Spotify v. Pure Music

Spotify began as the cool on-line portal that set a high benchmark for music streaming services. It’s now a fast growing, song spewing giant but it is not alone, as entertainment corps and smaller contenders want a piece of the action too. Philips Streamium with Spotify Philips Streamium with Spotify Spotify competes with …

[Anonymous Coward]

Spotify free doesn't have 1/2 the tracks as it used to. It's pointless and definately does not deserve 80%!

[Z80]

You should definitely demand a refund!

Seriously though, can you give an example of a track that's gone? I'm curious to see if I can still get it on the premium service.

[Jamie Kitson]

I seem to remember there not being any Chilli Peppers, or Adele...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a load of albums/tracks that I downloaded with my Premium Spotify membersip which over time have disappeared .... sometimes whole albums, sometime one or two tracks from an album on occasionally find an album with only 1 remaining track.

[Iain]

yep

The whole M-16 album by Sodom which features an excellent cover of Surfin' Bird, plus a few of their other albums, they used to have nearly all of them, now only about half.

[Arrrggghh-otron]

Any device, anywhere

I hope this move by pure might make Spotify think again about charging a premium for mobile access. The device, the 'where' and the 'how' are irrelevant.

[Davidmb]

Based on practicalities I suspect

The desktop Spotify client uses P2P, which keeps the server load/bandwidth/costs down. However, the mobile apps can't really do the same. There's a case to be made for a premium, although twice the cost sounds a bit high.

[Arrrggghh-otron]

Re: Based on practicalities I suspect

My experience of the mobile client was choppy playback over 3G. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but wasn't reliable on the move.

It was easier to use your fixed broadband connection to download your selected tracks to the device and play them off line. Why would the mobile client not use P2P over wifi?

[squilookle]

I have been using Spotify for a long time now and I'm still very happy with it. I think the £9.99 a month is reasonable for what I get, and between playing music in the house via the computer plugged into the stereo, and on my mobile out and about, I get definitely my money's worth.

That I don't have to manage my CDs or MP3s anymore is a huge advantage. I have a box full of old CDs that is taking up space in the house while I decide how to get rid of them, so I don't feel the need to own anything but the albums I consider my all time favourites.

The only annoyance is that some tracks have disappeared recently. Graham Coxon's the Spinning Top and most of John Lennon's catalogue were there and have been removed. But then again, my car recently got destroyed by fire and I lost the 50 or so CDs I had in CD wallets in the glovebox... shit happens...

[TonyHoyle]

I like spotify, generally

I often stream spotify when in the car and it's fine.. Most of the time I use the higher quality 320kbps one, but that does get choppy out in the countryside (320kbps shouldn't be a challenge over HSDPA - heck, even over ordinary 3G - but mobile phone companies are so inept they've made it so).

I really don't think I could go back to 128k mp3, so pure music is out on those grounds alone for me. 9.99 is on the pricey side for Spotify (doubling the price for mobile clients.. hmm..) but given that it's the only option, without lugging around multi-gigabyte music collections as I used to do, then it'll do.

[Florence]

Spotify is not the only option.

Deezer, We7, Napster, bloom.fm (beta) - bloom.fm is mobile only at this point, we7 has mobile clients and a very good selection. I'm less familiar with the other two.

It really isn't like Spotify is the only subscription service out there.

But it's the only one that's so tied with Facebook and wants to share everything with everyone by default.

[Tom 38]

"""Artist Radio [..] a handy way to discover new things."""

No it isn't. It's a handy way of listening to random dross from vaguely related artists. It's almost as useless as the 'Radio' feature, which lets you select genres and decades, and will then proceed to assault your ears with the most random shit ever recorded.

I'll get downvoted for mentioning Apple, but Apple's "Genius" mode is the only automatic playlist generator I've used that generates something I'd actually listen to.

[Nigel Steward]

320kbps is essential

I play my music through a Sonos multi-room system & in the car through a Harmon Kardon audio system with a dozen spakers.

Anything less than 320kbps sounds very poor.

I am still buying CDs but I don't have to manage them or MP3s any more as I immediately rip them to my VortexBox music server, and save them as FLAC files.

NJSS

[jason 7]

Spotify is good.

We have the 4.99 option and its been 18 months since we last bought a CD.

However, it needs more Budgie. Only got the superb Breadfan at the mo.

[Florence]

SADFACE

18 months since you last bought a CD. That's all.

Streaming services are brilliant to discover new music, but artists still need revenue - and that comes through CD sales as well as gigs and merchandising. Not from Spotify unless you expect bands to survive on £3 a year.

[Chris Parsons]

Re: SADFACE

Couldn't agree more. I used to be a Spotify Premium user, but thought 'why not spend that money on actually buying CDs?'. It's better for me, and it is certainly better for the artists - and I don't have to worry about whether I can get an adequate signal when on the move - the usual answer outside London being 'no'.

[a pressbutton]

android client fail

the android client will not work unless you have the 9.99 pm sub.

works fine on pc or mac for 4.99 or 'free' and as noted, other hardware.

fail.

[Z80]

Re: android client fail

It's called product differentiation.

[Mr Tumnus]

Re: Re: android client fail

It's called trying to have a viable business model

[phr0g]

love spotify

Yes, some music has disappeared, but Spotify saves me money. No more do I buy albums that get 1 listen and then consigned to the CD rack. From 3 or 4 a month I'm down to 3 or 4 a year.

Quality is excellent and I can access via my Squeezeboxes, PC or HTC phone. (I use FM transmit in the car too),

They really need to get lossless playback working on the PC, it must be simple as it is perfectly lossless through Squeezebox.

[Neonin]

Spotify Comments

I've used Spotify for a while now, got to be at least a couple of years, and for all of that I've been paying for the £4.99 package except for the first month I discovered the service.

Music does disappear, and I wish they'd post something about it rather than having it just "go grey" in your list. Sometimes when my complete playlist is on random it's months until I finally realise something I was listening to hasn't played for ages.

It is also missing the majority of stuff by some of my favourite artists such as Metallica, Lacuna Coil, Rammstein, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and others. Unfortunately for said artists, their lack of appearance on Spotify doesn't make me go out and buy their CDs, it just makes me annoyed they're not on there and determined not to give them any money.

Overall, despite the missing music and artists, I wouldn't be without it. Much preferable to buying CDs, and much more convenient than pirating. Yes, I am a reformed freetard, which will no doubt earn me the ire of some of the more rabid commenters on here, but this is exactly what I was waiting for.

Now all I need is for Netflix or LoveFilm to actually have a decent selection of stuff on their streaming service and I'll subscribe to that to!

[Robert Ramsay]

One question

....Does Pure Music pay artists more than Spotify's 0.000000001p per play?*

*there may be too many noughts here

[Oh my furry ears and whiskers]

What about non-subscription options for listening to albums, such as myspace?

I 'discovered' myspace, where, without logging in I can listen to albums without ads, though I'm not sure whether that's down to Firefox and Adblock Plus or not. It's not high rate audio nor can I save playlists without logging in, but it beats paying £5 per month. Are there other options?