Spotify - Love is in the air ...

 


Music is great for reaching the hearts of people, and Spotify is great for music, so let's connect the two in a very simple way - I want your all-time favourite love songs, and you will get the the love songs everyone else are crazy about.

If you have Spotify, simply open and add your best songs to this playlist: spotify:user:unclecj:playlist:5q9rhxy667Tu1qIbhPmpRr . If you don't, just leave your suggestion as a comment here. I have added my coziest songs already, so hope you enjoy them.

I have no idea why I haven't seen anyone do this before. Hope this may contribute to many romantic moments. And please be good too, I am sure Spotify deals harshly with vandalism.

(Update: It's curious, but kind of nice, how adding to the playlist is at least superficially anonymous. Like who added Pontiak Johanzon...)

(Update 2: The playlist is slowly growing, and I think it's pretty nice. The girlfriend just objected "Hold on, is this like your friends having a say in our love-life?", to which I answered "No, it's more like the world having a say in our love-life")

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)

New iTunes 8, and why you should start using it

Rumor has it that Apple will be releasing both a new major iTunes version and a new minor version of the iPhone firmware during their "Let's Rock" event (Tuesday) September 9th.

It is still curious how even releases of just software updates from Apple still manage to stir some excitement. However, when Apple releases a new version of iTunes for example, it usually indicates some pretty big new feature somewhere in the Apple product family. iPod video, iPhone, movie rentals through iTunes and other big announcements from Apple have all been accompanied by a feature update of iTunes. So if iTunes 8 is released tomorrow, at least I am curious about what will come with it. My best bet is that Apple is moving towards the location aware-market with the GPS iPhone, I suspect they will have some cool location-related feature.

Even with how great iTunes is already today, there are several of you out there who haven't realized it, so here goes my favourite features of the current iTunes:

• DAAP / iTunes server using (the free!) Firefly on my home server gives me seamless access to all of my music archive. Now I'm just missing iTunes remote speakers in software, but I guess I can live without it (Yay, there exists, cool now I will have to try it! - Umm... no "The key stored in iTunes has been extracted by Jon Lech Johansen, enabling 3rd party software to stream music to an Airport Express. However, the key stored in the AirPort Express is not yet known, and 3rd party software that mimics an Airport Express is thus not possible"):
  
  


• iTunes party shuffle is very nice to keep track of the playlist not only during parties. You see what next bunch of songs will be played and can modify it, you can add tracks manually or let them fill automatically as you play. Unfortunately DAAP / iTunes servers doesn't offer a party shuffle:
  
  


• iTunes manages my podcasts and syncs them to my iPod, including displaying which I have listened to. Very convenient:
  
  


• last.fm scrobbler plugin logs what music I listen to and keeps track of it in my online profile. Besides providing a great smörgåsbord of music, as I have previously written last.fm also keeps a great track of upcoming events:
  
  

These great features aside, iTunes is nifty for cleaning up the ID3 tags and filenames when you're an compulsive order nut like me, and of course it's simple and convenient for mom to rip her CDs in iTunes.

(Update: So that's it (on IDG here and here) indeed iTunes 8 was released, and except as I said, another version of an already great program, it's got some nice new shuffle function and a closer connection to the iTunes Music Store. Cool. iTunes is still the only program which cares and does justice to your cover art)