
Thoughts on Spotify - 2arrs2ells
http://tumblr.2arrs2ells.com/post/11281262378/thoughts-on-spotify
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sounddust
A few points on this post:

1) You don't have to sync offline tracks with the Spotify desktop software;
you can mark playlists as "available offline" directly within the mobile app
and it will start syncing them immediately. I've never synced my phone via the
desktop app.

The mobile app is also intelligent enough to sync songs that you're listening
to that happen to be part of an offline playlist, saving bandwidth (for
example, in the case where your settings only permit you to sync over wifi,
but you listen to a song over 2G/3G).

2) The Spotify app used to show song/artist info, but at some point it seems
that all the audio apps I used stopped doing this at the same time. Are you
sure this wasn't an iOS change?

3) The unavailable song issue is related to the fact that the available songs
are completely different depending on the country where you live. I've found
that the USA is the worst for what I like to listen to. You could probably
change your region by connecting to the website via proxy.

4) Regarding your question about supporting the bands: from what I've read,
artists receive almost nothing from Spotify licensing fees. If you want to
support the artists, the safest bet is still attending concerts/buying
merchandise directly.

~~~
geden
I manage a number of musicians signed to indies

Re 4) Spotify pay virtually nothing to artists. Our royalty statements show
that we make an order of magnitude more money from a single CD sale or iTunes
sale, than many thousands of Spotify streams. ie £1.80 vs £0.18

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shoota
My biggest gripe is the lack of music discovery functions. MOG is a competing
service and I find their artist radio functionality helps me find new bands I
would have never heard of before. Spotify lacks anything resembling discovery
functions and that's why I cancelled my subscription. Additionally, how is
there no web UI for music playing?

~~~
2arrs2ells
Didn't you seen Sean Parker's email? Desktop clients are like, totally the way
to go :-P <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077425>

Spotify's desktop client has a somewhat decent radio function, but it's
missing from the iPhone app. I agree with you 100% that they're dropping the
ball on discovery (What are the top tracks my friends are listening to?
Where's the last.fm style recommendations, based on what I like?)

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psychotik
Interesting.

My startup, Audiogalaxy, can help remedy most of the things you loathe and
things you're unsure about. If you have a large music collection, I'm sure
you'll love it - give it a shot. <http://www.audiogalaxy.com>.

~~~
2arrs2ells
Were you also behind the Audiogalaxy P2P client, or did you just acquire the
name? I loved Audiogalaxy back in the day - will definitely give your startup
a shot.

~~~
psychotik
Yep, the same. <http://www.audiogalaxy.com/blog/2010/10/audiogalaxy-is-back/>
and the About page explain the story a bit.

