Spotify apps review: first look

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Spotify this week unveiled apps that integrate directly into the music streaming service, but this isn’t quite FarmVille for music lovers. Instead, the apps are, for the most part, geared at helping listeners find music — the system offers 15 million tracks at last count, so figuring out which ones you want to actually hear can be a challenge.

At the moment, the 11 apps are all free, and available to those on free subscriptions, and it’s hard to see that changing any time soon. For the most part, the apps are generally reviews and playlists — hardly something many people will shell out for. Moving the service to handsets might make apps chargeable, but even then, these are little more than curated content.

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

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

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.

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How to stop Spotify shaming you on Facebook

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

If you’ve got friends on Spotify, your Facebook homepage probably looks something like the screenshot above this morning. This is because Spotify has just upgraded its software with a battery of social-networking features, and has taken the rather obnoxious decision to make everything you do public by default.

If you don’t want to be responsible for cluttering up your friends’ Facebook pages with inane announcements, or let the world know about your Barbara Streisand Greatest Hits playlist, here’s how to protect your privacy:

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The sinister side of Spotify

Friday, March 5th, 2010

I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that Spotify is, in many ways, simply brilliant. Music at my fingertips. The music I want, when I want it. And most importantly of all, for free.

The question is how long it’s going to last. More than one voice in the babbling din of the internet has openly wondered how the likes of Spotify can ever hope to turn a profit, and for good reason. The vast server farms, all that bandwidth swallowed by hungry cheapskates – not to mention having to pay all those pesky musicians – it must cost an absolute fortune.

And I really do wonder where all the money is coming from, because Spotify’s advertising is  clearly about as effective as getting semi-conscious students to thrust leaflets into the path of psychotic rush-hour commuters. The phrase ‘doomed to failure’ springs to mind.

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The 10 free programs I can’t live without

Monday, November 30th, 2009

I had the delightful task of rebuilding my working life last Monday, as my hard disk decided that would be the perfect time to die. And I realised I hadn’t actually synchronised my online backup system since I last tested a new service. Clever. With time against me – the magazine went to press on Wednesday night – it quickly became clear which programs I desperately needed to install.

1. Paint.NET

Windows 7 may now include a version of Paint complete with a fancy Ribbon interface, but it still doesn’t offer the features I need to quickly enhance photos and mould screenshots to my whims. Paint.NET does, and it also supports plug-ins for RAW files (and more), making it my top photo-editing choice. (more…)

Spotify for iPhone: the verdict

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

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. (more…)

Spotify for iPhone: first look

Monday, September 7th, 2009

The eagerly awaited music-streaming service Spotify has today arrived on both the iPhone App Store and on Android’s Marketplace, and I’ve been granted a seven-day guest pass to see if it’s really worth that £10-a-month premium account.

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. (more…)

How to stream Spotify to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and digital radios

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Spotify may have launched its iPhone and Android apps, but how about streaming the Spotify sounds to other devices in the home, such as games consoles and digital radios? After all, many of us have expensive speaker systems connected to the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, while the speakers found on the average laptop give even Barry White the nasally whine of the Bee Gees.

Although the Spotify software itself doesn’t support streaming to other devices, it’s perfectly possible to do so with the third-party software, Jamcast. What’s more, the Jamcast software is completely free of charge and (unlike the iPhone/Android software) you don’t need a premium Spotify account to take advantage.

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The PC Pro Spotify playlist: the results

Friday, May 15th, 2009

You know it’s Friday afternoon when a hastily-written blog post asking for inspiration for PC Pro’s Spotify account gets nearly 20 responses before four in the afternoon. The result is a barkingly-mad list of music which takes in artists from The Beastie Boys to Tina Turner, and from Styx to Korn.

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:

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Suggest songs for the PC Pro Computer playlist

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Here’s a bit of Friday fun: help us complete a Spotify playlist of computer-related songs.

The rules are simple:

1. The song title or artist must have a computer connection. (Kraftwerk’s Computer Love, or anything by The Commodores, for example)

2. It must be in the Spotify library  

We’ll put the best 12 suggestions into the PC Pro Computer Playlist. Add your suggestions using the comments below. 

UPDATE: Voting has now closed. Thanks for all your suggestions. See the final PC Pro playlist here.