Tag: Spotify

Music streaming

Experiments in listening

Posted by on in Listening, Music

I’ve been using Spotify for over a month now and it is really starting to fit into my listening process. It’s interesting to listen and subscribe to other people’s playlists, and a little strange too, almost like snooping in some ways.

I’ve also subscribed to some playlists from the Field Day festival, and again, that’s quite interesting too, and a good way to get to hear some of the acts that I’ve not listened to before.

So I start to wonder about the differences between owning and renting music and how my view of music ownership is changing.

Spotify trial is over

Posted by on in Listening

I’ve had my 1 month free of using Spotify premium, and I’ve decided to keep it, for now anyway. I think that how I use it will evolve over time. I’m not sure that I’ve quite got it fitted into my listening patterns, but I think that’ll change and make more sense soon enough.

Changing the way I think about listening

Posted by on in Listening

Using Spotify over the last few weeks has made me start to re-evaluate how I listen to music, or more specifically how I discover music. I’m quite intrigued by the idea of sharing playlists and collaborative playlists, and the whole concept of subscribing to a playlist. I think that I probably need to spend some more time getting used to this stuff before I go publishing and sharing my own playlists all over the place.

But listening is changing, probably in a good way, and I feel like I need to catch up and understand it better.

Songkick

Posted by on in Music, Tech

A friend told me about SongKick the other day and I found that there was a Spotify app for it too. It’s a really useful for finding shows for people in your music library, and the fact that it works inside Spotify makes it much more useful. I’ve already found a bunch of shows that I might go to now.

I suppose from that point of view it isn’t so great as actually it’s ending up costing me!

Spotify comes to the iPad

Posted by on in Listening

I was really pleased to hear that Spotify is finally arriving on the iPad. The iPhone version is fine, it does what it needs to, but I think that it could do a lot more and really needs an overhaul. Having said that, it’s good to see Spotify come to the iPad at last although I’d thought that they might bring Spotify apps into the iPad version from day 1. However, maybe that’ll just come later.

Almost at the end of my Spotify trial

Posted by on in Music, Tech

So, I’m getting to the end of my trial period and starting to wonder about whether to continue with the premium service or not. I have to admit that it’s very useful to have playlists on my iPhone. I haven’t particularly made use of SPAPPS so far, with the exception of the Last.fm app which is quite handy too.

So, is it worth the money? That’s the big question right.

Listening to Landscape

Posted by on in Listening

I used to listen to Landscape when they had they’re massive hit “Einstein A-Go-Go”. They split up after their next album. A shame really. Then I’ve found a load of their stuff on Spotify. Some of it really good. One album, called “One”, has had me listening to it several times over now. So I shall listen to some more, but it sort of bothers me that I’m not entirely sure if the band I’m listening to is the same band who originally made “Einstein A-G0-Go”, or if it’s some other band called Landscape!

I’ve tried the usual things about looking them up on the internet, but I can’t find anything conclusive. I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter. It is just good music, I like it, that’s all.

So, is Spotify the OS of music?

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, Music, Thinking

This was something that their head of platform claimed that they were aiming for at the Music Ally App Side conference last month. An interesting claim. I have a slightly different take on it though. For me the OS of music isn’t just about listening, in fact it might not be about listening at all, or at least listening might only be a small part of the puzzle.

For me the idea of an OS for music has always been very enticing. Something that I don’t think I’ve ever seen done properly, but I’ve always wished for. The closest thing to it was the elusive Capers OS which was meant to be a replacement for the Palm OS and act as an OS for music making.

Back when that was being talked about it wasn’t really something that could be used for pure synthesis, so Capers OS was more about controlling other devices. That made sense then, but not now. I think now we have the capability in mobile devices for an actual mobile OS which is built for music making.

Will something like this ever come about? Who knows, I’d love to see it, but I can see it being difficult to get off the ground and fund properly. One day perhaps.

So, is Spotify going to be the OS of music? Not for me I don’t think, but I do think that they are doing a great deal for changing listening and discovery, and that’s a step in the right direction, albeit not my direction.