People moaning about people moaning about these new restrictions need to think about the bigger bigger picture.

$potify are charged per stream. Someone on "unlimited" streaming more than one hour per day on average gets more than s/he is paying for. Give it 12 months for "limited" to be the new "unlimited".

Exactly. Thus if one feels strongly that those involved in the music production process should be "adequately" compensated, one really ought to question whether £5 per month (for unlimited streaming) is "enough".

I don't begrudge my £4 per month to We7 at all - means I can not just stream to my heart's content - I can *browse and compare*.

Also - We7 seem to play it fairer by paying the actual quoted rates off the Joint Online Licence... only thing we now need is for EMI, Macca and Yoko to play it fair and open up the streaming of the Beatles and Wings back catalogues to the rest of us. DRM-free legal downloads as well - for kit that can't run iTunes natively or people who don't want to. I believe Apple's exclusivity period is coming to an end...

I cna think of other catalogue bands as well - and We7 are working on it...

PRS fees, from memory, are £0.0085 per stream per user.. but that is the minimum. there's a percentage of revenue as well - and it's the *higher* of those two figures that is payable.

I opened up my Spotify yesterday and got a pop-up about the 5 times per track thing but how do you know how many times you've listened to a song? I can't see anything on screen.

I pay the £5 a month and think it's incredible value, the trouble is a lot of people expect to get music for nothing...........which is just wrong.

I also think as said earlier they have a very wide music base, not sure what was meant by "real fan"

I can listen to anything from British Sea Power- Femi Kuti- Grateful Dead- Wild Beasts, it's a pretty wide base I would say.

www.grooveshark.com is free and there's no limit

Right click on the track and it says how many plays you've got left.

Cheers for that. I'm now duplicating my Spotify playlist.



Oh yeah, so it does.

Just found a little flaw with their 5 listens only policy.

If you search for a well know track it'll no doubt appear on many compilation albums. Save one in your favourites then they'll let you play it 5 times but once the 5 plays is up just save it again from a different album.

Of course, if the song you search for only brings up one result you're buggered.

Just found another flaw which seems to work.

I'd saved a track that had 2 plays left so I deleted it then searched and saved it again from the same album. It's now showing up as 5 plays left.

Not sure whether it'll suss what I've done, I'll let you know....

I really don't get the big deal about why people actually use Spotify. Youtube you get music and video without limits. If I like a song then I buy it.

My broadband is quite slow so Spotify is a godsend at peak times plus the sound quality is better than a video that has been ripped from an old VHS like most of the ones in my Favourites.

What I also like is you can play an album all the way through from start to finish.

For me and my limited budget I have two options.
Buy one album a month for £10 or rent just about evey album I want for the same price.
At the end of the year, yes I have spent £120 and have no physical items to show for it, but how many times would I be listening to most of those albums months later anyway?

To answer your question anyway, I have spotify on my pc which is hooked up to my amp, and the iPhone app. This means I can stream and sync my favourite albums or playlists to my stereo, iPod, car stereo, work pc all with minimum hassle. The quality is fantastic and I have discovered so much new music. I have also discovered some utter crap but the delete button takes care of that. It's like carrying around all my music 24hrs a day.
I can see myself being a life customer, not necessarily to Spotify but definitely to music streaming sites. Can't wait for the day when we do this properly with movies.

You tube for me is too low quality, not enough choice and not very practical.

not enough choice on youtube and more and more of the stuff i want to listen to is actually being blocked by copyright claims.
£5 a month for what i am getting is worth every penny .