Monday 13 April 2009

Spotify - will this revolutionise the way we listen to music?


I recently found our about Spotify. It is potentially a revolutionary new idea for how we listen to music. The premise is simple - instead of owning all your mp3 files and storing them yourself, Spotify streams them all to you. You don't need to actually own any music or pay anything and once you have installed the software you have access to almost any music out there. The quality is good - 160 kbps, if my memory serves me right and if your bandwidth is not cluttered, the reaction time was almost instantaneous.

This could make owning music a thing of the past and all the work I have done keeping my collection neatly tagged and organised rather futile. I checked it out for a little-known band I liked at school and was pleasantly surprised to see it included. However, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin were not and it didn't have the track I wanted to listen to by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Never mind - still very impressive.

I have tried services like Last.fm before, but was unimpressed by the fact I could only listen to music like the track I wanted. Spotify lets you listen to complete albums and compilations - new ones too. This is more like what I wanted. Now I will just be waiting for their iPhone application to come out - that would be the icing on the cake.

Suffice to say, I will be watching Spotify closely and with baited breath.