Spotify

Have you heard about Spotify yet?

It seems that it's getting quite a few people excited and on the surface of the concept, it's easy to see why. It's a simple idea - allow anyone, for free, to listen to an enormous library of music. You simply register, download the software (which took all of 30 seconds) and then find your tracks and listen away.

I've been using it for a few weeks now and here are some things to bear in mind:

- You have to be invited to register first of all - a cunning way of them making sure word of mouth spreads - but ask me if you need an invite, I have some left
- You'll get a radio-style advert every 15 minutes or so unless you pay for the premium service at £9.99 a month (you can get daypasses for £1 I think). The adverts are pretty inoffensive and seem to be mostly government type things at the moment.
- It's not as user friendly to look at as iTunes and you have to know what you want to look for, rather than the shop browsing feel that iTunes offers
- It also doesn't have any of the iTunes extras like TV shows, films, podcasts, videos or celebrity playlists
- You can't download anything or take it anywhere (unless you're much better with computers than me and find out a way to steal it)
- It doesn't have everything on there, but so far it's only failed me on a couple of things such as a very new band called Empire of the Sun (this year's MGMT apparently!) and a particular Link Wray album.

But overall, it's a pretty damn cool thing to have and has let me hear a bunch of music, on demand, that's really helped me decide whether I want to go out and buy it at all, and so for that alone, Spotify, I thank you.