On Spotify

Spotify is an unbelievable service - it’s like having already purchased most songs in the world, and it looks great. It seems to be reducing piracy, and the premium plans look quite tempting. Everyone’s been raving about it for quite a while now, and it shouldn’t be long before it becomes the #1 music service used all over the world.

Anyhow, here are a few things I have to say regarding Spotify, that would be far from laudatory.

1. The requirement to have a Facebook login to create a new account is ridiculous. It’s probably driving away potential customers. Sure, Spotify may have been ‘forced’ to do it, but that really is no excuse.

2. Spotify should really cater to the Linux world too. Their Linux beta is only for paying customers, and non-paying customers have to rely on the Windows version to run on wine. A recent update to Spotify causes it to crash on startup. The fix for this issue ? When Spotify starts, you have to be fast enough to close the Facebook tab on the right, because that’s causing the crash. No problem if you were a Counter Strike sharpshooter (like me :)), but otherwise, keep trying. Many people will say that free users shouldn’t complain of a lack of functionality - but come on, this is broken. There should at least be a plain vanilla app that runs on Linux.

3. Spotify ads. This one’s really been bugging the OCD-hell out of me. I’m fine with ads, but Spotify often plays ads for the exact playlist/artist I’m listening to at that moment. Sure, they may not have those many ads, but playing ads just for the heck of it? I don’t know. It’s a waste of money for advertisers, because their target audience is already using their product. I realize that I may have found the playlist as a result of listening to the ad sometime in the past, but what use is that ad to me now apart from interrupting my listening the very same playlist that they’re advertising about? It’s like you’ve bought a car, and then a salesman drags you out of your car every 5 minutes to pitch you about the exact same car you’re driving. It’s maddening. I’m sure it’s not that difficult to ‘whitelist’ on a realtime basis, the listeners that shouldn’t be served this advertisement. Why not play a different advertisement ? Or reward the listeners by not playing the advertisement once, because they’ve presumably clicked through and are listening to the targeted playlist/artist.