Spotify

[shadowx 0]

Spotify, Spotify, the free music streaming service with optional paid services for better features. Free use enables you to listen to each individual track a limited number of times but does allow you access to millions of tracks with only a few adverts. The paid services start at £5/month and offer unlimited access to all the music advert free. Additional services for more money allow you to save music to an offline playlist and use the mobile version.Initially I was a free member, back when it was invite only in the UK, eventually the "limited re-plays of an individual track" got annoying so i purchased Spotify Premium for £5/month via paypal. The service was good, used it extensively at work for hours on end and at home. As a service it is very good, the music quality is excellent, the range of music is extensive, every genre and decade from classical to heavy metal. The client is smooth and as of recently there is a Limux client in Beta which is fairly stable on Ubuntu. Recently however Spotify sold their soul to Facebook. Now you cannot register for spotify at all. You can simply sign in using facebook, hence Spotify is controlled by facebook. The reasons are obvious, by default Spotify spams your wall with posts like "look you guys! Im listening to spotify lololol :D :D" it is opt-out and not obvious in that if you leave it enabled you cannot, EVER disable it, even if you click the disable button it will reset when you close and re-open the spotify client. Nice. But that way Spotify get free advertising at the cost of making you look like an idiot. Facebook of course get additional registrations since you need Facebook to use Spotify. Smooth.Until recently however, since I registered long ago when Facebook was merely a rotting mould in the corner of the internet my account was email based and not linked to Facebook. Then my paypal, and indeed email addresses, were compromised, presumable due to a password crack at one of the websites I use, I believe most likely Trion Worlds, so thanks for that one guys (unconfirmed of course), so my Paypal was thankfully disabled when the scamming noobs changed the address, however that meant my Spotify subscription was cancelled mid-transaction and thus caused a chargeback, essentially giving me £5, Spotify werent too keen on this as I would soon find out. After trying to sign in I got error messages that hinted to a wrong user/password, so I signed in on the Spotify site only to be greeted with a message saying my account was disabled. I was not logged in however, my account had literally been deleted. Nice.I contacted Spotify support who told me that due to the chargeback they had deleted my account and would not re-activate it. Usually I would be pissed off but re-register, however since I despise facebook (I have it but have 9 friends, half of which are relatives with whom I stay in contact with via facebook) and since I was FORCED to use facebook and had no choice in the matter I refused to re-join. I explained this to support who essentially shrugged their shoulders, so I took to twitter and tweeted to the CEO of Spotify directly explaining why I disliked the facebook tie in and the situation in hand. He too didn't care.In the end I have created a fake facebook profile with an email address I do not monitor. I will never add any friends and hide the profile so Spotify will receive no benefit from their little tie-in. The moral of the story is that I despise any forced tie in, so KS take note, I already disapprove of the facebook login! Forcing a customer to do something they do not like purely for your own profit is a risky business and makes people like me dislike the business immensely. Unfortunately the service they office is unique here it seems. But hopefully a decent competitor will show up and I will jump ship!

[nanna 0]

Hello Shadowx I installed Spotify on my laptop ive not had it long just over a month.I like spotify its nice to have music playing in the back ground while working on my laptop and the adverts dont bother me after a while you dont notice them.The only thing i must say is i would never think of paying a monthly subscription for this service.I think paying for Spotify you should be able to get all music songs from all artists that ever lived.I noticed you cant find all songs and artists one example like the beatles you cant get orginal songs from them.So if your paying for a service i really think every song and artist should be available to you.This just my view on spotify it was interesting reading your post about Spotify.

[comp2 1]

I have used spotify in the past "wasn't to impressed" but I was allowed to sign up via just email email address not linking facebook. I personally do not like facebook linking to other sites, I think it is none of their business.