So I have now been using Spotify for about a week after sumarily deserting Rhapsody (no stickyness at all!) Here’s my summary:
Pro Spotify
- Has a nice downloadable client on Mac which I can launch from the Dock
- I seem to be discovering some new music from non-American Jazz artists. Not sure this is a credit to Spotify or just luck
Neutral
- Exactly the same price
- Apparently equally large catalogs
Against Spotify
- Relies purely on an obscure search syntax (e.g. “genre:”Piano Jazz”) to search genres
- Does not have ratings based on genres – i.e. top downloads or new this week in Classical.
- Has a confusing relationship with iTunes. Why does it offer me to ‘download’ my iTunes and make it available ‘offline’? iTunes already does this on iPhone
- No way to know what ‘genres’ it actually knows about beyond the obvious: “Classical” and so on. Is there “Singer Songwriter”? Is there “New Orleans Jazz”? No idea.
Jury is still out for me…
