

Spotify Surpasses 2 Million Paying Subscribers - k33l0r
http://mashable.com/2011/09/21/spotify-2-million-subscribers/

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hospadam
Has anyone tried Rdio? I've tried both services (as a paid member) - and I
really think I prefer Rdio - even though Spotify tends to get more media
coverage. Rdio has a web based player (huge for people that can't install
stuff on their work computer). They also have an iPad app, and I find both of
their iPhone clients about the same. I haven't tried either of their services
on Android... but I'll assume they have the same feature set as their
respective iPhone clients.

Rdio also has much better music discovery services.

All in all - I really want to know what the Spotify hype is? (I want to use
the _best_ service, so if I'm missing something - please let me know).

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kyleslattery
While Rdio is definitely better for discovery, I prefer Spotify because of its
integration with iTunes. With Rdio, I had to keep opening iTunes if I wanted
to play a song that Rdio didn't have. With Spotify, it lists all of my local
songs inline with their library, and I can play everything from one app. If
Rdio added this, I'd probably switch back, but for now, I'm sticking with
Spotify.

In addition, I can sync both Spotify and local tracks to my iPhone, so I only
need to use one app on there as well, rather than jumping back and forth
between Spotify and iPod.

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chrischen
This is the main reason I use Spotify as well. MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, and others
all have this problem.

It's not so much integration with iTunes as it is the ability to import and
manage non-Spotify music.

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mcao
I love/hate Spotify. I love the product and use it all the time. I signed up
for premium after using the free version for one day, so they definitely won
me over. What I absolutely hate is they have a huge number of show stopper
bugs in the application. Songs don't play, songs go missing, can't get online,
etc. Some have been reported over a year ago and still haven't been fixed.

Sometimes you'll get the message "Offline access for this computer/device has
been withdrawn", which essentially deletes all your locally saved songs.
Spotify limits the number of devices you can have offline access enabled on,
but their algorithm is so awful it ends up nuking all your devices. So beware
if you're planning on taking a long plane ride and suddenly your entire
library disappears.

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earl
On the mac, spotify often fails to play songs for me as well. The problem is
an intersection of weird bugs and their lack of support for low volumes.

When Spotify plays an ad and you turn the volume down too low, they pause the
ad and show a pie chart of time remaining in the gutter of the app near the
repeat controls. They wait until you turn the volume up, where volume is the
product of whole computer volume and their in-app volume control, to continue
playing the ad.

Now, if you are keeping the volume low, perhaps because you have in-ear
earbuds and don't care to be deaf, there is a very confusing bug where an ad
won't play at all, and in fact, won't even start playing so you don't see the
time remaining pie chart. Instead, you get a yellow flash message that says,
"Can't play track" or song or some such at the top. If you double click a
track to play it, it just flashes the same message.

The fix is to temporarily increase the volume above their minimum ad volume
threshold and then hit the play button in the lower left corner of the app.
This reliably fixes things for me.

Snow leopard, macbook pro, spotify 0.6.1.287.g64b130c8

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bufo
I can only wish them luck, it will be interesting to see if this model will be
a successful one, since so many similar companies have trouble trudging on.
They paid €45 million of licences in 2010 [1], and 2 million subscribers is
probably close to €10 million revenue. They also have aggressive advertising.

[1] <http://www.ballade.no/nmi.nsf/doc/art2011011911391428493018>

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RyanKearney
Especially since I pay $25 a YEAR for 256bit AAC streaming audio to all of my
computers and mobile devices. Spotify is simply too expensive.

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muhfuhkuh
So, you pay the equivalent of two traditional CDs worth of music for a year of
audio. That sounds like a pretty good deal, actually, even if it is streaming.

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RyanKearney
iTunes Match, so it's streaming and download.

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pointyhat
The irony of this is that I have just cancelled my Spotify account because
tracks I have on my playlists have disappeared due to I assume various
problems with record labels.

It's utterly annoying when you sit down in the office and the first track you
go to is gone.

