Spotify enables you to access, enjoy, manage and share music. The changes in this service will make it rather useless for many. This together with the availability of many other alternatives makes one believe that this has been over-hyped on iPhone.
From May 1st, the free users of Spotify will be exposed to a few important changes to free/open accounts. Any user signed for the service on or before November 1, 2010 will be able to listen to each track for total of 5 times. These changes will be applicable to other users after completion of 6 months from their account set-up. Moreover, the free listening time will be limited to 10 hours per month after the first 6 months. That means around 200 tracks or 20 albums.
Practically, a user can set up a fresh account every six months, but at the cost of his playlists and connection to Facebook account. This highlights the question about whether a user will remain restricted to Spotify given these restrictions. It would make perfect sense from business perspective to shift to the paid option. However, for the users that wish to enjoy free music services and still legally, there are a few alternatives.
Pandora
A US only service; it is excellent for finding new music as per your taste. A single track or your choice of artist provides for building a playlist by the site, and you can vote up/down the songs to customize as per preference. Ad-free option (Pandora One) is available at $36 for a year. There is 40 hours cap per month for free accounts on music listening that can be lifted by paying $0.99 for that month.
Grooveshark
A digital mix of Pandora and Spotify with the former’s voting style radio feature and the latter’s playlist build feature. With Grooveshark, you can follow friend’s music, and share music. $6 per month / $60 per year for Grooveshark Plus or $9 / $90 for Grooveshark Anywhere are the two subscriptions available.
Last.fm
Reputed as a music recommendation software; it works with a program, The Scrobbler, to build playlist and recommend music. It is a widely used website with 40 million active users. There is a €3 per month subscription charge after initial 30 track free trial, for users outside of the US, UK and Germany. The statistics Last.fm reveals like, top songs, top artists etc. both personally and site-wide is one of its best feature.
We7
Available only in the UK and Ireland, it enables free and legal sharing and listening of music. It also provides for streaming off mobile phones and iPad, iPhone and other Android devices. Akin to Pandora, We7 uses random generated play lists created from a single track, artist or mood of your choice.
The site has got three types of services; Free, Premium (£4.99) and Premium (£9.99).
mFlow
It is different and newest service with no advertisement, and is payment free. It runs on a social platform with music sharing as an important aspect. 20% of the retail price of recommended music sold is gained by users to buy music. mFlow enables users to create playlists and follow other users.
YouTube Disco
YouTube Disco automatically makes a playlist off about 40 songs as user enters the name of a song or an artist.
Hence, it becomes evident that there are various sites on par with Spotify for paid content. Users have an option to explore other services that extend features and benefits different/similar to Spotify.
Guest post by Amanda Kidd: Amanda is a blogger who also happens to be a nature lover and has become a fan of Sustainable Design. She is very fascinated by the luxury world and hence, these days she is planning to write an article on mobile tv.
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