Being a super fan of Spotify and a huge fan of Last.fm, I must say I was really pleased when I noticed that Spotify now offers its users to scrobble through Last.fm! It’s been more or less ‘wanted’ (more like demanded) by the Spotify-community since day 1, which makes this an even bigger success for Spotify – they listened to the users – and gave them exactly what they wanted.
Now, please take it to the next level and develop an iPhone application guys, that’d just make my day completely.
Even though Spotify officially is still in beta, sites ‘offering’ shared Spotify Playlists have already starting to pop up left and right. It’s going to be really interesting to see who has the best and most user friendly solution, and/if this is something that Spotify eventually will offer through its own software and very loyal community. I’m not talking about the possibility to share playlists (as this naturally already exists) but rather sites that creates opportunities for lazy people, or not so tech-savvy users to use other peoples playlists.
Check out the likes of Spotify Friends, Listply, Spotifylists, and Spotlists. Spotify has the potential to become another Facebook (or Google if you wish to go big) but for the music industry, offering its own bubble in which entrepreneurs will feed of any idea to create business opportunities. I’m consciously exaggerating here, but if you can only see one use for Spotify – think again.
One ‘bigger’ thought is; how long will it be until we see a lightweight software like Spotify – but for Video? Interesting …
Update; TKJ recently found this as well.
I just wrote about Spotify the other day. Reading about Spotify and its benefits took me to a lot of other places that focused on connecting or helping people unite their common interest, namely music.
The other day SoundCloud had their release. On the site reads that: “SoundCloud lets you move music fast & easy. The platform takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals.” I’m not sure that this has been as big of an issue as they’d like to emphasize, but it will be interesting to see what comes out of it. Check out the video on the front page, quite cool.
Another service that I stumbled upon the other day is Hypem which really caught my attention. I normally stick to more ‘common’ resources for my music online, such as Last.fm or longer back; Pandora. But Hypem or “The Hype Machine” is really really clever and self-driven by thousands of bloggers. It collects data and music from blogs around the world and then presents it on the site with a clean interface and the possibility to listen to new blogged music in a pop-up player, even though the player at the bottom is sweet enough. If you want to see what music is the ‘buzz’ around the world, Hypem is really a one stop shop to get updated.
Today it was officially announced that Spotify has signed licensing deals with a list of companies that included Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Music, and Warner Music Group.
Spotify wrote on their blog today: “What this means to us, is that after just over two years, thousands of lines of code, and even more cups of coffee, Spotify will launch today. We plan to roll out invites to our free service gradually over the coming months, while premium access to Spotify has now been made fully available.”
Read more on the official blog from Spotify.
I found an old article about the founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzen at InternetWorld as well. Edit: Well, of course there was a new one on IDG as well, check it out.