I am in US right now. That's why I have no access to Spotify. I believe that majority of the users here are interested in using Spotify but have no idea what it is.
Could you be more specific on what makes Spotify so unique? I heard that it is just another subscription based music player like Rhapsody but with better UI. Correct me if I am wrong.
not being in the us I dont know what rhapsody does, but :)
the desktop client is free to use in an unlimited way, there are adverts but they are pretty unintrusive.
they have a pretty massive library, at first there was a few holes but they are getting better and better.
their player interface is pretty decent, but their software rocks, I can search and start playing a song faster than I can with itunes playing local songs, if it goes offline, they have usually cached most of my popular playlists, I can have svn timing out and somehow this thing still plays new songs.
along with a mobile application that lets you store offline playlists.
from wikipedia it sounds like rhapsody is a pretty similar service, and if so I dont really understand what more people can want as a music consumer, its a pretty damn big step compared to just a few years ago
As far as music being available, I think it's a decent option, but it's still beholden (as far as I know) to the music label oligopoly.
I'd like to see something that gives the music labels a run for their money, doesn't require artists to sign away all their rights in return for sales and makes sense for all players in the business, not just the big-money interests.
with services like cdbaby (who are signed on to spotify), independent artists can get pretty direct access to consumers, its only one separation from artists directly controlling their own distribution.
to be fair its been like that for a while with cdbaby and itunes, lets hope we start seeing a larger throughput of artists "go it alone" now that this is all in place, or maybe we were wrong about the labels (and the artists) all along.
I dont think much more needs to be done if spotify keep up what they are doing so far.