Using spotify here, although Rdio looks nice from the screens up there. My music listening is done slightly different then most here I guess, no mobile listening at all these days.

Having a little pc with Linux and XBMC connected to the t.v., which is connected to the amp and the proper speakers. All our music is on the hard drives connected to the pc, but I was annoyed I couldn't listen to things like playlists made by people on here for example. So I went on the search for a Linux version of spotify, but that's forever in beta. Luckily some kind internet person made a spotify add on for XBMC, only downside was that it required premium. Signed up, and now mainly use it for listening to playlists by others (currently listening to Studio Brussel's One Hit Wonders list, forgotten most of those tracks. Is there a way I can see the release date of a song in a playlists? All it shows now is track-artist-time-album-added-user) and to some albums that I only kinda like, or need some time to decide if it's ever worth a purchase. Also an easy way to look up artists if you want to know their stuff better before a gig, so that you then know which album to buy after their gig.
Not seen the need for importing my existing library just yet.

ill add to the loving spotify brigade and i think i use it completely differently to you face, i hardly even make playlists just zoom around doing a search on anything i fancy, then clicking similar artists or going on the radio to see if theres anything new to find.. never even considered it to be some kind of library for your own music

its absolutely great in this respect (imo) on the move

Facewon wrote:

And why is it a good thing for them to block/stagger releases in this day and age? That's what I don't get. assuming that there's some % of money changing hands, surely it's better to have something available everywhere? Surely it doesn't cost them any more, if a song/album is sitting on one of these services and viewable to allow a person to access it. I don't understand the motivation. There may have been reasons in the past, with physical media that meant it was better business to stagger things, but this is instant, if the m oney changes hands due to people playing/adding to their collection, then why not just let more people access it? I'm clearly missing something.

It's down to licensing. Smaller labels may not have the money the release a record globally, so they license the rights to different labels in different countries. Each label has got to sign its own deal with Spotify, hence different availabilities in different countries.

Out of interest I checked Xbox Music. There's 41 Fleetwood Mac albums, including Rumours. I'm fairly sure Fleetwood Mac haven't had 41 albums.

34 Jay Z albums, inc three versions of The Black Album (acapella? Seriously?)

Yeah, Xbox Music seems to take the album listings to the extreme.

There's one there called "3CD slip case" which is actually just the first three albums. And one called "Black Magic (PDF booklet)" with no way to actually download the PDF. Anyone would think they just loaded a record store catalogue without any thought to removing oddities.

Facewon wrote:

heh. Funny what you don't even think about. Because I had an old sony ericsson 3 phones ago, and I didn't like the way it worked as a music player, and because vista didn't play nice with my HTC, I have basically ignored the inbuilt music player on my s3. Now that I've changed the settings on WMP to MP3 when ripping, it's as simple as drag and drop. Durr. Would be nice to have everything under the one music service/player, but at the end of the day, I can probably live with rdio + DLing other stuff/buying the odd cd. We'll see, still playing away with Spotify.

Not the solution your looking for face, but Spotify has a 4x1 tile widget available and the s3 music player does too. I have both on the same screen of my S3 along with a radio widget, media player icon, YouTube,etc. one stop page on the phone for all my media files.

Yep, the solution I already have.

First page on my s3 has all 4X1 widgets. Flipboard, rdio, Pandora, Pocketcast, then my alarm and a 1x1 bluetooth toggle widget.

While I'm trying things out, I have 4x1 music player and spotify on a second page.

Heh. @Crispy Only just coming back to this thread, good timing.

Was just coming in to say that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stay with it. It has stylies I don't like, and the collection has more holes than spotify, but overall, having now given a reasonable go of most of the alternatives, it's still my favorite.

Much easier to manage your collection and have it sorted automatically without faffing about with playlists. But very easy to make playlists if you want to.

Between the four main options to view the music, Heavy Rotation, Recent Activity, Top Charts and New Releases, it's very easy to catch new stuff (and it automatically alerts you if artists you've already added release new stuff. This is good for new bands, not so good for Miles Davis et al, as they get spammed)


If you have even 2-3 people on your rdio friends list, and a couple of the "taste maker" selections, you really won't miss out on much.


I just found 8 new albums to add to the collection from random listening, looking at albums, and who was adding them. A real mixed bag.

Very easy to manage what's synced and what's not, the phone app is awesome (on both iphone and andriod. We have both and it works fine. (And if they're all in offline mode, you can have them on multiple devices.) And  if you have an old smartphone like I do, you can just leave rdio on it, and use it as a stereo for the lounge or wherever, and use your current smartphone as a remote.

There's a 14 day trial, and then it's Aus$13 a month.

Things that will annoy, but I am living with:

There is a pause between tracks, even synced.

There's a lot of spam/BS cluttering the New Releases. Can seem like the collection isn't good. Wish someone would do some active curating.

There are some holes as far as particular artists and discographies go, as noted with all of these services.

Everything else is absolutely lovely. It really feels like you have a collection. It's really easy to manage and it's really nice hunting for new stuff.

Decided tonight not to buy any more stuff on Amazon MP3 because, you know, they're bastard tax dodgers.

Thought I'd use Spotify to buy some tunes.  I do like Spotify. I love the interface, and even on my crappy connection, I never have problems streaming stuff (didn't realise until now it's a P2P system too!)

But when I try to buy tracks I get this dumb ass message:

We’re currently not offering new download purchases on Spotify

So let me get this straight.  I want to be a paying customer, but you don't want my money?

Ok.  Back to Amazon it is.

I mean really?  Sheesh.

I guess that means they're putting their eggs in the sub basket.

Meanwhile, actually used the remote option with rdio last night. I had half forgotten about it until I posted about it above, and generally am only using one device, but for long dominion sessions, I can now just set my htc going and use my s3 to select tracks and albums etc. Works perfectly.

Only for Lumia handsets?

As a Lumia 920 owner, this interests me.

Pretty short-sighted business model.

You can't use the mobile apps or stream offline.

WorKid wrote:

You can't use the mobile apps or stream offline.