Bangers and Twitter

Maybe if I work the entire summer and live on noodles…

I’m sure this will be more like me investing in “importan equipment” than when my parents bought me an expensive tennis raquet that I used for less than 4 months.

Come to think of it; I still have a squash raquet around that I never used. hmm…

 is the music service that make me feel slightly better about leaving the U.S. along with its amazing services such as Netflix and iTunes rentals in not too long.

It has been a decent deal all along, the major flaw when I left Sweden being that the “free” music wouldn’t hop on my iPod, something that is solves through the expansion of iPhone-like phones (running, if not iPhone OS, Android or the likes).

With today’s announcement of the new .4 beta version of Spotify, the intent is to further integrate the social and discovering aspects of music consumption. This is done by connecting to facebook (something that when eliminating the sheer sign up for an account idiocy online like with DIGG is a blessing, but this is obviously intended for more) as well as the local music library which one migh have filled up before with CDs and iTunes music (and hrm. bittorrent downloads).

Comments on:

• Facebook integration:
  Friends on facebook are accessible to users of Spotify. This is an obvious simplification that’s been used by e.g. Skype 
• Publish Spotify “profile” to the web
  I can post my listening interests to the channels of my choosing automatically. Pandora and last.fm has this. And it’s great. If only all of these guys could simplify setup (think instapaper) will Spotify?
• Popularity of playlists, playlist changes, etc.
  last.fm in a nutshell. Of course, Spotify currently plugs into last.fm. I wonder if that will change with the feature overlap. Of course, a good service allows for flexibility.
• See who’s listening to a specific playlist IN REAL TIME.
  This kind of to-the-minute interaction with other users, almost like a social networking with music in the base World of Warcraft, I think is going to be a prominent feature of future Internet relations. Google has a reason to be careful and privacy proponents a reason to be vigilant. 
• Wireless sync to e.g. iPhone
  Why isn’t Apple doing this with iTunes? On the subject of sync; if this also syncs my own tracks (which it probably won’t) this could be very interesting in conjunction with the more accessible API of iPhone OS 4. Think: don’t sync iTunes at all, but set up Spotify to handle bought and “rented” music files, that can then be run in the background and take up most of the storage space.

In all, I’m excited about the combination of tracks that I add and Spotify tracks, which gives me increased control over what music I have what access to where and when.

Since a comparable iPhone plan that’s $100 in the U.S. is more like $40 in Sweden, I feel like I can afford a $10 premium to get a premium music experience!

Further reading:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/spotify-takes-aim-at-itunes-befriends-facebook/
http://mashable.com/2010/04/27/spotify-social/