Voice of Subjectivity: I Need Spotify!

Voice of Subjectivity is an occasional companion column to Voice of Objectivity, for when I can’t quite agree with my calmer perspective. The opinions presented here do not necessarily represent the views of Techcitement, but they’re all mine. Let’s face it, I get as Techcited as anyone.

There is no perfect streaming music service yet. But for me, Spotify comes awfully close. I’ve done the Grooveshark thing in the past, but it wasn’t quite the right fit for me.

I’m sure the time will come when a web app will be a useful tool, but I love Spotify’s desktop app. It’s quick, it’s beautiful, and it doesn’t clutter up my web browser with a tab when I’m not looking at it. Plus, it provides advantages no web app ever will.

One thing Grooveshark just can’t compete with is Spotify’s ability to wirelessly sync your music from your PC to your mobile device, free. Both services let you stream from the cloud to mobile if you pay, but free users can install the Spotify app on their phon or tablet and sync any music file you keep on your computer over WiFi. It neatly solves the problem of missing tracks, because you can sync any music you buy on your own this way. Besides, despite a few glaring omissions, at 15 million songs, Spotify’s library is big enough that you should find most of what you really want.

Spotify doesn’t have any of the pitfalls of operating in a borderline legal manner, either. When you upload your initial library to Grooveshark, be careful about any files you have left over from the old Napster days. If you cause a couple of DMCA take-down notices, Grooveshark permanently revokes your upload rights, and you’ll be down to relying on the community. That community can be great, but it’s also chaotic. Grooveshark is rife with duplicated songs that have slightly different tags. And if you’re into something obscure, you might not have any way of getting some of your music into Grooveshark other than uploading the music yourself. This is to say nothing of the very real possibility that Grooveshark will eventually be destroyed by the three major music labels suing it. I like my online services to have a longer shelf life than I expect Grooveshark to have (though admittedly, I’m a bit surprised Grooveshark has lasted even this long, so who knows when it will end).

One of Spotify’s best features is its Facebook integration. Link Spotify to your Facebook account and you can see what any of your friends who use both services are listening to and sharing. You can also share songs directly with those friends, and they’ll see it right in the player. This makes for one of the best music discovery arrangements I’ve ever seen, because you can star any song you like as you listen and it’s added to your collection. It is a lot easier than writing down a list of songs you heard and liked, and then deciding later if you really want to buy them. (Pandora is great for listening, but it’s sort of complicated my decision-making process when it comes to music purchases.) It’s not quite as personalized as a Pandora-like service, but I don’t really need it to be, because I still have Pandora.

For now, Spotify is invite-only for free users, and I know many people are eagerly awaiting a chance to try it out. If you’re as techcited by Spotify as I am, here’s your chance. We have one invite to give away to a lucky Techcitement fan. To enter, follow @techcitement on Twitter, and then tweet “I am so techcited about #spotify invites from @Techcitement”. We’ll pick a winner tomorrow. In the meantime, let us know in the comments why we should pick you!

For the more objective look at this issue that inspired this response to myself, check out my weekly column, Voice of Objectivity.