Be Excellent To Each Other

I've started a blog about finding random good albums and playlists on Spotify here:
http://spotifinds.blogspot.com/

If you have any suggestions, send 'em over

All tomorrow parties have been making playlists to go along with their festival line ups. If you scroll down a bit to an entry at 12th jan you'll find the 3 links.

http://www.atpfestival.com/vs-the-fans/login.php

Bah, they don't load for me

Starting to get adverts a lot more frequently now, but they're only short and haven't popped up more often than twice in an hour yet. They don't have much variety though; they're mostly the tax adverts with the guy reciting Pi to X decimal places.

I'm still quite happy with the program, but I can hardly ever think of anything to listen to. I've reached another musical block in my life.

This is my problem (and has been for about two years now). I'm worried my love for music is seriously on the wane.

In these fallow times of things to champion, the best thing to do is go back. The fun I have had over the last few days sifting through Bowie albums on Spotify to fill in the gaps can't be measured. Possibly.

It really does need a like this/try this feature though

I miss Pandora.

It does have a similar artists thing next to the artist profile thing, although its exactly thorough.

I've given this a go, now - it's briliant! It's a shame I can't use it at work.

Also - Markg - who is "Aim"? The tracks on your playlist from them/him/her are brillo.

I'm pretty sure if you click on the artist name it gives you a little bio. He's from Barrow I think.

Well, whoever he is, thanks for putting me onto them.

Cumbria represent!

Yes! Or, possibly, no.

But mainly yes! C'mon, it's either Aim or It Bites -- which side are you on?

Bitches' Sin.

*edit - or Skullflower. Or, um, Blaencathra

Blaencathra? I've heard of them, I'm sure I have. Have I seen them playing in the Tuns?

Heh. Grim up north etc.

Anyway, Spotify, eh? It's rubbish now.

handy tool here, spotify is getting quite regular updates and to help find if theres anything you'll like some blokes made this little search thing that compares your last fm account to the new releases.

http://lutt.se/lastfm+spotify+new/

Spotify is moving to 320kb/s:
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/22/spo ... bscribers/

I bet 320k Ogg will sound great. And only for paying subscribers? It's a good upsell that makes the escalating bandwidth bills they must be facing more palatable. Well played, Spotify.

I'm hopeless at telling the difference between medium- and high-quality bitrates. I doubt I'd appreciate this, but then I'm not paying for Spotify anyway. 160Kb/s is fine for me.

Really? I think the differences are quite obvious once you know what you are listening for. It might be best if you never learn what to listen for, else you'll be plagued by concerns about it for the rest of your life

Yep, I really can't tell the difference. Of course, I've never sat down and put much effort into forcing myself to — I have nothing to gain by joining the Audiophile world.

My hearing isn't amazing, though. I find it incredibly difficult, for example, to process what people are saying if there's a lot of background noise; I am absolutely useless at even semi-loud parties, and if there's loud music on at a pub* I have practically no option other than sitting there in silence, drinking and smiling politely. Or force everyone to sit outside, of course.


*WHY?? People go to pubs to chat and drink, not dance or listen to music, you cretins.

I used to rip all my audio at some enormous preset in LAME; I then once did an accidental double-blind listen test on myself with FLAC lossless compression and discovered that I can tell the difference. These days I rip all my audio at iTunes Plus rates and try hard not to think about it too much.

You are me and I claim my £5. I don't think that's poor hearing so much as poor ability to filter out background sounds, something I find very difficult.

Does that mean we're both John Coffey, too?

Yeah, I guess my problem is pretty much the inability to filter out background noise. It's very annoying at times.

Yup, which means we all owe ourselves a tenner.

I think that makes me more susceptible to compression artefacts, not less. Because I can't stop hearing them.

That's ironic seeing as the rest of us can only hear you and no one else.

I work on the principle that everyone else might have the same problem as me.

I wish Spotify would minimise to the Quick Launch bar as a mini player, like Windows Media Player and iTunes do. I'd be a lot more inclined to use it more often then.

Any good? http://toastify.codeplex.com/ ?

Demo of the iPhone app:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNCb1IdmJ_0

Looks very nice. Has a really neat offline mode.

Anyone else noticed an increase in the ratio of ads to music on Spotify of late? I'm sure it used to be one ad for every six or seven songs, now it seems to be one ad for every two or three songs. Not that I can complain really - I guess they're just making more money either way (increased ad sales and more people getting sick of the ads and subscribing).

How much is the subscription?

Tenner a month.

I pay it gladly. It's an awesome service.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8507885.stm



GRR.

I stand by my earlier comments.

I'll just pirate any of their stuff then, on principle.

(the principle being that I'm too used to not paying for it now)

Well, it's over a year since you made them and it hasn't gone bust yet.
And I've listened to a fuckload of free ("free") music in that time.

I would imagine Spotify negotiated a licence to the content that lasted, ohh, I dunno, a year or so? So here we are, at (presumably) their first ever contract renwal, and the content provider has walked away from the deal, probably because there isn't enough money in it, probably because Spotify don't have a compelling business model.

I suspect it's all downhill from here for Spotify.

And you wonder why Warner don't want to renew!

I suspect Spotify will do just fine but the free service will be further curtailed in some way.

Warner have always been the first amongst arseholes.

A similar program with independent and unsigned bands version would be excellent especially if it was a social network as well. Cost of running and licenses wouldn't be anywhere near as high and would be more of a tool to promote bands than to make money for them.

Garageband used to be really good for that. Plus, back in the day if you reviewed enough songs you'd get a free CD off CDBaby. I usually ended up getting one by a band I'd reviewed & liked.

For a tenner a month Spotify is a truly astounding bargain, anyone who pays a subscription to Sky, but won't cough up for Spotify is either really fucking stupid, or deaf.

We signed up for the premium version mostly on principle, i.e. it's so damn good it deserves to be supported - (we pretty much have all the music we want on MP3 already, and since we're at the age now where 'all new music is crap' we don't need to have the latest X-Factor miscreants at our fingertips) - although despite that we get a fair bit of use out of it, Spotify is installed on every PC in the house and even if we have the track we want to listen to on the MP3 collection on the NAS, we use Spotify anyway as there are always the interesting links to other bands and tracks you hadn't thought about.

I'd be happy to see them nobble the free version in some way to make the premium version more attractive, but at the same time still keep the free version viable for folks who genuinely can't find the tenner per month.

If Spotify fails due to a lack of paying subscribers then the general public are thick cunts who deserve everything they do or don't get. For years the pro-piracy lobby always had the 'well the pirated stuff is easier to use and less locked down than the paid for stuff' argument to fall back on, Spotify blows that out of the water, and delivers what is basically all the music in the world (yes I know give or take, but when was the last time Pink Floyd did anything that didn't induce vomiting?) for a trivial subscription to any internet connected PC (which, let's face it, we pretty much all have).

If that doesn't tempt the 'won't pay' lobby into coughing up a few quid, then maybe 'the industry' was right all along and we're just a bunch of robbing freeloader bastards.

Spotify don't carry the majority of my musical tastes as I'm wikkid underground, so therefore it is a bag of shite.

You can get an exception too then I suppose, although I still think it deserves buying into on principle.

I like it but I hardly use it. I mostly listen to music in the car and I don't have or want an iPhone. Also maybe someone who has a Sky subscription and not a Spotify one prefers watching telly to listening to music.

The principle of paying Leona Lewis some more pennies? GTFF.

But on the other hand, you can get all you need from the charity shop: