In which a new music streaming service is reviewed

So I promised a review of the new music streaming service, Spotify. This service has been around for a while in Europe, but it has taken a while to reach the States. It had something to do with music companies and copyright regulation. Anyway, it's here now. So here's the deal: You can stream any song you want (well almost any, some songs/artists aren't available yet) for up to 20 hours per month for free. There are advertisements when you use the free version as well which are interspersed in your music. Unfortunately, you can't mute the computer and let the commercial play; it knows you have muted and waits to play the commercial when it's unmuted. Pretty sneaky. You can pay $5 a month which basically gets rid of the ads and the time limit. Or you can pay $10 a month and you can access your playlists off-line and use the iPhone (or other smartphone) app. So you basically "own" any of the songs you play. People are saying that this is going to replace Pandora or even iTunes. I don't think so. Yes, you can "download" unlimited music with Spotify, but you don't actually own it. One cool feature is that Spotify imports your downloaded songs from iTunes so you can mix and match your own songs with whatever you get from Spotify to make playlists.

I think Spotify would be good for people who know what they want to play, since you have to search the songs yourself and build your own playlists, which is in contrast to Pandora, where you don't pick the songs, they are picked for you based on what you already like. If you want to discover new music or have more variety (and are too lazy or don't have time to spend building playlists), I like Pandora better. If you are looking for that lost Jimmy Eat World album that you can't find since your last move and need it to complete your catalog, Spotify is what you want. Another difference is that Spotify has software that needs to be downloaded to your computer to run. You can access Pandora using any internet connection and don't need to download anything to your computer. Spotify also has a social networking feature, which I haven't tried out. This feature enables you to trade playlists with friends and see what other people are listening to (friends and otherwise). You can also use Facebook with Spotify, but I don't know how that works.

I like Pandora for every day listening and Spotify for listening to specific music I don't already have or listening to full albums before buying on iTunes. I'll continue to use both until my free time is up for the month.....