Music streaming part 1: Spotify

After I got my current phone (you know, the one that works) I started listening to more and more streaming music.  I'd do it a little bit on the old POS phone, especially some Pandora in the car, but once I started having a reliable phone and internet connection, it became more and more.

Pretty much every time I'd show up in Miami my cousin would extol the virtues of Spotify.  It took me forever to register for some reason.  I think because I had an American IP address and no invite?  But I started playing with it in the past couple of months.  I'd also had on and off love affairs with Pandora.  I found some really great songs and artists including some of my all time favorites.  I have a weak spot for a song writer with an acoustic guitar.  As with so many other things, I did tons and tons of research before making my "pay for the year" decision.

There's lots of great articles on the differences between Spotify and Pandora on the web.  I've read most of them.  This inforgraphic is probably the most helpful.  This article is written in the context of business marketing but is fairly helpful.  This one most helpfully clarifies the song suggestions from each app, and how they pay for themselves in ads.

Once I figured out how to create a Spotify account that wasn't connected to Facebook, both harder and easier than it sounds, I logged in and started enjoying myself.  I also kept right on using Pandora, especially in the car.  Relevant because only the most expensive version of Spotify works on phones and tablets while all versions of Pandora have that option.  I realized a couple things quite quickly.  Spotify is better for finding and testing out specific songs, and better for hearing what friends are listening to.  It's like the web version of friends giving me a mix tape.  Ironically, I keep my feeds private becuase I don't want my friends judging me for listening to "It's not easy being green" on repeat.  I jest, but only slightly.  I'm also able to find playlists for things like running made by friends or people I've never even met.  I have a love/hate feeling about having to download and run Spotify in a separate app on my computer instead of inside the web browser.

Ultimately, there was no way I was going to pay over $100 per year for a music subscription, no matter how much I listen. I also found that I didn't listen long enough to really get that amount of money's worth out of the offer.  So I moved on to Pandora. (More on that next.)