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

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.

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.

I set this up on my Xbox 360 over the weekend and the process could barely be easier:

1. Download the Jamcast software and install it on your PC.

2. Open Jamcast, click the devices tab and check that your Xbox, PlayStation or digital radio/receiver appears in the list. If not, click Find and it should appear.

3. Fire up Spotify. Jamcast essentially broadcasts the output from your PC’s sound card to other devices on the home network, so check you’ve got no applications such as email clients running in the background, or be prepared to have your listening interrupted by “you’ve got new mail” jingles.

4. Turn on your Xbox and choose Music from the My Xbox section. Select Jamcast from the list of networked devices, then select Playlists and Virtual Soundcard. Click play, and after a few seconds delay, you should hear Spotify streaming through your console’s speakers. (Note that the instructions may vary slightly for other consoles/devices).

JAMCAST CAVEATS

Jamcast is beta software and the streaming experience isn’t perfect. The stream suffered from the odd audio wibble and drop out during our tests. A post on the Jamcast support forums claims this is down to the PC struggling to sample the Spotify audio quickly enough, which could be a particular problem on low-powered laptops and netbooks.

There’s also a five to ten second delay between the sound emanating from your PC and the sound coming out of your console/digital radio, so don’t panic if it doesn’t kick in immediately.

We also struggled to get Jamcast running on our test digital radio (the Revo Pico RadioStation), which recognised the Jamcast Virtual Soundcard playlist, but flatly refused to play it. Others have had more success with digital radios, judging by the forums.

MAC STREAMING

And what about those of you in Apple land, who are unable to install Jamcast? Several online forums suggest it’s possible to stream Spotify using a combination of the $25 Airfoil software and Apple’s Airport Express devices. Note – I haven’t tested this, so proceed at your own risk.

Let me know on comments below if you’ve found any alternative/better ways to stream Spotify to non-PC devices.

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!