Sleepless with Spotify

Tonight I can't sleep, nose being stuffed and running at the same time, the cough has started, you sneeze and muscles you didn't know you had cramps and you lay asleep breathing slower and slower through one nostril until realizing you're not falling asleep, you're suffocating. So I got up and make myself some tea and share some creativity. Do you have any other good suggestions, what do you do when you have a cold? Don't tell me about the garlic or the vodka socks, I have realized that what I hate besides having a cold is having a cold with the aftertaste of garlic, and I know other uses of vodka which are much less superstitious.

Anyway, through friends of friends, I have just received an invitation to beta-test the much haussed music service Spotify (and this time I won't let it go to waste! :-P ). All friends who have tried it have gone Spotify-crazy, and maybe, just maybe I can understand why. Essentially it can rightfully be summarized as a crossbreed of Skype, last.fm, iTunes Store and Bittorrent (indeed they have hired the original creator of μTorrent who happens to be my old school-mate who surely won't remember me). And it's legal!

The cool features I notice right away are dual - first, you have access to a ton of music legally, for free in a light client, and you can play any of it with the ease of a few clicks. I've seen several of those things done before, but not all at once, for obvious reasons :-). Secondly, you can share and attach music with friends and and on the web without transmitting any files, just make a link like such: "Right now I am listening to Johnny Cash - American V". The social internet will have to give way to the musical internet! More updates as soon as I discover anything cool.


(Update: Another very pleasant thing about Spotify is the very clean interface. No fuss, just a very simple and good interface, except it is unfashionably black, but what the heck. One thing I'm curious about is whether they expect to actually catch the long tail of music and not just the hits? They seem to have somewhat of such an ambition, but I notice they have only one of the three Kjell Höglund albums I have, that's weak!

Oh and that's so cool, since noticing this blog post my university mate mentioned above got in touch over Skype. An extremely cool dude and great fun to get in touch with! I also noticed in the invitation letter from Spotify that I was requested to not post screenshots, but since they're already here and there over Google, I'll just hope they don't complain at me if I keep my head down. Sorry, it was a mistake, honestly)

(Update 2: Don't miss my candid pictures from the Spotify office, or my other posts about Spotify)



(Update 3: it24 has a particularly interesting article (translated here) though they're claiming "Spotify is [primarily?] living off the hype")

(Update 4: It's quite funny how Buzz Out Loud (CNET article here) labels Spotify as "a service available to everyone else [than the USA]" now they finally notice it. Also, thanks go to Judith and Martin for linking to this post)