To combat this terrible album problem I thought, why not try a music service that lets you play a mass amount of music on an unlimited basis? I never really paid attention to any until now. Out of all the services offered today, i tried Spotify.

The pursuit for my own personal Spotify
This was my goal back in ’08: To have a perfectly formatted library of my favorite jams. There were no viable music services like Spotify back then. That worked for about 2-3 years but as I got older my free time started decreasing  and my library slowly became unorganized. I’m at the point where I don’t have time to be formatting tracks, syncing, etc but I always made time to check out music on the go and buy albums which got expensive on a yearly basis. It was a hit or miss most of the time which I explained here hence me checking out Spotify.

The other problem I had was that my beloved iPod classic was looking to be on its death bed. Constant hard drive failures, corrupted folders which resulted in another 5-7 hours of reloading 10,000+ songs. The process gets old very fast but the thought of spending another $250 for a new one keep me doing it. I bought that iPod in 2008 for one reason. Space, space and more space. 120gb of goodness. I like all my music in one place. I had to find a long term solution.

Nothing like a good free trial
Back to Spotify, I signed up for the one month free trial and I was in (just remember to cancel or they will charge $10 after 1 month). Immediately I started looking for random tracks that I thought it wouldn’t have. From O.C. to AZ, it had almost everything I threw at it. This can’t be true?! This is why Ive been so hesitant to try it out, i never thought it would have all the underground random music I listen to but perhaps I was wrong?

The discovery of new music requires little effort and was nice since I did not have to worry about listening to album snippets or finding the right version of a track on YouTube. However much of the song, album, artist I wanted to hear, I had unlimited access. I like that.

To really take advantage of the experience, you have to go for the $9.99/month (oh great, another bill) plan since it allows you to play Spotify on your phone/tablet, no ads, unlimited listening. If not, you are stuck with it only on your computer, full of ads. That didn’t work for me. Cancel anytime though, I like that.

I’m not going to dig into every feature but have ruled that this service is a no brainer for music addicts. Its a great place to catch new albums before you waste $10 on a terrible one. I was able to listen to all the new stuff, hear other people’s playlist and dig deep into other genres old and new. The cost isn’t so bad, I suppose I could take one less trip to that restaurant of choice in exchange for endless amounts of music. UPDATE: It now offers free mobile and tablet listening on iOS

With this convenience, of course there are some trade offs.

Pros

* Catch new albums
* Discover new artists and music
* Good for music junkies / everyday music listener
* Library of tracks is humungous
* Radio (just as good as Pandora imo)
* Set tracks for offline use
* Make your own playlists
* Don’t have to worry about upkeep and formatting of files
* Low cost pricing plans

Cons

* Not a lot of mixtapes
* They don’t have every album I searched for ( Aaliyah One In A Million, Blu Below the Heavens, etc)
* You don’t own the music, playlist etc for when Spotify eventually closes its doors or starts to suck or increases pricing (a bit extreme but a possibility)
* Dependent on network connection. If you didn’t save that song for offline use, you’re screwed in those no service areas.

Never can say goodbye
I doubt I will ever say goodbye to my iPod unless it says goodbye first (i guess there is a little hope), the notion of having the music all there with no worries makes me sleep well at night but Spotify will serve as a nice buffer for me in the meantime.

What service or device do you use to listen to music each day?