Meet and Greet with Spotify

Hey girls,

Have you dabbled in Spotify yet? If not, you can request a Spotify invite here. I’ve been playing around with it for the past few days and I wanted to share my thoughts and insight about it. Firstly, I think it’s online sharing capability is impressive and I certainly look forward to watching it blossom across the social media landscape.

There are three membership options, each with its own amenities. I’m on the free account right now, but will be making the upgrade shortly.

Spotify allows us to take our online sharing habits to a new level.

• Sharing  and discovering music
• Making personal playlist creation a viral group activity
• Syncing our existing MP3 players and iPods is easy as pie

Sharing and discovering music
When I created my free Spotify account, I was presented with a list of my current Facebook friends already using it. When I click on their profiles, I see their Top Artists, Top Tracks and Public Playlists. I don’t see their full music library, BUT I do see the playlists they choose to make public and create within Spotify. You should now…the playlists you create in iTunes does not transfer over as playlists, only your iTunes music transfers…sans playlists. You can find your iTunes music under “Library” in your Spotify dashboard.

When I click on a Top Artist from my friend’s Spotify, it shows me the Artist’s albums, top hits, biography, related artists (love that!) and a Share button allowing me to share this discovery on Facebook, Twitter and MSN Messenger (does anyone use that still?). I can also drag-n-drop songs into any playlists that I’ve created. It’s so simple!

Making playlist creation a viral group activity
We all love playlists, right? For road trips, the gym, parties or for concentrating at work. This may or may not happen with you, but sometimes the creative juices aren’t flowing and I can’t seem to build a rockin’ playlist. Nevertheless, with Spotify you can create your playlist and send it out via Twitter, Faceboook or MSN Messenger and ask your friends for input! I did this on Facebook and received some music ideas.

I haven’t discovered the Share button for “Starred” music, Local Files or Library yet. Perhaps we cannot share those…

Syncing your existing MP3 players and iPods is easy as pie
No kidding. It truly is. You can take your music everywhere if you download the Spotify iPhone or Android app. This is where it gets tricky though. If you have a Premium ($9.99/month membership) you can stream your music via the app. However, if you don’t have a Premium membership, you can access Spotify via the app, but only search for tracks…no streaming.

If you’re on Spotify, what are your thoughts? Do you think iTunes should be threatened? Lets talk about it!