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Posted on May 18th, 2010 by Tim Danton

Spotify for £5 tempts me at last… what about you?

spotify sign up

I’ve been a whisker away from signing up to Spotify Premium in the past, with the promise of all-you-can-eat music enough to lure me to the Spotify home page – but never quite enough to persuade me to part with £10 per month.

But this morning’s announcement – a cut-down version for £4.99 per month that brings music to your PC but not to your phone – has finally brought my dust-ridden credit card out of retirement.

This is a watershed moment: it marks the point where I officially stop buying CDs and move to a brave new download-only age. Although if I’m entirely honest, the past year hasn’t seen many CDs added to my collection (five if you must know, and all of those were Christmas presents).

Fifteen years ago, when I was but a fresh-faced university graduate, things couldn’t have been more different. I spent hours each week in the local HMV, listening to the new CD singles and pondering which to buy. My shelves still heave with the weight of discs sitting there, unlistened to for a decade.

How much more convenient to have music on demand. If I want to listen to the new album by The National, I can. Or a friend tells me about a band I’ve never heard of; all I need to do is head over to Spotify and type in their name. Or I can flip back to my youth and swoon to the sounds of The Cure (still the best band in history, just for the record).

spotify poll So yes, I’m persuaded. And I’ll be fascinated to see what everyone else thinks. Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a poll on the website gently ticking away, asking whether or not PC Pro visitors would ever sign up to Spotify Premium for £10 a month.

You can see the resounding answer above: 82% said no, 12% yes, and a paltry 6% already do. Will that change? That’s up to you, so head over to the home page and take part in the new poll – which asks the same question but this time the price is £5.

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14 Responses to “ Spotify for £5 tempts me at last… what about you? ”

  1. Paul Ockenden Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 11:27 am

    With the new fiver tariff they’ve taken away all of the bits that I would consider paying for!

    I’ll gladly pay a fiver a month for a mobile only (no-PC) subscription. They could call it the £10-£5 subscription.

     
  2. Tim Danton Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 11:32 am

    Give it time, Paul, give it time. Or maybe you and I should combine, and I’ll take the PC connection while you have the mobile!

     
  3. colsmith Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 11:33 am

    Now, if they can only sort out an agreement with Sonos and the deal (for me) will be sealed.

     
  4. James Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 11:44 am

    A fiver is a pretty good deal. If they would only pull their fingers out and release a windows mobile client, id sign up for the premium account.People have been asking for it for ages now, but they only seem to care about bloody iphone and android.

     
  5. jay Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 12:01 pm

    well its great for me…

    never been obsessed with mobile phones, i just dont see the fuss

     
  6. Peter Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    Would be tempted if the £4.99 version streamed at 320kbps but unfortunately it doesn’t. Loss of mobile phone functionality not an issue to me since I wouldn’t use it.

     
  7. David Wright Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 12:46 pm

    I don’t listen to enough music…

    I guess I listen to, maybe, 2 tracks a month, unless I happen to be in the car with the kids, then I have to listen to music…

    I tend to listen to either my podcasts or NDR Info…

     
  8. James Bassett Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    I don’t listen to that much music when sat at the PC. It’s mostly an “on the move” thing for me so this would still be a no. Also, I find far too many gaping holes in their track-lists but I freely admit my musical tastes are weird.

     
  9. shaunb Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:50 pm

    I notice that the “Day Pass” has bitten the dust now. Funnily enough they recommend forking out for an Unlimited or Premium account instead :-(

     
  10. Garreth Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    Why is everyone going on about spotify? It sucks – you have to download and install software to use it, last time i used it you couldn’t really playlist songs and there are voice adverts.

    Grooveshark people! Its web based, has playlist and favourites features, plus a ‘radio’ feature.

    Seriously why bother installing that POS?

     
  11. AnonnyMuss Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 4:17 pm

    I’m not that fussed by the adverts, they aren’t that frequent and often are less silly than some of the jingles on real radio. I would consider paying £5 if it included offline PC access.

    I think the real value as Paul mentioned is in the mobile side of things. I’d even be happy to sideload the music from a PC rather than do it over 3G networks. But £10 is just a bit too much.

    I think removing ADs is worth about £3/month to me and giving me mobile access about £6/month.

     
  12. AnonnyMuss Says:
    May 18th, 2010 at 4:19 pm

    Just to add: my preferred realistic option would be mobile with adverts. I’d even be happy for it to be sideloading only with a limit on tracks e.g. 200 tracks max at any one time on the mobile and unlimited on the PC.

     
  13. Christopher Walton Says:
    May 19th, 2010 at 4:01 pm

    I don’t think it would no matter how much it costs. I use Spotify free for light listening, however when it comes to parting with money for music, i occasionaly use itunes but mostly i purchase vinyl (occasionally CD’s) from my local independent record shop.

     
  14. halsteadk Says:
    May 24th, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    I’m certainly more tempted by £5 than £10 as I don’t have a compatible mobile device and the standard sound quality is pretty good. However, I’m still tempted by Napster which seems to have a similarly large catalogue and lets you keep 5 MP3s each month – the downside being the slightly poorer streaming quality.

     

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