Just found this, after hearing of it on the Gadget Show.

Online music catalogue, you download the player/interface, looks a lot like iTunes, but tunes play instantly without buffering, unlike other online players.

Free one seems to work fine, without any probs.

Looks like its gonna knock last FM etc off the top spot. Anyone else tried it?

Edited April 8, 200916 yr by Trevski

Anyone else tried it?

Have been using it for 4 or 5 months. I use it at least 4-5 hours per day. Thousands of albums are being added each week.

More info here:

https://www.spotify.com/en/help/faq/

I've got a bunch of invites if anyone of you want to try it out.

It's a fantastic service in my opinion and points the way forward.

Legal instant streaming services with a gigantic selection that are either financed by ads or by reasonable monthly member fees (like Spotify) is probably the only thing that will ever hamper illegal music and movie downloads.

Looking forward to when the upcoming cell/iPhone application for this service is released, and mobile broadband gets cheaper.

Edited April 8, 200916 yr by Sebastian

Should perhaps add that so far the free ad-supported version of Spotify only works in the UK, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Spain. The fee based version is available for most other countries though.

Have been using it for 4 or 5 months. I use it at least 4-5 hours per day. Thousands of albums are being added each week.

More info here:

https://www.spotify.com/en/help/faq/

I've got a bunch of invites if anyone of you want to try it out.

It's a fantastic service in my opinion and points the way forward.

Legal instant streaming services with a gigantic selection that are either financed by ads or by reasonable monthly member fees (like Spotify) is probably the only thing that will ever hamper illegal music and movie downloads.

Looking forward to when the upcoming cell/iPhone application for this service is released, and mobile broadband gets cheaper.

Dunno about the invitation thing Seb, I just googled 'spotify' and got it from the site without any problem.

https://www.spotify.com/en/

Just click the 'free, get started'

(And, of course, you can download anything you like off there...... so it won't stop illegal downloads... )

Edited April 8, 200916 yr by Trevski

Have been using it for 4 or 5 months. I use it at least 4-5 hours per day. Thousands of albums are being added each week.

More info here:

https://www.spotify.com/en/help/faq/

I've got a bunch of invites if anyone of you want to try it out.

It's a fantastic service in my opinion and points the way forward.

Legal instant streaming services with a gigantic selection that are either financed by ads or by reasonable monthly member fees (like Spotify) is probably the only thing that will ever hamper illegal music and movie downloads.

Looking forward to when the upcoming cell/iPhone application for this service is released, and mobile broadband gets cheaper.

Could you send me one of those invites please Benji - much appreciated

(pete.smith@freeuk.com)

nb just checked, they've opened it invite-free to the UK

Edited April 8, 200916 yr by Pete S

Didn't know that it was free to all UK users. It's still invitation-only here in Sweden.

(And, of course, you can download anything you like off there...... so it won't stop illegal downloads... )

No you can't. There's a big difference between being able to download and being able to record a song to your computer. Recording 1000 songs to your computer is a gigantic task and takes about 50 hours. To download 1000 songs via a popular torrent-file can take less than 5 minutes.

It will ofcourse not stop illegal downloads. But if you make streaming music/video easy-to-use on both home computers and cell-phones as well as legal and offering a massive catalogue, then the reason to download things will gradually go away. I think it will in any case.

Didn't know that it was free to all UK users. It's still invitation-only here in Sweden.

No you can't. There's a big difference between being able to download and being able to record a song to your computer. Recording 1000 songs to your computer is a gigantic task and takes about 50 hours. To download 1000 songs via a popular torrent-file can take less than 5 minutes.

It will ofcourse not stop illegal downloads. But if you make streaming music/video easy-to-use on both home computers and cell-phones as well as legal and offering a massive catalogue, then the reason to download things will gradually go away. I think it will in any case.

True, but it's handy for pulling the odd tune for my iPod...

True, but it's handy for pulling the odd tune for my iPod...

I totally agree with that.

Didn't know that it was free to all UK users. It's still invitation-only here in Sweden.

No you can't. There's a big difference between being able to download and being able to record a song to your computer. Recording 1000 songs to your computer is a gigantic task and takes about 50 hours. To download 1000 songs via a popular torrent-file can take less than 5 minutes.

It will ofcourse not stop illegal downloads. But if you make streaming music/video easy-to-use on both home computers and cell-phones as well as legal and offering a massive catalogue, then the reason to download things will gradually go away. I think it will in any case.

I've got 22,000 songs on my Ipod now and to be honest, I can't think of anything else to download and put on there, so I'll use this new player to listen to stuff I may not have heard before. Then I'll download it