So Mike sent me an invite for Spotify. It seems to be VERY similar to live365 as they have radiostreams, but you can also listen to streamed music for FREE and it has an amazing catalouge to chose from! Ive found a lot of old albums I couldnt on places like iTunes or find to download illegally. The sound quality is amazing and theres no refreshing of the stream, or drop in connection. Its really like listening to your own music catalouge except its via the web. my fave bit? it WORKS with my last.fm account and scrobbles without issues! unfortunately at this time i cant control it through the taskbar dock, but you can control the option via your profile page on last.fm
According to their ‘about’ page this is what theyre about:
http://www.spotify.com/en/about/what/
What is Spotify?
Spotify is a new way to enjoy music. Simply download and install, before you know it you’ll be singing along to the genre, artist or song of your choice. With Spotify you are never far away from the song you want.
There are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when. Forget about the hassle of waiting for files to download and fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them. Spotify is instant, fun and simple.
Because music is social, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists, Friday afternoon in the office might never be the same again! We’re music lovers like everyone else.
We want to connect millions of people with their favorite songs by creating a product that people love to use. We respect creativity and believe in fairly compensating artists for their work. We’ve cleared the rights to use the music you’ll listen to in Spotify.
The software is easy and fast to download. Looks a lot like iTunes & the BBC iPlayer interfaces.
As you can see theres an search bar, shows you recent searches youve made, if the artist youve select has any albums available and how many tracks of theirs are available on the site. Its really easy to use and just great.
It be interesting to see how far this gets. its only in beta stage with invites (kinda like gmail!) only to gain access to the site. Mike said he joined a few days back and now has a bunch of invites, so once i get some more i may start spreading the love.