Music is used by different people for different purposes –for relaxation, hyping up, studying, sleeping or driving. Music can and is being used in different settings. As such, making songs available through the internet for easy accessibility became a norm.
When downloading songs, however, one should be wary of illegal downloading, otherwise known as piracy. In this light, there are some music service websites available in the internet that are purely safe, legal and effective. One such website is Spotify.
What is Spotify?
Spotify is an online music streaming website that lets you listened to streamed music. It works through a P2P system, making more music files available to listeners. Moreover, a P2P system ensures a faster song detection and streaming.
How to use Spotify?
To make a long story short, when using Spotify, you type a song title, artist, or an album in the search box and Spotify will automatically play your song/s for you.
Upon first use, Spotify has to be installed in your computer –PC or MAC. As you open the program for the first time, it copies all your songs from your iTunes library and transfers it to Spotify, giving you one running program for all your songs –be it downloaded or streamed.
Performance
Spotify’s performance depends on your Spotify subscription. For instance, you can sign up for free. This will allow you to listen to streamed songs for free in your computer. However, you cannot sync your songs to your iPhone and your sound quality is only up to 160 Kbps. As can be expected from a free program, services rendered are limited.
For instance, after 6 months of unlimited streaming, songs could only be streamed for up to 5 times in a month and streaming hours will be limited to 10 hours/month. Moreover, advertisements abound which can sometimes interrupt your streaming.
However, if you wish to upgrade to Spotify unlimited, all your advertisements will be gone. Your streaming will also be totally unlimited. But that’s just about the difference of the two. You still have to listen from your computer –not your iPhone. Moreover, the sound quality is still only up to 160 Kbps. All this you get by paying $4.99/month.
If you’re not happy with this, you can upgrade to Spotify premium. For over $9.99/month, you will have an access to 320 Kbps songs, advertisement-free streaming and the iPhone-compatible version.
More Cool Features
Spotify has a feature which enables you to “sync” your Spotify with your Facebook and Twitter profiles. With the Facebook connection, your Spotify can notify you about your friends’ recent activities when it comes to Spotify and music. It will show you their playlists and recently played songs, and vice-versa. Such that, through this app, you can keep one another updated especially when it comes to music. This is useful especially if you and your friends have the same taste in music.
Criticisms
Spotify, unlike Pandora, another streaming website, does not have the “intelligent” feature of auto-searching songs for users depending on their assumed tastes. Moreover, it is quite expensive and is not readily compatible with iPhone –unless, of course, you are willing to pay $10.00. Otherwise, you have to live with unlimited number of advertisements and subpar –but not low –quality songs.
Spotify is a pretty decent program for streaming music. It has its pros and cons as evident in this article. If you are an audiophile, visit this website, try using it and tell us what you think about it.
About Aurora Freegard
