Spotify ports its music streamer to Linux

Spotify is previewing a Linux version of its popular music-streaming service. According to a blog post from Andres Sehr, Spotify's global community manager, the company's developers built this Linux incarnation for selfish reasons — at least in part — piecing it together during hack days and late-night coding sessions. "A lot …

[Parsifal]

Still Waiting

For Spotify to be available in the US, there is still some vague statement about it being available in 2010 , but it would be good to see them announce a committed date.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still Waiting

We'll give it to you when you give us Hulu

Seems fair

[K. Adams]

"... issues regarding decoding of local music on the Linux platform"

AKA: due to "... the fact that there's no way we're gonna upset Big Media, by allowing the full-featured edition of our software to be used on an open platform that normally eschews pesky things like DRM."

[Paul Crawford]

Er?

I found Spotify to be very good, and the Windows client run just perfectly under WINE on Ubuntu 8.10, so I see this as a bit of a non-story. Yes native LINUX would be nice, but the sensible Windows API use results in an app you can use under an emulator just dandy.

[James Le Cuirot]

Ssh!

I admit that it works very well under Wine but I'd rather have a native client any day! Don't go around saying things like that or we might not get native clients for things in future.

[lpopman]

titular nonsense

I'd prefer a Linux native version over running the Windows one under an API compatibility layer.

@Paul: remember, Wine Is Not an Emulator, it's an API compatibility layer. There is a not so subtle difference.

[Mr Smin]

Wine...

WINE Is Not an Emulator!

[zonky]

Yes, because i really want a whole lot of third party apps

That don't sit under the package management system, thereby being a total pain to manage and keep up to date.

There is a good reason people have left windows behind- it's impossible to keep up todate.

[Carl Fletcher]

Re: Yes, because i really want a whole lot of third party apps

What? Did you even follow the link? They've made an repository that you add and it updates within the standard Ubuntu package management.

[James Hughes 1]

Er,

What's that got to do with Spotify PREVIEWING a PROTOYPE version of Spotify for Windows?

Do you KNOW they won't be putting it under package management ONCE ITS READY?

As someone else said - Windoze version works fine under Wine.

[Uplink]

Nice try, but...

"And since it doesn't yet handle ads, it's only available with a Spotify Premium account." And Ubuntu 10.04 compatibility isn't. Give me that source code and that NDA and I'll add the ad support you lazy bums :P And I'll throw in a proper Ubuntu 10.04 gconf2 dependency.

[Anon the mouse]

Baby steps

It's a good step forward for linux, a popular CLOSED SOURCE application being ported.

These baby steps are good, but at this rate linux won't be a contender for another 20+ years

[James Dunmore]

Great stuff

Brilliant. Hope other companies follow suite. I think it's all very chicken and egg (wrt. linux native apps) - for example, picasa - is only really a packaged wine port - not native, hence why the uptake wasn't massive, which was googles reason for not giving 3.5, etc.

The more native apps we get, the more people will start using it. Just now need iTunes (horrible software, but so many people want it) and photoshop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Always struck me as weird

It's strange that they never updated the support to picasa 3.5. I mean it's literally a matter of copying the new binary over the old one from a handy windows or wine installation and it works just fine.

[NickH]

Whatever....

Who Cares!!

There are millions more BlackBerry users in the world. Where is the Blackberry client ???

[Fai]

Already a linux client...

that's open source.

Despotify is your friend. You'll still need a premium account to use it though, ever since Spotify decided it didn't want it freeloading songs without ads. (or hack the code yourself)

[Cam 2]

The Linux Spotify API has been available for some time,

languishing presumably because of the restriction of needing a premium account. I only hope that this premium-only native client doesn't give them an excuse to let the currently minor niggles of the Windows / Wine version get worse, to the point where Linux freeloaders are forced to get a premium account. Presumably the Spotify developers that are scratching their own itch are enjoying a freebie premium account...

[Craigness]

Last FM

If they want to listen to music whilst they code they could use Rhythmbox with its Last FM scrobbler. 20 hours a month coding before having to pay for the privilege is a rip off.

[Tom 38]

Halfway there guys, time for the final push

The wine version runs quite nicely on FreeBSD, but only in a 'native' x server - run it under Xvnc and all the chrome disappears - common wine issue, but annoying when you want to allow multiple people to control one spotify instance.

Quite fancy trying this version - I get to run spotify under a linux abi compatibility layer, rather than under a win32 abi compatability layer! - to see if it solves these annoyances, but why did they go for Qt4 - so much extra hassle, and everyone knows* gnome is the only way to go.

* Hence the flame icon.