There is an ongoing buzz around Spotify – a new streaming music service from London – the latest news is that they closed a deal with CDBaby and thus grew their library by 1M tracks. That sounds great, so i decided to pay the 10 euro and try it out.
I won’t say that i regret having paid, i like it, but i really wonder how much time people spend on developing stuff that – on a mid term perspective – will surely be eaten up by the big fish in the pond?
Spotify isn’t difficult to understand. Basically, it’s a streaming iTunes with a 9,99 € flatrate. The application is well made, slim (just 2.4MB) and in terms of interface design an iTunes copycat, even shortcuts like spacebar for play/pause work the same. Spotify is fast and search works fine. Sound quality is good, a lot better than streaming from last.fm, but not as good as an 192kB mp3 downloaded from iTunes. One downturn for me: spotify cannot stream to my apple airport speakers. Feature request! Anything else is fine, but what’s new?
Surely, Spotify is doing what Napster should have been done in the past. But that does not justify its right to live. At the certain moment when it will be possible to clear royalties for an on-demand streaming for the US market (Spotify only works in Europe), it is very easy for Apple to enter the business, and that will be the sudden end for Spotify.
Streaming to Airport Express: download Airfoil – works brilliantly, although license costs around £21. Also, don’t bother getting the ‚Premium’ account; the free version only has a few ads on it (just hit the mute button). Quality is easily up there with web radio, & will encourage me to buy CDs, as I have spent too much on a decent stereo! I hope this service will stay free & low on advertising.