Spotify

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Spinsucks.com,  and today they did a post about the new music service, Spotify.  I thought, "you know I have time, and I'm in on the Spotify American Beta, so why not me too".  Here is the link to their post: Spinsucks: Spotify.

Being a member of klout you get free early access to Spotify.  I've been playing with it and enjoying it so far.  It is kind of like GrooveShark, streaming music for free as long as you're connected to the Internet.  But aside from being 100% legal, I can't really discern a different between Spotify and GrooveShark aside from Spotify being a downloadable app and GrooveShark being a webapp (definitions used loosely).  Sure the legality issue may make a difference to the RIAA and musicians, but to me and most other Internet users we do not really care as long as we get our music.

Spotify has a share feature that allows you to post your favorite songs to Facebook or Twitter.  It also allows your Facebook or Spotify friends to view playlist or favorite artists (assuming you grant your friends permission to do so).  It looks pretty clean and the buffer speed is fast to say the least, of course living in a major city with already fast Internet speeds buffering times have never been an issue.

Currently I am a Rhapsody subscriber (ya I'm one of those suckers).  I pay $10 a month to take my music on the go.  When you spend half as much time commuting as I do, it makes sense to have lots of music and not buy each song individually.  That being said, I just cancelled my Rhapsody account in favor of a switch to Spotify once my subscription runs out.

Spotify promises lightening fast sync times, and it's simplistic UI make it easy to manage music, create, and edit playlists.  Not to mention if the excitement around Spotify holds it could become an invaluable tool for sharing music.

I'm making the switch.  I'll say more once I upgrade at the beginning of next month.