playlist thread sounds good . . .
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
BD - I have a spare invite. PM me with your email address if you want.

Anyone interested in a playlist thread? I think there should be one...mainly because there's a lot of people here with great taste, as opposed to the Spotify playlist sites where you have to wade through a load of shite in order to find something good.

Anyways, here's one I made recently. I call it 'Shadows - A Noir Soundtrack'. Tried to avoid the obvious 'jazzy' noir stuff and opted for atmosphere sourced from various artists.


Cheers, just signed up for Premium for 3 months, so will try and get this on the iPod.

Good:no adverts, even better quality streaming.
Bad: syncing to iPhone & iPod Touch is crappier than I thought
* syncs over WiFi only
* no easy way to "select playlist->just sync this one"
* after a while it insists on player being connected to computer to "save" battery life (that is what the phone's own screenlock/energy settings are for!)
Overall - deeply unimpressed with Spotify's sync implementation (but think I've read somewhere that it works better with Android)
 
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massrock

Well-known member
I quite liked finding the full forty minutes or so of that 'Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void' Mercury Rev thing on there. It's good that, played right through without ads, wyatting spotify.
 

massrock

Well-known member
Really long tracks are good if you are using Spotify free.

This mix for instance, 68 minutes uninterrupted:

Henrik Schwarz, Âme and Dixon - The Grandfather Paradox

01. Steve Reich & Pat Metheny - Electric Counterpoint - Fast (Movement 3)
02. Etienne Jaumet - Repeat After Me (Âme Mix)
03. Kenneth Bager - Fragment Eleven… The Day After Yesterday Pt.1
04. Liquid Liquid - Lock Groove (Out)
05. Cymande - For Baby Oh
06. Patrick Moraz - Metamorphoses 1st Movement (Live)
07. To Rococo Rot - Testfeld
08. Mathematics - Blue Water
09. I:Cube - Acid Tablet
10. Ø - Atomit
11. Conrad Schnitzler - Electrocon 11
12. Green Pickles feat. Billy Lo & M. Pittman - Feedback
13. La Funk Mob - Motor Bass Gets Phunked Up (Richie Hawtin's Electrophunk Mix)
14. John Carpenter - The President Is Gone
15. Yusef Lateef - The Three Faces Of Bala
16. Robert Hood - Minus
17. Raymond Scott - Bass-Line Generator
18. Moondog - Invocation
 

Leo

Well-known member
includes lots of favorite labels...

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-11/17/labels-withdrawing-from-spotify

200+ labels withdraw their music from Spotify: are its fortunes unravelling?

Following a study that claims that streaming music is damaging to record sales, a distributor representing more than 200 labels has withdrawn its entire catalogue from Spotify, Napster, Simfy and Rdio.

The study, which was conducted by NPD Group and NARM, came out with results suggesting that subscription services -- where you pay a flat fee each month to access a giant jukebox in the sky, rather than owning individual tracks -- is discouraging other forms of music purchasing. You can find the further details of that study over at Digital Music News.

That prompted STHoldings, which focuses on techno, grime, dubstep and bass music, to contact the 238 labels that it has on its books to ask if they wanted it to keep distributing content to Spotify or withdraw it. Only four said they wanted to keep their content on Spotify. Interestingly, though almost certainly unrelatedly, Music Ally has noticed that a band signed to one of the labels counts Apple's director of music for iTunes Europe as one of its members.

A statement from the distributor reads: "As a distributor we have to do what is best for our labels. The majority of which do not want their music on such services because of the poor revenues and the detrimental affect on sales. Add to that the feeling that their music loses its specialness by its exploitation as a low value/free commodity. Quoting one of our labels, 'Let's keep the music special, fuck Spotify.'"

We asked Spotify for comment, and a spokesperson told us:

"We have strong support from the music industry, and of course respect the decision of any artist who chooses not to have their music on Spotify for whatever reason. We do however hope that they will change their minds, as the Spotify model is adding, and will continue to add, huge value to the music industry. Right now we have already convinced millions of consumers to pay for music again, to move away from downloading illegally and therefore generate real revenue for the music business.

"In addition, 'revenue per stream' totally misses the point when considering the value generated by Spotify. The relevant metrics are: 1) how many people are being monetized by Spotify; 2) who these people are (usually young people previously on pirate services which generate nothing for artists and rightsholders); and 3) how much revenue per user Spotify generates for rightsholders.

Artists can -- and do -- receive very substantial revenues from Spotify, and as Spotify grows, these revenue streams will naturally continue to grow. Spotify is now the second single largest source of digital music revenue for labels in Europe (IFPI, April 2011) and we've driven more than $150 million of revenue to rights holders (ie whoever owns the music, be it artists, publishers or labels) since our launch three years ago."

Disquiet from musicians and labels over the royalties paid out by Spotify has plagued the music service almost since it first launched. Back in 2009, a storm in a teacup erupted after it was revealed that Lady Gaga got just $167 for more than a million plays. That figure was thoroughly debunked, but the idea behind it has persisted and Spotify hasn't helped matters by keeping any royalty discussions under a strict veil of secrecy.

Charles Arthur from the Guardian attempted to pierce that veil in late 2009, and the results were a mess of calculations and corrections. A second attempt wasn't much clearer, and a recent infographic trying to piece things together has been universally condemned by all parties. Recent top-sellers like Coldplay and Adele have actively avoided Spotify for their newest albums, because their management know the record will sell widely regardless and Spotify's audience isn't likely to be especially keen on those artists anyway.

Complicating matters is that the four major labels own part of Spotify themselves. 18 percent, according to TechCrunch, which was likely part of the conditions for licensing their catalogue to the streaming service in the first place. Merlin, which represents independent labels owns one percent. It does beg the question -- if streaming is so bad for the music industry, then why invest in it?

Meanwhile, even the smallest labels yanking their content is bad news for consumers, because it turns a service that has everything into a service that has "most stuff" -- that's a life-and-death difference to a hardcore music fan. Surveys have suggested that fans are still very wedded to the ownership model and that the chief reason for that is that they have no confidence that their favourite album might not just disappear. If Spotify can't stem this tide, then that lack of trust might well be what finally does the Swedish streaming service in.

Perhaps, as PaidContent's Robert Andrews argues, it's time for some transparency on music streaming rates.
 
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