Last.fm used to be one of the best streaming music apps but, since the firm’s decision to switch to subscription-only access, we’ve been hunting for a replacement. Luckily, with we7’s radio tool hitting the market, it looks like we’ve found a worthy successor.

Previous Last.fm users will be right at home with the free we7 app, which is still in beta. You can create your own station by searching we7’s database for artists or genres of music – both options will result in a station that riffs off your first keyword to find songs to your liking – and these choices can then be saved for later consumption.

There’s also a list of popular searches from around we7’s community – handy for looking up top artists – and a selection of preset stations centred around popular themes, too. At the time of writing there are Ultimate Working and Best Driving Anthems themes, alongside selections based around the lineups for this year’s Glastonbury and V festivals.

We7’s player is easy to use, too. Album art is automatically hunted down to sit in the centre of the screen and, like Last.fm, highlighting a track as a particular favourite will see your station skewed towards other similar songs.

While this app is free, more options are available if you choose we7’s £10 monthly subscription, with playlist creation and the option to search for individual songs and albums. It’s also a shame that there just isn’t the range of options offered by Last.fm, which allowed you to connect to other users by tracking and observing the music that they played.

Still, if you’re after a way to listen to music on the move then this is worth a look – we7’s broad catalogue ensures you’ll get plenty of variety, it’s easy to use, and it’s currently free in the Android market.

Want more great Android apps? Check out our previous Android Apps of the Week or read our 36 Best Android Apps feature

If there’s one thing I despise about my job, it’s what I call the PR ambulance chasers. The second a flake of snow falls on London, there’ll be six press releases in my inbox warning about how many billions it’ll cost British industry – all, conveniently, from remote-desktop firms. Likewise, the minute a Government laptop goes missing, there’ll be a flurry of comment from publicity-seeking security firms, wondering why oh why the civil servant wasn’t running Spods Security Encryption 9.

So it came as little surprise yesterday evening, shortly after Google announced new measures to tackle copyright infringement in its search results, that the BPI decided to darken my inbox.

“It is encouraging that Google is beginning to respond to our calls to act more responsibly with regard to illegal content,” the music industry body declared.  “However this package of measures, while welcome, still ignores the heart of the problem – that Google search overwhelmingly directs consumers looking for music and other digital entertainment to illegal sites.”

Colleagues will confirm that it doesn’t take much to raise my hackles, but blanket, unsupported statements such as “Google overwhelmingly directs consumers… to illegal sites” is a pretty effective way of getting my gander.

So I fired off an abrupt email to the BPI’s PR chief: has the BPI got any evidence to support its wild claims, I asked? Within minutes I had my answer. Yes it did.

“Earlier this year, we undertook test searches on Google for the title of each Official UK Chart Top 20 singles and albums, followed by ‘MP3’,” the PR wallah replied. “On average, for the Top 20 singles, 17 of the first 20 Google search results (85%) were links to known illegal sites. For the Top 20 albums, on average 14 of the first 20 search results (70%) were to known illegal sites.”

If you typed “PC Pro magazine” into Google and the top result was linking to a site that was offering scanned PDFs of our fine wares, we’d be pretty narked too

“Try it for yourself now,” the man at the BPI urged. “Type in the name of any current popular artist — for example Lady Gaga or whatever you want.  Add the term ‘MP3’ or ‘download’ and look at both the predictive search results and the resulting list of sites.  The top sites are pretty much all infringing.”

Truth be told, he’s not wrong. A search for “Lady Gaga MP3”  delivers results for sites such as MP3Raid.com, emp3World.com and beemp3.com right at the top – all of which (the BPI assures me) aren’t licensed to carry the songs, although whether it’s fair to call them “illegal sites” is debatable.  In fact, there wasn’t an obviously “legitimate” site on the entire first page of results.

Replacing the term “MP3” with “download” did at least return results from iTunes, but again the vast majority of the top ten were iffy sites. And the same goes for Duffy, Take That, Katy Perry and pretty much any other artist I’ve winced at when they’ve appeared on my car radio.

I can understand the BPI’s frustration. If you typed “PC Pro magazine” into Google and the top result was linking to a site that was offering scanned PDFs of our fine wares, we’d be pretty narked too. Let alone if we weren’t even on the front page.

The prickly question is: what should Google do about it? I admire Google’s stubborn refusal to manually override its search algorithms, even when freak search results generate enormously damaging PR for the company, such as the infamous “monkey” image of Michelle Obama.

And there’s no doubt that the popularity of dodgy download sites is one of the main reason they’re top of the search rankings – in many ways it’s the will of the public, not of Google, that is pushing those sites onto the front page. But when the search results are so clearly distorted in favour of sites that are ripping off copyrighted content, it just doesn’t feel right.

Yes, Google’s promised to act faster on takedown notices and prevent “piracy” terms appearing in autocomplete searches. I think it could go further. By leaving the organic search results exactly as they are, for instance, but increasing the size of the sponsored links box at the top of each page for music-related terms, so that users are at least presented with the chance to buy from a legitimate site. The labels earn more money, Google earns more ad revenue: both sides (potentially) win. And if legitimate sales don’t pick up, Google has copper-bottomed proof that search isn’t killing the music business.

Has anyone got any better ideas?

Alongside systems such as Spotify and Last.FM, FlowMusic is hoping to encourage listeners to keep it legal by making it as easy as possible to buy tracks – which I’d say is the right tactic to discouraging music piracy. Make it easy, keep it cheap.

However, there’s one area constantly throwing a wrench in the works: sorting out the rights.

At the FlowMusic launch, Pure’s CEO Hossein Yassaie shared a slide showing the complicated mess his company had to decipher when it came to paying out royalties to the various parties involved. He said this one slide took three hours to be explained to him. (Click image to enlarge.)

“I didn’t believe it at first… being an intellectual property company we understand licensing,” he said. “But I have to say I have never seen anything as complicated at this.”

And if that doesn’t make your eyes bleed and your mind start to leak, it’s worth noting that’s the dumbed-down, simplified version. As Yassaie said: “There were times along the way I almost gave up.”

Despite clearly trying — and getting PRS for Music onside — Pure couldn’t sort out all of the rights issues before launch, with debate remaining over who gets paid for streaming songs. Director of connected services Pete Downton said: “This is new ground in the industry… we’re trying to find a model that works for everyone. If we wait for the copyright legislation written in 1709 to be amended to reflect the reality of technology today, we’ll be waiting a long time to launch these services, but we start from a fundamental position that we respect copyright.”

And there’s the problem. Even if a company can figure out the tech side and come up with an appealing commercial idea, sorting out the licensing can knock the whole thing down. Ever notice how songs in your Spotify playlists quietly get greyed out and won’t play? That’s over rights issues.

The musicians, songwriters, and yes, even marketeers in the music industry deserve to get paid for their work. But somehow rights need to be simplified or the industry risks causing those music companies trying to encourage legal downloads – such as Pure – to give up and leave music distribution to the pirates.

Last month I came across one of the most interesting books I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a long time: Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age by Steve Knopper.

As well as a riveting account of changes in the music industry over the past several decades, it tells the story of the birth of Napster, the rise of peer-to-peer downloading, and the terrible choices the industry has made that have directly led to the situation we find ourselves in today.

The sheer scale of the head-into-sand plunging that evidently went on in industry boardrooms until very recently – and still does in some – is astounding, and it’s hard to feel sympathy for the fat cats who are now seeing their bottom lines being squeezed by punters with more technological nous than they. The plight of the artists themselves, and the music they make and we enjoy, is a different matter entirely – one which the book seeks to address.

But Knopper’s not looking at ways of preventing illegal downloads. He’s more interested in how the industry can make legally downloading a song a better experience than taking the free alternative route. It’s an obvious point, but in my opinion Apple’s recent stranglehold over the digital music market and its rigid pricing (not to mention the appalling design of iTunes) were standing firmly in the way of that ever happening. To this end, even though I use my iPhone as my primary music player, I’ve never purchased a track from Apple.

This Christmas I received the best present I’ve ever had: the knowledge that my Apple boycott (if you can call it that from someone who handed over an arm and a leg for an iPhone…) may long continue. It was thanks largely to the Rage Against The Machine vs X Factor internet campaign that somehow managed to spark a million people into action. I didn’t buy either track, for the record, but I was surprised by the number of alternative MP3 stores offering both. Amazon, Play, 7Digital, the legal Napster… the list is growing and the competition means we’re seeing plenty of prices below those offered by iTunes. In fact, a visit to the Amazon MP3 store revealed the RATM single was being sold for a loss-leading 29p, but that wasn’t what caught my eye.

Armed with a “Best Albums of 2009″ list, I found recent, hugely successful albums selling for £5, and £4. Some for £3 or less. Twelve tracks for less than the cost of a London pint is firmly inside the realms of the impulse buy, and before the hour was out I found I’d bought 14 new albums – more than I’d bought in the whole of 2009, 2008 and 2007 combined. The whole lot cost me less than £45, and they immediately downloaded and automatically added themselves to Windows Media Player at my request.

I know I may be late to the party here, but the prices on offer changed my view on downloading music so completely that I’ve since found myself asking friends for recommendations, looking through specialist websites and exploring the back catalogues of bands I’ve recently enjoyed. A quick look on iTunes tells its own story, as those very same 14 albums would have cost me more than £85 – the kind of unappealing amount I had previously associated with buying music.

Most people use torrent sites not out of a desire to get their entertainment for free, but to acquire it at a price that doesn’t feel like they’re being taken for a mug. Whether a supermarket-style price war on digital music is good for the industry is a question for another blog, but making music legally available at attractive prices is by far the best way to drag the vast majority of torrent addicts back to legality.

“The [music] industry has been extremely slow to listen to the demands of its customers, and has had something of an abusive relationship with them, seeking to punish them before thinking of how to serve them better,” Lord Lucas told the House of Lords recently, when debating whether to cut-off file-sharers or not. He’s not wrong.

Yet, there is a small part of me that’s tinged with sympathy for the music overlords. Perhaps I’m being overwhelmed with Christmas good spirit (although that sounds ridiculously out of character), but I can’t help thinking BPI chief Geoff Taylor had a point when he commented recently that: “There are now more than 35 legal digital music services in the UK, offering music fans a great choice of ways to get music legally. It’s disappointing that levels of illegal P2P use remain high despite this.”

I spent a good portion of my weekend wrapping presents (with the ability of a man in a strait jacket) and writing Christmas cards, with Spotify merrily playing away in the background. In between Spotify sessions I would fire up my Xbox 360, and flip between the Elbow and Tom McRae channels on the excellent Last.fm service (I’m a sucker for moribund male vocalists).

I didn’t pay a penny for either of these services – if you exclude the necessary Xbox 360 Live subscription required for Last.fm. And yet I could listen to pretty much any song I wished for on Spotify, or sit back and listen to a tailored stream of songs based on my tastes on Last.fm. And for £10 a month for Spotify and absolutely chuff all on Last.fm, I could take both of these services with me on my iPhone.

They took their time about it, but Taylor’s right: the music industry has finally delivered decent, legal music services that benefit us as much as the record labels. Plus, you could  buy the Christmas number one for only 29p from Amazon, so even the argument that digital music is overpriced is beginning to fade.

So how about we call a truce with the music industry in this season of goodwill? They drop this ridiculous campaign to persuade Government to cut off file-sharers, and we’ll stop “borrowing” albums from BitTorrent. Happy Xmas (War is Over).

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…

Over the course of a year that does seem like a lot of money – particularly as most users will already have huge music collections of their own – but the promise of millions of tracks available on the move is certainly tempting.

Starting up

Once logged in, you’ll be delighted to see all of your desktop playlists seamlessly synced with Spotify on your phone, and if that’s what you’re after you can just dive straight in.

Over Wi-Fi, tracks play immediately; on 3G we had pauses of anything up to ten seconds, and EDGE is even longer. But once the track is going we were only scuppered by the occasional drop-out for a few seconds – and our office is a notorious O2 blackspot.

When tracks are playing the screen looks similar to that of standard iPhone playback, with the usual controls, a CD cover if Spotify can find it, and an extra options button in the top-right corner.

Tap this for details of the album and artist, an option to add it to an existing playlist, and extra shuffle and repeat controls.

Offline playlists

Altering playlists on your desktop client brings a seamless update on the iPhone app too, in mere seconds if you’re on Wi-Fi. And you have the incredible option of turning them all into “Offline playlists”: next time you connect to Wi-Fi the entire playlist will download onto the phone for use at any time.

The limit is a rather odd 3,333 tracks, and all you have to do is connect once every 30 days to prove you’re still a Premium subscriber. That’s a pretty phenomenal amount of music at your fingertips, and conveniently sidesteps those obvious issues while on the tube or out in the wilderness.

Searching is simple enough, with three tabs to arrange results by Tracks, Albums and Artists. It’s not something you’ll want to do regularly with the iPhone keyboard – you’ll create a playlist in a fraction of the time using the desktop client – but it works well for finding that track you just heard in the pub.

That’s the real meat of the app, and the only other addition is a More… button on the homepage, with details of the app, a link to Spotify.com’s help page, and an option for forcing offline mode even in network areas. And that’s your lot. It all works remarkably smoothly and won’t be at all unfamiliar to users of the desktop app.

The caveats

There are a few key issues though. The first is Wi-Fi, which works fine in most cases but currently refuses to work over firewalled networks. So, no office Spotify just yet, and it also casts doubt over the app’s usefulness on public Wi-Fi networks. Spotify representatives have suggested opening port 4070, but in Starbucks that won’t be an option. Rest assured it’s high on the list of fixes being worked on.

Then there’s the iPhone’s annoying single-task way of working. The functionally identical Android app can play tracks in the background while you work, but on the iPhone you have to have Spotify open at all times. Nip out for a second to check your emails and playback will stop dead, although it will continue from that point when you next load it back up.

And finally there’s the issue of battery life. The iPhone’s music player isn’t exactly kind to the battery anyway, but when you’re adding data transfer on top of that too, it becomes greedy to the extreme. A mere half-hour of streaming over 3G has taken a good 25% of my battery bar (on a last-generation iPhone 3G), so I wouldn’t be too confident of using it for the duration of a long train journey. There’s not a great deal Spotify can do about it – although the offline playlist option should reduce the effect by quite a bit.

These are certainly drawbacks, and they must be considered when the cost is a significant £10 a month. But all in all it’s a hugely impressive debut. A few features of the desktop client haven’t made it across – the radio channels and top lists, for example – but as a standalone player for specifically selected tracks and playlists it’s a very tempting proposition.

A far greater issue has arisen, though. On a short 20-minute walk from Charing Cross to Soho, my 3G connection dropped out no fewer than six times, each time for around 15 seconds. One of those six times the Spotify app was even kind enough to close itself automatically. It’s annoying enough to put me off, so I guess the offline mode is going to be the major way I’ll be using Spotify from now on.

A quick reminder of the rules: all the songs had to have some connection to computers and they had to be found in the Spotify library. 

The winners are:

12. It’s All About the Pentiums by irritating American “comedian” Weird Al Yankovic, as suggested by our very own (and now banned from Spotify) Darien Graham-Smith.

11. Electric Worm by rappers The Beastie Boys. Many thanks to Fat Trev.

10. Mr. Roboto by electro-rockers Styx. Included here partly for its obvious reference to brilliant Japanese robot technology, but also for the line “My true identity, I’m Kilroy, Kilroy, Kilroy“, which we can’t hear without thinking of the orange-faced Euro-sceptic dancing the robot. Now there’s an image for you. Suggested by Greg.

9. At number nine is Twisted Transistor by Korn, suggested by (erm) Steve Backley.

8. Technologic by Daft Punk follows at number eight, and is a song so incessantly annoying we only included it because if we have to suffer, so do you. Many “thanks” to Peter.

7. Naked in Front of the Computer by Faith No More is another gem suggested by Fat Trev, and gets a mention because it accurately describes the disturbing state of PC Pro’s hyperactive reviews team. This is why we don’t have a live webcam, folks.

6. Go Go Gadget Flow by Lupe Fiasco lands at number six, and gets a nod from Oliver for including a proper geek reference to the 16-bit Sega Genesis.

5. Steamy Windows by Tina Turner. Because the only logical follow-up to Chicago-born rapper Lupe Fiasco is Tina Turner. As suggested by 1980’s Olympian-turned-motivational-speaker Kriss Akabusi. Or someone using a fake name.

4. A Scanner Darkly by Primal Scream, as suggested by Richard George.

3. Left to My Own Devices by the Pet Shop Boys neatly describes the PC Pro team’s idea of heaven, and we’re grateful to Firewire Fred for the suggestion.

2. At number 2 is The Proxy by RJD2. If you haven’t mentally checked out of your office already this afternoon, this is the song that will be the final straw.

1. And finally, Return of the Mack by mid-nineties stun-gun enthusiast Mark Morrison was also suggested by our speedy new friend Kriss Akabusi. The eponymous album was released in 1997, pre-dating Apple’s massive revival by a couple of years. Silly man, funny voice, excellent IT industry prediction skills.

On that note, we’re going to give our new playlist a whirl. Thanks for all your suggestions and we’ll see you next week. If you’d like to inflict – sorry, share – PC Pro’s Spotify playlist with someone special, you can find it here.

Update: we’ve just noticed this status update on the Spotify site warning of intermittent issues with playlists. Best laid plans and all that… 

All you have to do is register with the site (use this link, don’t go through the homepage, or else your name will simply be added to the waiting list) and download the desktop software, which is a mere 1.5MB.

Once installed, you’ll be presented with a piece of software that looks so similar to iTunes, I’d be amazed if Apple’s lawyers aren’t already ordering Havana cigars in anticipation. Pop the name of any band, track or album into the search box, and you’ll be presented with an impressive list of matching tracks, any of which can be played almost instantaneously with a double-click. Others can be added to the queue with a right-click. 

There doesn’t seem to be any limit to the amount of times you can listen to a song – whole albums are seemingly up for grabs. Like iTunes itself, Spotify has struck deals with all the major record labels, and the only missing mainstream albums are the usual hold-outs: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Grumbleweeds.

So how the Charlie Dickens are they making this pay? Every 20 minutes or so, in between tracks, you get hit with a short advert. So far, I’ve had Moira Stewart reminding me to get my tax return in on time and a reminder about claiming child benefit. Literally taking with one hand and giving with the other. 

Spotify offers day passes for 99p or monthly subscriptions for £9.99 if you want to avoid the ads and pick up a few extra features. Nothing worth paying for, in my opinion, so I’m hoping the Government advertising is enough to keep this brilliant service in the black.

One word of caution: delve into the preferences menu and you’ll see that Spotify creates a local cache. It’s set to steal no more than 10% of your free disk space, but you can reduce that quota if you wish. And before you go hunting out that cache in anticipation of a shedload of free MP3s being stored on your PC, forget it: we’ve already looked, and they weren’t that naive.

And for those of who you who read my blog post from yesterday – I’ve now found something to stick on my spare screen! 

Yes, I’m well aware that the number one is the product of a talent show that’s produced and part-judged by a record company executive.

But sitting at number two is a record that wasn’t even officially re-released, that’s sung by a man who died 11 years ago. And the reason it’s sitting pretty during the busiest chart week of the year is that a Facebook Group was so worried that the X-Factor winner was going to murder Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, that they urged everyone to download the peerless Jeff Buckley version instead. Even Cohen’s own version of the song is sitting at number 36.  

Meanwhile, a further glance down the chart reveals The Pogues and Kirsty Maccoll’s Fairytale of New York at number 12, Mariah Carey’s pitiful All I want For Christmas at 17, Wham’s Last Christmas at 27,  and Wizzard at 33.  

I’m going home and digging out the luminous socks – it’s like 1985 again!