Thoughts on Spotify

I signed up for Spotify a few weeks ago. I bought the $9.99 a month premium account. I probably wouldn't have done it except that I needed the account for some development I'm doing.  I'm glad I did though.

It's a pretty cool service. You get access to so much music you don't know where to start.  It's actually intimidating.  When you can listen to almost anything what do you choose?   There are holes in the catalog around some major acts but it goes deep and wide for everything else.  Pick a band, any band, type in their name and listen to any of their albums; it's crazy.

Generally, I dislike the sort of music you find on the radio.  I guess I don't share mainstream tastes.  This makes discovering new music tricky.  I've used Pandora and Last.fm to identify a few interesting tracks but I've always needed to buy the full album to know whether I really liked the band.  Spotify solved this problem.  Using their service I can listen to much more than a single track.

Just this week Spotify paid off with my discovery of a band called Port O'Brien. I stumbled across them this morning and listened most of the day. I'm going to buy at least two of their albums if not three. Who knows how many shotgun, random album purchases I would have had to make in the past before I actually narrowed down a band I really liked.

I normally grumble when I have to dish out cash for work but in this case it was worth it.

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