Spotify isn't anything special

July 15, 2011, 8:23 AM —

Yesterday, Spotify launched in the US to much fanfare in the tech blogging circles. Wired said "In the end, though, Spotify is just cloud music done right." In a Google+ post, Louis Gray said "Spotify is the best music experience I have ever seen from any service, period." Android Central said "Take just about every feature from every streaming music service available, and you you get Spotify." I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.

I'm here to tell you, don't believe the hype. I signed up for a Premium Spotify account ($9.99/month) yesterday morning and what I found was just another streaming music service. It isn't that Spotify is bad; it just isn't anything special when compared to competing services like Rdio and MOG.

A few things immediately jumped out as missing from the Spotify experience. First of all, a web client. You won't get a note of music out of Spotify until you install a desktop app (or a mobile app). Sometimes a desktop app is great to have, but other times (most of the time, for me) you just want to use a browser to listen, particularly if you're on a work machine or other computer that you don't own.

Second was the lack of a recommendation engine. I like to be able to give thumbs up or thumbs down on tracks in order to let the service get an idea of what I particularly like or dislike. Then the service can suggest other music to me. If you search on an artist Spotify will suggest similar bands, but that isn't tailored to your tastes.

Third, there was no 'radio' option that I could find. One of my favorite MOG features is a slider that lets you mix in similar music to what you're currently listening to. You can mix in the odd track here and there, or move the slider to max and generate a really varied play list. With Spotify you either manually create a playlist or poach one from a friend. Other services offer 'genre' stations for when you just want music and don't want to fuss with play lists (though admittedly this is getting into Pandora territory).

Last, and this is pretty minor, but there's no iPad app. You can run the iPhone app on the iPad, of course, but an app that takes advantage of the screen real estate of the iPad would be welcome.

So what about the good points? Well, there's a free tier, and that may be all it really needs. If you don't pay for Spotify you do get ads mixed in with your music, and you can't get the service on mobile devices without paying for the Premium tier, but it's hard to argue with free. Normally there's a cap on the amount of free music that you can get in a month (10 hours), but for Spotify's first 6 US months, that cap will be waived. Classic "first taste is free" marketing; I can't wait to hear the howls of outrage when people start getting capped.

There's also collaborative playlists, which are kind of interesting. You can create a play list, share it with your friends and invite them to add to or edit it.

Beyond that, Spotify seems feature complete: saving tracks locally for offline playing (Premium tier only)? Check. Sharing playlists? Check, though searching for friends is a little cumbersome. Put "spotify:user:username" in the search box. A list of new albums? Check, sort of. The list doesn't feel very complete to me. All of these options are available on other services as well, and often done better.

I get why the service was really popular in Europe; it was the only game in town. Here in the US there's a lot of competition (with nearly identical pricing) and so far I haven't found enough unique features to get me to quit MOG and switch to Spotify. Other users I've spoken to feel that Rdio has better social features than either MOG or Spotify.

So if you're still waiting for an invite to the US launch, stop fretting. You're not missing out on anything exhilarating; Spotify's biggest advantage is that, for reasons I can't fathom, it's the darling of tech bloggers and so will get huge exposure. If you're really interested in trying a streaming music service, why aren't you already using MOG or Rdio or Grooveshark or Rhapsody? (And that isn't a complete list.)

Bottom line, Spotify seems like a perfectly capable streaming music service, but it isn't perfect and it isn't "better" than other options in any universal way. Pick the service that's right for you based on features, not on the near-hysterical hype built up around Spotify.

Yesterday I asked on a number of places what made Spotify so much better than existing competitors here in the US, and didn't receive a single good answer. So I'll ask the same question here. If you're a Spotify supporter, sell me on the service. Tell us all why it's superior to all the other streaming music services.