Do You Have Spotify Yet?

Or I suppose a better question would be: Are you still paying for online music? Spotify is the single greatest online app to hit the us market in years. Its the best of Itunes and Pandora...but free. It's not a P2P, you are not stealing music and opening yourself to all kinds of unwanted traffic. It's completely legal. It's based upon the same "internet music streaming" model (i.e. internet radio) that Pandora is, but allows you to store "playlists" as if they were albums on your PC. Did I mention there is a Spotify iPad app? If you spring for the Premium version, a whopping 9.95 per month, you can store "offline playlists" on your PC and your Phone! Being a premium member allows me to connect my phone to my car stereo, or use my phone at the gym, and play whatever I have stored on the phone. The first night that I signed up for Spotify I downloaded (created playlists) with over 1000 songs. In this article I will explain how it all works. Read on and you'll be Spotifying in no time!

First of all you need to become a member at Spotify, which is real easy to do. Did I mention that you can share your music choices with friends? Yes my social networkers, Spotify is a social networking hub as well. First go to www.spotify.com and register. Once you have your spotify app installed, double click the icon and you'll see an interface like the pic i posted for the header of this article. The very first thing you'll want to do is start searching for your favorite music. Think of anything, I like Bungle (Drum and Bass) so let's search for bungle.

Hey look at that, Tons of tracks by Bungle, DJ Marky. There's the song I was looking for "25th Floor VIP". Ill just go ahead and Star that one. (By Far one of the most unique and beautiful Drum and Bass songs you'll ever hear). So lets see, I'll just create a Playlist and call it "Bungle". To add a song to a "Playlist", you simply right click and select the Playlist you already created or at the top ( see pic below), you can select "New Playlist". If you like Drum and Bass or don't even know what it is, feel free to check some of my selections out, it's quite addictive. TIP -- You can create a Playlist and give it the name of an album -- for example , I can create a Playlist and call it "The Wall". Then grab all songs on Pink Floyd The Wall and add them to my playlist. Any album you can think of can be a Playlist.

TIP -- the songs in the search results menu can be sorted by album by clicking the album name on the far right. (see Photo Below)

Spotify has a TON of integrated apps, starting with the "APP Finder". One of my favorites is "Last FM", which actually looks at what you've been listening too and makes recommendations upon those songs. (Great for electronic music). For Social Networking opportunities check out Fellody or Tastebuds. There's also cool apps like "Rolling Stones Recommends" and "Pitchfork -- The essential guide to Independent Music".

One of the best features of Spotify is that once you have it download and your Playlists created, the next PC that you log into Spotify with will have already have those Playlists. There is no "Transferring of Libraries" etc, I have the same Playlists on my work and home PC's as well as my Droid.

I don't think I'll be buying individual songs anytime soon, as I have more than enough to keep me busy for days. Trust me, the first time you log into this app you'll be spending hours grabbing as much music as you can! Have fun and Enjoy!!