Spotify 0.3 beta

Spotify is a new service, which is yet in its beta-testing phase, that provides access to a huge and constantly growing library of music, to listen to complete songs and albums with excellent audio quality, and all for free, as it is funded on advertising. In Spotify it is possible to listen to all sorts of music: from a rare song one might not expect to find, to the latest albums by popular bands and artists.

To access the service, we need to create and account, choosing any of the three options offered, one of which is absolutely free. The second step is to download Spotify streaming music player. The free version, unlike other services of the kind, has all its features enabled, and the only difference from the premium accounts is that once in a while we will be listening to audio spots and banners, which are not very frequent though. This may well be one of the most positive aspects of Spotify, a fully functional service, free and legal.

Spotify player will be familiar to most Last.Fm users; it is easy to use, its interface is absolutely cool, and works as a real music player, with all the basic controls, extra features, and the big difference is that it lets you choose what to listen. All we have to do is write the name of an artist, or song, and select our favorites. You will surely be surprised by the speed of music loading: it is great, no delays nor downtimes, and the best of all, the sound is excellent, in CD quality. Besides, it allows us to make advanced searches, by artist, genre, and even years, letting us find exactly what we are looking for. Apart from that, Spotify is a radio service, with thousands of stations, arranged by genre, decade, etc. However, the radio maybe one of the aspects to improve, as it is a bit uncomfortable to look for a specific station - it basically needs some arrangement.

The main characteristics applying to the free version are the following: we can easily create playlists of our favorite songs, or albums, and listen to them whenever we feel like, something that in services like Last.Fm requires a subscription. Then we can share our music with our friends in many ways: for example, we can drag and drop a single song, an entire album or a playlist to an email and send them to a friend, or publish them as links in a any blog, forum, etc. The recipient will have immediate access to the music, provided that he/she has Spotify installed on the computer. Another interesting feature allows us to keep our Last.Fm profile updated by enabling scrobbling of our music.

Apart from the Radio needing some arrangements, another shortcoming is that the service is officially available only in a few countries of Europe: Spain, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Finland and Norway.

Is Spotify a new music revolution? Lets wait to see how it evolves.