Finally checked out Spotify and am trying out Premium version. Love it!!!!

So yeah, I know a lot of people have tried it and use it but I finally caved in within the last 2 weeks. Currently have a 30 day trial for premium.
I have to say this is the PERFECT tool for me to find out what new music is out there. I find a couple of new bands I like and then get a bunch of other band recommendations (bands I've never heard of) and can browse through songs/albums which then leads to other recommendations.
So with only a few hours put in I found these bands that I am really digging (many of which have multiple albums out).-

Pond
Temples
Beak
Jagwar Ma
Nick Waterhouse
Suuns

Most of these I haven't even had a chance to listen to a lot of their stuff but I've saved them in a playlist for further listening.

My main point for this thread is just to show a potential way for people who don't have the time to read magazines, internet reviews and such that Spotify is great so far in finding new stuff. For those who already know this and it is old news carry on .

 

I was using MOG until they screwed it up as Beats. Switched to Spotify and I think it's great.

 

I was a loyal Rhapsody user for a few years, but switched to Spotify this year. Can't imagine living without it now.

 

Suuns is possibly my favorite band of the 10's. Pond is good too, as is their mothership, Tame Impala.

Anything that gets people listening to good new music is OK by me.

 

I love Tame Impala and while listening to them on Spotify-one of the many"related artists" that popped up was Pond. So it's like if you find one band you like you keep opening up these other doors for new sounds.

 

as far as the customer is concerned, Spotify is vastly superior to Beats in every conceivable way

 

I'm glad you are enjoying Spotify. I must say it sure is convenient and yes you can discover some bigger name acts on there but good luck rocking out to

Tumbleweed
The Died Pretty
Strange Cargo

and many many more that AREN'T ON SPOTIFY!!! When you advertise "the history of recorded music at your fingertips" then you should deliver on that promise…NOT "the history of recorded music at your fingertips with a lot of your favorites left out"…

One of these days I'm going to come up with a comprehensive list of all the significant artists/songs NOT on Spotify and then maybe everyone won't be so excited about it. All these artists and most of Spotify's omissions are on youtube so why bother w Spotify in the first place other than making playlists and continuous play BUT most of you all are vinyl addicts anyway which are more effort to play than a cd or streaming service…

Also, I hate when i find a great tune on Spotify only to find out it's some dodgy live version or re-record and NOT what I put in a cue to play!!!

As to motionoftheocean's comment above, our company has both Spotify and Beats on our Sonos system and to me they are virtually identical so (not advocating Beats by any means) I don't/can't see how Spotify is vastly superior to Beats in any way.

 

never heard of any of them

bigger selection
better desktop app (Beats doesn't even have a desktop app)
better mobile app

 

If you have a last.fm account, you can set Spotify to "scrobble" or keep a playlist of everything you've listened to. I do it and I love it - it's really handy.

What made you decide to check out Spotify?

 

I have Spotify Premium, but have been using Google Play Music more lately. I was able to upload over 10,000 of my own songs. Plus I can check out songs/albums that i don't own.

 

The same thing with any subscription service - different services are going to have different artists, depending on the copyright holders.

 

You should check these artists out motionoftheocean

Tumbleweed were a bad ass rock band from Australia, Died Pretty also from Australia and pretty legendary down there. Strange Cargo was William Orbit's "group" which released 3 0r 4 killer albums of ambient, dancey stuff. The album Hinterland was a classic in my book. It introduced Beth Orton via "She Cries Your Name" (which Beth later re-recorded for her debut) and I'm certain this was the album that motivated Madonna to use William Orbit as the producer for Ray of Light (in my opinion far and away Madonna's best album of that period).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Cargo_Hinterland

Since many of you use streaming services as a discovery tool it's a shame that you can't use it to discover these (and many more) amazing artists...

 

I just signed up to Last FM and just started scrobbling music from Spotify.

The reason I signed up is that I see Spotify come up more and more in conversation . I'm 43 and just felt that I was slowly starting to lose touch with stuff that was pretty new, something that I felt I had at least a pretty good handle on. It was getting to where I was only listening to older music, which is fine but I still like hearing new stuff too-with a busy family life I just felt like I didn't have the time. So the past few nights I've been just kicking back and checking out new stuff (with some older stuff thrown in for good measure), it's just so quick and easy.

 

Well worth it. I've been using it lately to comb through genres of music I know little about. I never had much more than a basic knowledge of jazz, and I'm hip-deep in discovery mode (currently, The Heavyweight Champion: John Coltrane collection). I also just realized that Spotify has comedy as well (hello?), so I re-discovered my long lost Sam Kinison records.

 

There's a bunch of us with Last.FM accounts, if you want to "friend" me it's nbakid2000. I use Spotify constantly to check stuff out before I buy it or just stuff I want to listen to without buying. For everything else there's YouTube. Spotify costs more money in the long run due to me hearing stuff I need. haha

Also keep in mind there's user generated playlists galore on Spotify as well as professionally curated playlists and apps.

 

I definitely like Spotify for finding new things, but also for old ones, including ones I own. It just popped into my head to listen to the 3 most recent Dylan albums and the first four Crowded House albums -- poof! They're on my phone without having to dig through a library or connect my phone to anything. With the higher-res downloads and good headphones, I'm very, very satsified with the sound, and the convenience is unbelievable. We were in the car recently when my wife asked if I had any early Simple Minds on my phone. Half a dozen clicks later I did.

I definitely keep other things handy that will likely never show up (King Crimson, as well as The Band That Shall Not Be Named, among others), but then again, Led Zeppelin used to be one of those, but now they're there. I own Presence, but haven't gotten around to ripping it...but when I had a hankering to listen to it again recently, there it was. So it's not like everything is there, and there are often gaps in an artist's discography, sometimes only the regular edition of an album rather than the deluxe, etc. Sometimes things that are there go away, too, but I find much, much more that I'm looking for than not.

(At least in rock, pop, hip-hop, etc. Jazz and techno DJ comps, not so much.)

One of the great ways to discover new music on Spotify is the use of apps. I think it's one of the ways that Spotify sets itself completely apart from the other streaming platforms.

Look for the Apps link on the left nav of the main pane. There are a few I consult CONSTANTLY. Pitchfork's integration is amazing. The reviews load in the Spotify window, and if you see something that looks good, it's one click to add it as a Spotify playlist.

The apps for The Guardian UK and NPR put all the music in one place, so you don't have to dig for it. KCRW's app is a bit of a mess, but they have some additions I hadn't seen elsewhere.

ADM is one I consult alllll the time. It's a review aggregator, so when it lists a new album, it shows excerpts and ratings from a whole bunch of sources, with the ability to click through to the complete reviews (where available) in a web browser. Comparing reviews is a lot of fun, and has also helped me zero in on sources that tend to match what I'm looking for.

As well as reviews, the NME app lists some fun playlists -- 100 best tracks of the 80s, all-time best since we started NME.com, all-time best since we started publishing the magazine, etc. As with any list, there's plenty of ridiculous stuff....and as with any list, it's fun to argue with.

Rolling Stone does a nice job including reissues, which really works for me. They also have some brief but tasty curated lists from artists who list their 10 favorite songs on whatever theme, or by some other artist, etc. I haven't found much new that way, but they can be fun.

There are quite a few more, including several that are specific to other genres. But this is something I find that even experienced Spotters sometimes miss. Definitely worth checking into.

Also note, you can now put your playlists in folders, making things much easier to find. I'm way behind on cleaning up, but this is another great feature that a lot of people list.

FWIW, my name there is metropolitim if you want to check in. Like I said, a bit of a mess, but I've found that plugging into other people is another great way to discover things I hadn't heard before, regardless of when it was released.

 

Nice one! I've been on Spotify for a few years now and love it. Originally had the free version and enjoyed it. I got a free 30-day trial for the paid version and loved it and I ended up winning 3 free months of premium (this was around the time it first launched here in the US). My wife thought it was silly to pay for it until she used it, once she did she loved it. Now all of us, me, wife, kids, have our own playlists and listen to all sorts of stuff. (It's especially handy keeping my kids' hands off of my CDs and LPs when they wanna listen to my stuff)

 

The mobile apps are both mediocre in different ways. Spotify might have an edge but it's very slight. I miss MOG's app.

Spotify's desktop app is worlds better than Beat's web app

As for selection, they're about equal for me. Every week there are a couple of releases I can't find on Beats that I can on Spotify and vice a versa. There's also a few each week that I can't find on either

 

Moodagent is one of the cool music discovery apps available in Spotify. Plug in a song title or artist name that you'd like to discover similar music to theirs and it generates a playlist of mixed artists, which you can then save as one of your own playlists. It's pretty neat.

 

I assume these apps are in the desktop application. I don't see them on my phone which is 99% of my use. When I'm at my computer, I'm listening to my library.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the apps! Too bad they aren't in the mobile version too which I use more often.

 

Other apps of note;
Bluenote
Nick Cave
Tune Wiki

 

Well, part of the negativity and anger about Beats is that they bought MOG...and then gutted core functionality like artist radio and an "Add to Queue"* button. And made the interface super busy. So we feel like they @hit on us, basically.

But before I jump ship, let me ask: can you "Add to [current] Queue" in Spotify? And is there artist radio?

*This button just tacked your selection onto the end of what was already in the queue. No need to make or choose a playlist or other baloney.

 

what's not to like?

 

Yes, you can add to your listening queue.