Hi everyone! Have you ever wanted to simply play music, that you don’t own, on your computer? Well now you can! Spotify is a free client that allows you to stream music from an online source. This enables you to be able to listen to almost any song or album, absolutely free.
To get started, all you have to do is go to the Spotify Website and navigate to the download page. Spotify is available for both Windows and Mac. Although there is not a certified download for Linux, you can use WINE to run *.exe files in Linux, which also enables you to run Spotify under Linux. However, the Linux ‘version’ is not as stable as the others, so you may experience other problems.
After installing Spotify, you can start listening to music pretty much straight away, there is no need for a reboot. Just go into the main interface, to the search box at the top, and you can search for the Track Name or Artist. Though you do need to create a Spotify account, this is so all your Playlists can be saved to your account, and accessed from any computer where Spotify is installed. Once this is done, you can click the “Remember Me” button, and you’ll be automatically signed in whenever you launch Spotify.
Furthermore, you need a working Internet Connection to be able to use Spotify, as all the music is streamed from the online source. You will also need an Internet Connection to be able to log in, as you’re logging into the online database.
A brilliant feature of Spotify is the playlist feature. This allows you to save songs you like to a list you can play again and again. Simply go onto the left hand side pane, and click “New Playlist.” Adding songs to your playlist couldn’t be easier! When you have search results being displayed, you simply need to drag and drop the song you want to your playlist, and the song automatically gets put in there. Something I like to do quite a lot in Spotify, is make an album playlist. This involves making a playlist, and naming it the title of an album. I’d then search for the name of one of the songs in said album, and click on the name of the album. Spotify will then bring up each and every song in the album (that is available in the Spotify Library). Then, all you need to do, is select the songs you want (select multiple items by holding down the control key and clicking the items, or pressing control + a to select them all) and drag & drop them all into your playlist.
Another of these brilliant features, is the cover image. It is a small item on the left of the Spotify interface, which displays the Album Cover of the currently playing song.
There are two versions of Spotify: The freeware version, and the full version. To use the full version of Spotify, you have to pay an extra £9.99/month. The free version includes many banner ads, which don’t really block your view. There are also occasional audio ads, which don’t come up very often, but when they do, it gets rather annoying. They are about 20 seconds long, and advertise the full version of Spotify.
To conclude, Spotify is a great bit of software to have on your PC! If you hear about a song, but not sure if you want to buy it, it’s a fantastic way to sample it.
For further information regarding Spotify, and help and support, if you need it, go to The Spotify Website
In other news: Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, is going to be released soon, why not download the Release Candidate now, from The Ubuntu Website. Do note that Jaunty is still not completely Stable, and should not be used for proper home use. If you do wish to try it out, this is for testing purposes ONLY.
For now,
Yours,
Ratscallion
