User Opinions of Spotify - free version...

[barber olly]

PS Did Barbirolli ever record Mahler 8?

NO!

[johnb]

It was a rhetorical question!

[barber olly]

He did 1 to 7 and 9, to my knowledge, I was hoping for a reply on the lines of 'Oh yes he did but it was for Venezualan Radio in 1954 and the sound suffers somewhat from having been taken from an ineadequate sound source!

[hackneyvi]

you may be interested in http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_...r_spotify.html

I'm not sure that I grasp his point. He's saying that I'm renting music through Spotify but if the price for the rental goes up then I might pay?

Doesn't a similar risk apply to beans? I don't retain the beans once they're eaten. If I want beans again and the price goes up, I have to decide on their value to me.

I'm not paying anything. I put up with the adverts and have access to an astounding quantity of music in a quality that my lo-fi ears find marvellous. I hadn't thought to try it but my Total Recorder has made a good copy of the track I'm listening to. I can buy music on Spotify if I like it but it lets me hear it first and as often as I want to. I honestly can't see the drawback, not any.

[Lateralthinking1]

It is a good service but it isn't as good as it was for free members. A few months ago we had no time constraints. Now we get just two and a half hours each week (You can use it more up to a maximum of ten hours but if you do they will only give you the time back at a weekly rate of 2.5. It would therefore be four weeks until you were back to your maximum credits again. I've been there!).

On the plus side, I feel that with this change, the commercials are fewer. It might just be though that it seems like that because I can't spend as much time on it.

[Sydney Grew]

Spotify? Spotify has always been useless (quite literally):

http://www.spotify.com/int/why-not-available/

"Spotify coming soon

"Thanks for visiting Spotify.

"To us, music is everything. Our dream is to have all the music in the world available instantly to everyone, wherever they are.

"But for the time being, we’re not able to launch in every country. We’re really sorry about this, but it takes time to arrange licensing agreements with record labels and local publishing rights societies.

"Rest assured we’re doing everything we can to resolve this, and hope to offer Spotify in many more countries as soon as possible."

We have been resting assured for many many many years that everything possible means nothing, and have complete confidence in Spotify's remaining useless for ever and ever going forward.

[davehsug]

As a newcomer to serious classical listening in the last couple of years, Spotify was a real boon to me. It allowed me to explore at my leisure, flitting about from piece to piece. It let me hear stuff I would never have heard & I particularly liked the fact that as I had started to attend local concerts, I could at least familiarise myself with pieces I didn't know. That was very valuable to me as I quickly learned that works that didn't do much for me, could be completely different beasts heard live, (Shostakovich 5 being the best example I can offer!).
Sadly the new free restrictions have curtailed my use substantially, I am still considering paying, but I was concerned about the stream quality & it seems it might have been well founded. For the more casual listener though, I still think it's great to see someone mention a work & be able to go & find it almost immediately.

[hackneyvi]

It is a good service but it isn't as good as it was for free members. A few months ago we had no time constraints. Now we get just two and a half hours each week.

I'm puzzled by the time thing because my screen still shows me with 17 hours. But perhaps this is a hangover. I probably only listen to an hour or two per week anyway. Between concerts, the iPlayer programmes and Spotify, I probably listen to 10 hours of 'serious' music a week and don't know where the time would come from to listen to more and read and work and exercise etc.

I have a strong suspicion there are Faustians on this site with longer than 24 hour days and more than 7 day weeks. Quite sure of it.

[Stunsworth]

Sadly the new free restrictions have curtailed my use substantially, I am still considering paying, but I was concerned about the stream quality & it seems it might have been well founded

Well, if you pay, the streaming quality is _never_ going to be worse that the quality of the free version and often better. Did you ever notice any problems? Personally I still think that for the equivalent of a couple of drinks in a London bar the paid for service represents excellent value.