Spotify - high quality, legal, free, streaming music.

[Diletante]

I didn't get that message, either. Maybe it's your country? Have you tried accessing through the proxy mentioned above?

[Tsaraslondon]

I signed up to it about a week ago. What a fantastic resource! And even if you prefer to have music on CD, what a great way to try before your buy. The search feature is geared towards pop music (isn't it always?) and there's quite a lot missing (I could only find one or two Universal issues, and many of the smaller labels are poorly represented), but plenty of EMI releases, including new ones, like the Pappano Madama Butterfly. My pc speakers aren't particularly good, but if I once find a way of linking the pc to my usual sound system, I'm sure I'll be buying a lot fewer CDs than I used to.

[Renfield]

I signed up to it about a week ago. What a fantastic resource! And even if you prefer to have music on CD, what a great way to try before your buy.

Exactly! I love it too, for that reason.

[Frumaster]

Just get it permanently, free, and lossless.  Go ahead, download it 'illegally'.  I'm doing society a friggin service by listening to classical music....as would we all.  The law can shove it.

[Guido]

Just get it permanently, free, and lossless.  Go ahead, download it 'illegally'.  I'm doing society a friggin service by listening to classical music....as would we all.  The law can shove it.

lol!

[71 dB]

I'm doing society a friggin service by listening to classical music....

What service? 

The law can shove it.

Even when the law happens to be on your side?

[AB68]

I just discovered Spotify, it's ingenious!
You can find almost anything, and best of all.. it's free.
I'm listening to Beethoven op.127 with the Tokyo SQ right now...

[Siedler]

A wonderful service!   There are a lot of classical records by Virgin, EMI, Naxos, Naïve and Chandos. Too bad most of DG's catalogue isn't there and that the search function is frustrating (and some of the classical albums are badly labelled).

[MDL]

I found out last night that Spotify has recently uploaded a huge swathe of recordings from Decca, DG and Philips!
I was hopping around from one recording to the next like a demented spacehopper... So much stuff! Too much choice!

Complete Mahler sets from Chailly and Solti, Colin Davis's Concertgebouw Stravinsky, Boulez's Berlin DG Ravel and so on. I can't wait to get home tonight to dig around some more.

[Tsaraslondon]

Indeed if this goes on, and they keep expanding the labels and music available, I might subscribe (in order to get rid of the ads) and give up buying CDs altogether. But, ultimately, is it going to be a good or a bad thing for the classical music industry?

[mahler10th]

Indeed if this goes on, and they keep expanding the labels and music available, I might subscribe (in order to get rid of the ads) and give up buying CDs altogether. But, ultimately, is it going to be a good or a bad thing for the classical music industry?

You would give up buying CD's? 

There is nothing more satisfying than going to your music shelf(ves), choosing what you want to put in your head, putting it on and reading about it in covernotes.  You are free to come and go with whatever you want, you have the solid manifestation of the music in your hands and on the shelves, you have right to OWNERSHIP of the discs and the listening experience and the right to say if what you are listening to is good or bad...you will own physical evidence of amazing works, and they can travel with you in life.
It is better than installing some software and listening to streamed music.

[MDL]

There is nothing more satisfying than going to your music shelf(ves), choosing what you want to put in your head, putting it on and reading about it in covernotes.  It is better than installing some software and listening to streamed music.

I agree. I recently bought the complete Schnittke symphonies on BIS, even though the recordings are on Spotify, and I am sure I will be adding CDs to my groaning shelves until I fall off my perch.

But I love being able to sample stuff for free. I have four complete sets of the Mahler symphonies and hundreds of individual performances, so I don't need to add any more. But I am curious to hear other recordings, and that's where Spotify is useful.

[DavidW]

I would rather rent than buy music, I'm glad to see that renting has come about again.  I also prefer renting movies, but guess what?  I also buy, I just don't want to buy something just to hear it, just as I don't want to buy a movie just to watch.  I think it's funny that the record industry is finally over the past few years is allowing us to rent again, when the movie industry has gone the opposite direction restricting new release rentals (warner's deal with netflix and redbox).

As far as I know I can't do anything like rhapsody and other services on the ipod, but at least I can get ideas by listening to Pandora and last.fm.

[opel]

So I recently came across this Swedish software called Spotify. It's free and has a huge library of classical music. Link > www.spotify.com

This is how spotify descibe themselves:
Spotify is a new way to listen to music

Any track you like, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Any artist, any album, any genre - all available instantly. With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you could listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it.

Sound good, i know, there is more:

Think of Spotify as your new music collection. Your library. Only this time your collection is vast: 10 million tracks and counting. You can create as many playlists as you like from this collection - just drag and drop the tracks you want.

And because the music plays live, there's no need to wait for downloads and no big dent in your hard drive. You can listen at any time, no matter where you are. Through your computer or your mobile phone.

So basically there is a free version and a premium version (costs 99 swedish krouns/month).
The things you gain with premium is:
- A higher quality music (barely noticealbe),
- No commercials - in the free version there are 10 - 60 second commercials after you listen to about 10 - 20 songs, I'm not really sure how it works.
- Being able to hear prereleased albums (about 1 week before the world premiere), this wouldn't interest many of you though sice there aren't really any composers using this feature.

I'm sticking with the free version, the commercials can be a little annoying somethimes but you don't have to listen to them if you just crank the volume down when they interrupt your listening.

Notice: Spotify does not support some countries, meaning that if you're in one of these countries you wont be able to create an account. This was my problem.
It's actually really easy to bypass this by just entering the website through a proxy server located in sweden or any other EU country.

Have fun!

[Tsaraslondon]

You would give up buying CD's? 

There is nothing more satisfying than going to your music shelf(ves), choosing what you want to put in your head, putting it on and reading about it in covernotes.  You are free to come and go with whatever you want, you have the solid manifestation of the music in your hands and on the shelves, you have right to OWNERSHIP of the discs and the listening experience and the right to say if what you are listening to is good or bad...you will own physical evidence of amazing works, and they can travel with you in life.
It is better than installing some software and listening to streamed music.

Aside from the having the liner notes, this is just like owning the music myself. I have a very small flat and limited space. I was already running out of places to put more CDs. This is like having a vast library of music at my fingertips, which I can choose from any time I want. I choose what I want to listen to and when, just like choosing a CD from my own shelves. Furthermore I have been able to listen to recordings of works, of which I already had one or two versions without buying another. For instance I already have 4 recordings of Aida, and don't really want to buy any more, but I have listened to several other recordings over the last year or so, recordings that I had been interested in but didn't buy because I didn't want too many duplications in my collection.

When I first downloaded spotify, I was still listening to more CDs. Now I log on in the morning, select something from their shelves (it may be something I own already, or it may be something I haven't heard before). If I want information about the work or the artists I can find it on the internet.

What's more, now that I am a subscribing to spotify, I can have this collection on my phone, so I can take it wherever I go, and, as long as I am on a wifi connection, it won't cost me anytyhing. It is indeed a new world we are living in.

[Holden]

OK, so how do I register via a proxy server?

[Maciek]

In case anyone is interested:

Spotify is currently available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands. We hope to launch in more countries in the future.

[Chaszz]

Officially, it's not available in the U.S., but if you access the website through a UK proxy, it is.  Enter the URL here and you're on your way:  http://privama.com/

FYI, when you create an account, it asks for a UK postal code.  Because I don't have one, I used the postal code for the House of Commons: SW1A 0AA   

Could you please be more specific? What do I do when I get to privama.com?
So far, whatever I've tried there has not worked, and I still get "N/A in your country" from Spotify.
Thanks.

[Mandryka]

I've been a bit taken for a ride by spotify and I feel quite disappointed by them, and indeed distrustful. True their catalogue is impressive and the system works. But the sound quality is not good enough. You can't tell what bitrate they stream at: they hide that information and even the Squeezebox doesn't divulge it. But you can hear very clearly that it's not high quality. Not 320kbps. At least not in the handful of recordings I just tested in a like for like comparison with the CDs.

Whether I will feel that the premium service is worth keeping remains to be seen. I suspect not.

[DavidW]

As far as I know I can't do anything like rhapsody and other services on the ipod, but at least I can get ideas by listening to Pandora and last.fm.

Seeing this old post I have to say that I'm wrong!  Rhapsody, MOG, Napster, NML are all available on the ipod touch... so take that DavidW you pompous ass!!