Ed Hewitt Yet another Tech & Gaming Blog!

The Spotify Effect

I have been using Spotify on Linux for 24 hours now. It has reminded me how great the service is, in the past I have only used it on and off to try out. Since the release onto Ubuntu, it has made want to try it out again. The price of entry for me was £5, the basic subscription charge. Its nice to have no ads, which became annoying after every couple of songs. The subscription is still very low, as much music as you want for £5, with no limits! Though, I still had my doubts. Spotify is using DRM, your £5/10 is only paying for access, not ownership. If you stop using Spotify or Spotify go bust (reports suggest so), you have no music from your subscription. However, the ease of the service and the limitless amounts of music, in the long run it will save me alot of money, from buying individual songs at 69p or Albums at £6 on Amazon.

Fairly quickly after starting my subscription I knew Spotify was my new way to listen to music. Music removed from both of my computers, and archived onto external Hard Drives. I was going Spotify all the way!

Discovering the social feature to Spotify added another level to this service. Linking your Spotify account with your Facebook account, pulled in all your friends who use Spotify. Very quickly I was checking out songs my friends listened too, and adding the songs to my favourites. It has a nice feature to 'send' songs to each other. This started conversations with friends about music, which I have never done. I dont usually talk about music with friends, but since Spotify makes it so easy to share songs with each other, it just sort of happens.

I  am loving Spotify every time I start listening and looking for music. Its nice to pay one flat fee and have as much as I want. Its likely that I will carry on paying for the unlimited service, don't like ads! I will be hunting, sharing and talking about the music on Spotify from now on!