Spotify – Streaming iTunes

It’s been awhile since I’ve used iTunes heavily on my Mac.  It takes some time to download music, figuring out what songs you want, especially when it’s not free.  Then once it’s on my machine, my iPod is broken so I really have to be at my Mac to listen to the music.  Sure, I could set up streaming from my iTunes library to other iTunes players on the network, but still it’s a limited selection, based on what I have in my library.  What if I just wanted to listen to a song, any song, whenever I had the whim, from my primary (PC) machine.

Enter Spotify.  Spotify is a UK-based website that delivers an iTunes-like application.  Except with Spotify, the songs are not downloaded to your machine (per se).  They are streamed from Spotify, and they are completely free.  It beats Pandora because you can listen to whatever you want, when you want.   You can create your own playlists, as well as share them with others.  Spotify has arranged agreements with many major labels and has tons of songs available.  Some songs aren’t but they continue to work with those companies.  Spotify (if you’ve already clicked on the link) is also not available in the US yet, but they are working on it.  They have only launched in a few European countries, including the UK and Sweden.  You can use Spotify for free with ads, or for a few Euros a month, you can get it free of ads.

Well, if it’s not available in the US, then how did I try it?  Well there are some methods, using proxies and such, documented in the comments section of the original Lifehacker article where I read about Spotify.  But my friend also recently reminded me about Spotify via this link – which is actually a pretty informative blog in general too.  Try it out and let me know how you like it!