

Spotify now available in The Netherlands - bluppy2
http://www.spotify.com/nl/blog/archives/2010/05/18/netherlands/

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sssparkkk
Great news! Also, they introduced a new plan: Spotify Unlimited. For half the
price of the Premium plan you will be able to listen to unlimited amounts of
ad-free music. You won't get offline playlist support or access to the mobile
version.

On a related note: if Spotify were to become massively popular in the
Netherlands, its social features that rely on Facebook might spell big trouble
for the dominant dutch social network Hyves. I wouldn't be surprised if the
good folks at Hyves HQ are frantically trying to come up with a great way to
share Spotify's music through their network as well. Question ofcourse is:
will that even come close to the social integration the Spotify client will be
able to provide...

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mzl
While the social features do use Facebook, I wouldn't say that it relies on
them. If you know someone with username X, you can search for spotify:user:X
to find their user-page. The facebook-integration "just" automates finding
your friends for you.

~~~
sssparkkk
Yes indeed, good point.

How would you share tracks with a friend that's not on facebook though? You
won't be able to just drag&drop, as this doesn't work to a user's profile-
view. Right?

~~~
pirko
It should work with drag and drop by dragging a track to the user on the
People list on the right. You can also right-click on a track, Send to,
Spotify People, pick a user

~~~
sssparkkk
Ehm yes, I know how the social component of the client is supposed to work. We
were talking about users that don't show up because they have not connected
with their facebook account.

So: how do you get a 'spotify:user:x' user in the people list so you can share
tracks with that particular user?

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mzl
If the user has enabled social features, you can just enter "spotify:user:x"
in the search-field. But now that you mention it, I realized that user x has
to connect to Facebook to enable the social features. That is unfortunate.

I was thinking more of users that one is not a "friend" with on Facebook, but
that one still wanted to share music with/see playlists from. Like the
spotify:users:spotify company user.

EDIT: After some help, I learned that if one cancels connecting with Facebook,
then the social features will be activated without requiring a Facebook
account.

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DrJokepu
I'm not sure whether the new plan is a good idea or not. (Spotify Unlimited -
cheaper than premium, you get unlimited adfree use but you can't use offline
features or run it on phones). Multiple plans confuse the user; think about
the billions of different Windows editions. Best to keep it simple; the
existing "you either pay or not" plan model was simple and elegant.

We had a great discussion about the fallacy of having too many plans on HN
maybe about a year ago, unfortunately I can't find it though. The point was:
it seems like when users face a non-trivial choice, they are more likely to
simply back off and not chose anything at all.

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spuz
I disagree. I don't have a fancy mobile phone and I'm unlikely to ever be at a
PC without an internet connection. £5 for unlimited ad-free music is perfect
for me. In fact I just signed up and didn't even have to pause my music for it
to recognise my purchase. Sometimes too many plans can be confusing but I
don't think Spotify really could have made it simpler.

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jules
1\. When I click buy I get an error that the security certificate is invalid

2\. It would be nice to be able to view the clip associated with the song

3\. I have a pretty high resolution. In a list of songs the first 10% of
horizontal space is "Track". Most of the song titles don't fit in that space.
Meanwhile 70% of the space is unused on the right. It's easy to fix by hand,
but it would still be nice if it automatically adapted to screen size. You
have to manually drag "Track" wider in every different view.

Very good UI overall.

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mischa_u
If you have a problem when signing up, it is likely due to the postcode
format. Use the format "1234AA" (without space).

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mikeyur
I've been using Spotify for months with a UK VPN, I'm really hoping they can
get it launched in North America soon.

