Introducing Spotify, the Musical Paradise

Photo by doctor_bob.

Wikipedia tells you that Aretha Franklin, Charlotte Church, Peggy Lee, Josh Groban, and the Jackson 5 are among the numerati who covered Bridge Over Troubled Water during their musical careers. It’s one thing to read their names, but what if you want to listen to each performer’s version in alphabetical order — without paying to own the songs?

How do you do that today? Where do you go?

Trekking to the library or CD store is out of the question because you won’t be able to search for the title across 15 million+ artists. Brick-and-mortar libraries and stores don’t stock databases to that level.

Watching music videos on YouTube would be great if only everyone made a video. It is rare for musicians and record labels to upload videos, so you are more likely to see a keyword match for a group of teenagers singing it — and YouTube doesn’t allow you to filter them out easily.

Listening on iTunes is the next thing you would try, but when you visit the iTunes music store to trial selections in their cloud database, you are limited to about 60 to 90 seconds of time. You would need to buy every covered version (at about $1.29 each) to listen to them in full. But who buys songs to only listen once?

Audio streaming services and internet jukeboxes are the obvious route to go. With memorable names such as Pandora, Last.fm, Rhaposody, and Rdio, which do you choose? The existing online music market is competitive because record labels want you to buy, not listen for free. It’s been a challenge to find a happy medium since Metallica sued Napster in 2000.

Enter Spotify.

You input the song title into the search box and — before you finish reading this sentence — every cover can be sorted and played in alphabetical order. Its database contains millions more selections than the above choices; and unlike iTunes, which requires your songs to be stored on your computer, your Spotify selections are stored online — accessible from your desktop or smartphone.

After a 36-month success in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, Spotify launched in the United States in July 2011 — and yours truly joined others with an invitation code to try it out.

Is Spotify an iTunes killer? The jury is out with pros and cons — but I appreciate my 2,200+ songs on iTunes, some burned in 2006 and others purchased online since 2010, were easily transferred to Spotify and all can be played in one place.

Want to view and listen to a growing mix of songs found on Spotify? Here’s my current mix list. Note: You need a Spotify account to view it.

With Spotify’s ability to search nearly 15 million songs and play them — in full — with a snap of the fingers and no purchase required, where’s the value in traditional and older online music applications anymore?

Tagged as: music, Spotify