The blogosphere has recently fallen in praise at the feet of a new application currently released in its beta stage, called Spotify. I too am excited about this application, it has some very nice perks.

• Firstly, Spotify is Swedish. And I am half Swedish. And I am in the habit of stressing this fact in a futile attempt to pretend I am more exotic and diverse than I really am.
• Streaming does appear to happen almost instantly.
• The music is apparently streamed at about 160 kbps. Whilst this obviously gives lower quality sound than those FLACs you downloaded from your music tracker of choice, I can not tell the difference when listening on my home speakers, so I’m happy.
• Spotify scrobbles to last.fm, and I love last.fm. In fact, last.fm is now probably mainstream enough that any streaming application that ignored it would probably be sunk. People enjoy showing off their tastes.
• There are very few ads, even in the free version – if you can get an invite to the free version.

But, enough of that. Let’s put this thing to the test.

Because there is no way for me to scientifically test this application in any reasonable amount of time I am simply going to pit Spotify against my 20 most listened to artists in the past 3 months according to my last.fm. This is an interesting test for me because I download most of my music from illegitimate (but brilliant) sources. (In fact I download all of it, but I also buy cds and visit concerts if I enjoy the music.) Perhaps if a service such as Spotify allowed me to properly ‘test’ music, I would be less inclined to download it. I want to see if Spotify would have been a reasonable substitute for illegal downloading by seeing what percentage of the music I have enjoyed most recently could have been streamed on their service.

My last three months of music is as follows.

Spotify’s results are as follows:

Having now tested this, I have to say that I am rather impressed. The only artist which Spotify totally failed to stream to me was DJ Blow, an unsigned artist who’s music doesn’t seem to be available on the public internet.

I was surprised that Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Nine Inch Nail’s The Slip and Ghosts I-IV were not available, but it would make sense that this was due to Spotify having made deals with record labels, not artists. I think this kind of issue will become very make-or-break for Spotify and any similar services as more bands abandon their labels or simply do not sign to the big ones. That they are signed to smaller labels may explain why the bands whose songs only appeared on compilations are in that situation.

I should also note that in the process of trialling Spotify I was played some very fetching tracks and remixes that I didn’t know existed. I was also told to remember to file my tax returns on time or face a possible £100 fine. Apparently government agencies are the current British advertisers.

Overall, I do recommend Spotify as a good way to try out music before purchasing, or even just before properly downloading it, but the application is not without pitfalls (or preachy advertisements). Drop a note in the comments about your experiences with Spotify, or if you would like an invite.

Lastly, I need to give a shout out to Alex Muller, my good friend who invited me to Spotify in the first place.