Spotify is a streaming music server that saves your play lists, of any music, not just what you’ve purchased, and you can replay that music from anywhere. Recently, that anywhere has included Facebook.
How do you add music on Facebook? When you are logged into Facebook on the front page, in the left column, you’ll find an icon with the words “Music” next to it. It’s located right under “Apps.”
When you click on Music, you’ll be asked to download an application called “Spotify.” After installing it, you will be asked to login with Facebook. Or, you can set up an account on their website, without logging into Facebook.
When you do, you can see what music your friends are listening to; subscribe to their playlists; send recommended songs to friends; and just enjoy free unlimited music to your heart’s content.
If you don’t want to share your playlists you can turn it off. Within Spotify click on your preferences, then uncheck automatically share my playlists. It appears that its an all or nothing feature.
You can also disconnect Spotify while you’re in the program so that the music you’re listening to doesn’t get played. To do that within Spotify, go to File, to Disconnect from Facebook.
Spotify is free. From what I can tell from this blog post on Spotify, the service will only be free for six months.
Spotify pays for the free music by running ads between every few songs and display ads from within the software. They also charge for subscriptions. In fact, every time you open the app, you are asked if you want to upgrade from the free account. It says you can upgrade for a monthly fee. Unfortunately, the form asks for my credit card information before it gives me the price, so I didn’t complete it. Wikipedia lists that the Unlimited Subscription is 4.99 per month and Premium (includes mobile) is 9.99 a month. If you spend a lot on music in iTunes this option might be worth it. I’m just a little concerned that it seems to be luring people in with misinformation. You sign up and get all you’re play lists created, then after six months, you’re told you can only play 10 hours of music. Of course, this may have changed with the Facebook deal.
I’m sure there will be a huge uproar from the Facebook friends who, just having gotten used to the music part, are suddenly told that they are going to have to pay for the right to listen to music, but not own it.
“Abandon ship!”
“Hit the brakes!”
“I’d expand my farm before I’d pay that!”
I don’t want to stop people from enjoying their free membership on Spotify. Go ahead and enjoy it for six months. The Software is pretty cool and I’m really enjoying the ability to hear almost about every song I can think of. In fact, I’ve put some songs in that I would have sworn wouldn’t be in there and they were.
As always, I have a couple of tips. First, when you search for a song or name and it says not found, try a different way to put it in the search bar. For instance, I searched for She said Plan B, and no results appeared. But when I tried Plan B She said, it came up. Other times I put the artist last and it had the same problem.
Also, I was disappointed when I added the Bob Seger song Turn the Page to my play list, but it turned out that it was only a cover, cause I know that wasn’t Seger, not even close. At least when I tried to play Peace Sells, it was listed correctly as a cover song (as made famous by Megadeath). So, just make sure you listen to the song before adding it to your play list.
Apparently, not many people are using the service yet. I have only one friend among hundreds who has a published playlist. So, if you’d like to share your playlists (as long as its not country) please add me.
Finally, if you find yourself getting attached to your playlists, and have no intension of subscribing at some time, keep a separate note of when you signed up and what’s in your playlists.