Pandora was a useful research tool a few years ago too, threw up some numbers I'd missed back in the days.

Spotty is a thing I should use more now that I have internet on the go, the go being where I do the lion's portion of my musiclisten.

I use Deezer thanks to Orange giving me it for free on mobile. Again a good selection but a lot of covers stuff too. Easy to avoid though.

Google Music allows me to upload everything else though and stream it whenever and wherever. For free.

Olimite wrote:

Spotify and nothing else. Using it in conjuction with third party apps/last.fm is a wondrous thing. Still needs to improve the social aspect of its offering, but it's head and shoulders above anything else I have tried. I guess the major downside is its inability to cater for the really obscure, but nothing is perfect, right?

Ditto. Spotify has also improved their search engine recently. Big improvement

I'm trialling a free premium Spotify at the moment, mostly to just try discover some new music (via Last FM plugin).

It's pretty handy for playing at work, but I can't see myself paying at the end of the month – not overly keen on the desktop app, catalogue isn't quite diverse enough and to be honest i'd rather support artists by buying their work.

It's been good for seeking out long forgotten albums that i'd not buy again though!

Interesting to see so much spotify love. Am I just old, or is it really silly when it comes to listing, you know, albums? And then adding them to your collection. etc. Rdio just seems much more organised and nicer. Will play around with the apps and see if I can get it to work for me.

Because it calls them 'playlists' ?

I thought that at first, but it's just nomenclature and doesn't mean anything. You select to add it as a playlist and bam, album is on the sidebar. Done.

Ah but if you type 'Prince' be prepared to wade through 30+ albums and compilations. Also reissues do my head in. I want the OG thing, not demos etc but I have figured my way around those now.

Fuck me, if the apps finder page refuses to load one more time on spotify, I'm going to punch it in the flange.

oh, that may sway it.

Facewon wrote:

What else is there?

There's Xbox Music.

Good broad catalogue. It's kind of a hybrid between Spotify, iTunes and Google.

You can stream full songs (Spotify), you can buy non-DRM files (iTunes) and it has a cloud match of your existing files (DRM or nonDRM) across machines (Google).

Occasionally you hit a file that you have to buy (iTunes) rather than stream (Spotify), but it's usually possible to simply find the same track on a different album.

I mostly just stream, but you're free to download a DRMed copy of the file to your PC. If you owned a Windows Phone you could then put that file on it. If you stop paying the sub the DRMed file stops working.

The Win 8 interface leaves a bit to be desired, but they are actively working on it. On the plus side it does integrate with Win8 and app snapping well. Alternatively you can download the Zune client which basically functions like iTunes organising your local stuff and allowing purchases/streams.

You can use the 360 to stream files (either from the net or local network) and it syncs up playlists and last played stuff nicely. As an aside the Play to 360 feature works well for video as well. Smartglass too.

All of it is Ad free. The music discovery thing is pretty good. Smart DJ lets you put an artist in and it'll play associated/similar acts. Seeing what your friends are playing is a bit of a bust, all the functionality is there but I don't know anyone else that uses it.

Worth trying I guess, you can have a free 30 day trial via the Music app in Win 8. IIRC it doesn't auto dump you into a paid sub but keep an eye on it when the trial ends.

Tempy wrote:

Ah but if you type 'Prince' be prepared to wade through 30+ albums and compilations.

Damn that Prince for having such an extensive back catalogue.

It could be much better, for sure!

I'm sure I saw a video late last year for a major Spotify social update. Unless my app hasn't updated, I don't think it's out yet.

I used it briefly to put stuff on the B&B Christmas list and the search/found seemed well wonky. I'm sure you get used to it.

Mod74 wrote:

I used it briefly to put stuff on the B&B Christmas list and the search/found seemed well wonky. I'm sure you get used to it.

Would probably benefit from some sort of advanced search, but I'm guessing their standpoint is to not over-complicate.

I love spotify's UI and features, very clean, but it's too expensive really compared to others to justify renewing my sub. I switched to grooveshark which works out at around £3pm for the total package. In fact the only thing the free version didn't give me was mobile use, for which I paid the £3. I've only been using GS for a few weeks now but so far so good. Spotify's changed, man, 5 listens per song on the free version now? Fuck that.