Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let's take a look at Spotify.
So Spotify is a music service I have been using as an alternative to purchasing music
on iTunes.
Now a lot of people have been asking me what it is about and how it works, and why it may
or may not be better than using iTunes.
So let's take a look.
Spotify is an App that you download.
It is a free App to download and then you have to sign up for an account as well.
The basic account is free and I will go over the different types of accounts in a second.
But once you're in Spotify here you can basically search for music.
So you can search for a group that you like, say the Rolling Stones, and then you can get
Search Results or you can go right to the Artists Page.
You can look at different albums and of course you can double click on any song and to stream
it and listen to it.
So basically you can stream and listen to any type of music you like as long as it is
on Spotify and somewhere between 50 and 90% of all music is on Spotify, depending on how
you count it.
I find plenty of things not on Spotify but also a lot that I like that is and some groups
I am discovering by just exploring around and searching.
Looking at things like related artists and such and just looking at some of their suggestions
for new music as well.
So there is a lot you can listen to and at this level it is free and just streams and
is available on your Mac as an App.
Now the way to get it and sign up for an account, as you may have guessed, is you go to Spotify.com.
Now when you are there you can see the different types of accounts.
I've been talking about the free account and the way things are paid for there is through
advertising.
You can sign up for a $5 a month account and that gets rid of the advertising.
But both of these two accounts have the restriction that you can only play music on your Mac.
You can just stream it live from the internet.
If you go to the $10 a month account then things get really interesting because not
only can you play music and stream it from your Mac but you can also play it on your
iOS device through a free App available for the iPhone or iPad.
The other thing that you can do from that Premium account is that you can create a playlist,
playlists are pretty much like they are on iTunes.
You can create them and then drag music to them.
So you can create a playlist and then in that playlist you can click Available Offline.
What happens then is the music downloads to your Mac and it is stored in the App and if
you are not connected to the internet, say you are on an airplane or you are out in the
country, and you want to listen to music if you have made it available offline and waited
for it all to download, you now have it available to you.
So you can listen to music offline when you have no connection to Spotify or the internet.
So now here on the iPhone I have run the App and I can do all the same things here.
I can search for something, an artist or a song, maybe if I've got a weird craving to
listen to a song while I'm out, I can just search for it here and it will then find it
for me in Spotify.
I can also go to playlist and I can see the same playlist that I have on my Mac.
It will sync across because you are using the same account.
I can go to a playlist here and hit Available Offline, and this is while I am connected
to the internet, and it will start to download each of the individual songs and now I can
see here that I've got a few albums already set, they've got that little green arrow next
to it showing that I have that available offline and I can listen to it even if I don't have
a connection.
It is worth doing sometimes even when you think you may have a connection because you
don't have to worry about the cost of streaming if you are on a restricted plan with your
provider.
You can just play the music and it will just stream it from your local cache of those songs.
So the biggest problem with Spotify is that it is only as good as its catalog.
So you are going to find things not available in the catalog.
You are also frustratingly going to find things that are available in some countries but not
in others.
Of course this is all due to licensing.
In some cases you will find compilation albums or soundtracks that will have some songs available
and others not.
There is also some artists that apparently you have a delay.
So you find a new album comes out and you find that it is available immediately on Spotify
and then other times it seems to be about six months later that it is available on Spotify.
You have the ability to go and get the free trial and then look at it on the App on your
Mac and see what's available.
See if your favorite artists are in there or the ones that you are considering purchasing
in the future and that can help you decide whether or not it is worth going to Premium
level.
Of course at ten bucks a month there doesn't have to be too much on there to make it worthwhile.
Pretty much one album a month that you get on Spotify rather than purchasing in iTunes
makes it all worthwhile and then using some of their discovering features and some of
their social media features you may discover a new artist through Spotify that you may
not have found otherwise.
There are also radio stations on Spotify which makes it similar to Pandora in that respect
except that you listen to music that is available on Spotify so you can then stop and then go
and listen to the entire rest of the album or more songs by that same artist if you like.
Another drawback to Spotify is that you don't get the feeling that you own the music.
Ownership levels have gone down since you are not purchasing the album or CD and then
purchasing the digital music in iTunes.
Now with something like Spotify you are kind of like subscribing to the music.
But if that kind of thing doesn't bother you it certainly may save you some bucks to do
it this way.
So go take a look at Spotify and see if it is something that can fit with you and how
you listen to music.
Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.