I’ve had my week reviewing Spotify’s Premium account and the iPhone app, I’ve listened to an uneclectic mix of playlists that mostly consisted of the song Africa by Toto, and I’ve used it in central London and out in Kent, with all the public transport in between.

And the verdict? I almost, nearly, don’t quite want to pay for it.

It’s not that it’s not brilliant. It is. I’ve grown tired of eulogising to friends and family, trying to convince a younger relative who’s part of the free music generation that paying £10 a month for any track, anywhere is infinitely better than a BitTorrent account.

I’ve had people wanting to buy an iPhone after ten minutes playing with the app. I’ve used it in conjunction with Shazam in the pub to find new artists to enjoy. I’ve even rediscovered my embarrassing teenage addiction to Kriss Kross’s Totally Krossed Out. (I was young. Backward jeans were cool. Still are.)

But, now that my guest subscription has expired, I’m just not sure I want to shell out my own money – and even I’m a bit surprised by that. A few niggling little issues have grown into show-stoppers as the week’s drawn to a close.

Not quite perfect

Connection has, on the whole, been pretty good. On wide roads in London the 3G signal held strong, but walking down back roads with imposing buildings on either side the drop-outs became quite frequent. Obviously, the offline playlists solve the problem, but then you’re tying yourself into the Spotify Premium account.

I know it’s a huge library of music but I’m still not 100% convinced about spending a year building up playlists and downloading new tracks in the knowledge that cancelling the subscription means losing the lot. I don’t download or buy a massive amount of music, so the £10 a month I’d be spending wouldn’t be far away from the amount I’d spend anyway – on physical products that are mine to keep.

Then there’s the library itself. Yes, it’s impressive, but at the moment the albums I’d actually be willing to spend my money on are the new releases – yet they’re a bit of a grey area. Looking at yesterday’s releases in the UK the results are mixed.

Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3, David Gray’s Draw The Line and Mark Knopfler’s Get Lucky were all in there ready for streaming first thing.

Muse’s The Resistance wasn’t but has today appeared; Peter Andre’s Revelation, Porcupine Tree’s The Incident and Megadeth’s Endgame were nowhere to be seen

Pixie Lott’s Turn It Up – surely the most teen-friendly of those – was initially a Premium-only release.

Now, I completely understand the use of Premium exclusives such as this, and I have no problem with it at all. Being able to get a new release for free on the day it’s out does seem like taking the Spotify ad-supported model to its extreme.

But that only works as a draw to the Premium account if every major release is included. What about the others in that list that didn’t make it to Spotify at all on release day? Here’s Spotify’s response:

“How fast we add a new release depends on the artist management and their label.  Some new releases we get on release date (like Muse and Jay-Z this week) and others might take a little while longer or not appear at all if we don’t have the rights.  We don’t set the actual release dates so it’s up to the labels to decide when we get it.”

It does seem a little harsh to take a library of millions of tracks and complain about the small minority of absentees, but offering new music on the day it’s released is a fundamental strength of services such as iTunes – which many analysts seem to think is what Spotify will become.

No more freebies?

My final worry is that Spotify is becoming a victim of its own success. I can’t be the only one who’s noticed – since I reverted to a free account, of course – that the service is extremely flaky at the moment. Some tracks aren’t loading at all on my desktop client, others just bring a notice that Spotify can’t be accessed right now.

With the move back to invite-only as well, the signs are all there that the service is struggling with the huge increase in traffic in recent weeks – and it’s the non-Premium listeners who are having their bandwidth cut. Which begs the question: will the ad-supported version still exist in six months?

So no, despite my initial enthusiasm last week, I won’t be getting my credit card out just yet. I’ll be going to a traditional shop and buying the Muse album on an old-school CD, ripping it to my hard disk and putting it on to my iPhone in the knowledge that it will still be there in a year’s time.

I genuinely love Spotify and want it to be a huge success. Plus, I already miss the freedom of that Premium account. But I just can’t bring myself to commit to £10 a month.

That said, I’ve already changed my mind about it once this week…