Some conclusions after two months of using the music service popular around the world.
In this article, I would like to briefly describe my feelings from Spotify and supplement the theses expressed by Artyom Lutfullin in his article. Not so long ago, he abandoned Play Music in favor of its more experienced Swedish competitor and did not regret it for a second. Why didn't Google's service suit me? In short – the speed of updating the catalog, an emphasis on popular music, strange tips and a truncated client under iOS (I listen to music on a PC, Android – a smartphone and tablet from Apple) . All this is a thing of the past after switching to Spotify, but first things first.
Availability
Soon after the publication of Artyom's article on the website, I decided to download the application, thinking what had happened, finally the service officially came to Russia. Let me explain: in the middle of 2015, in a bar, I accidentally got into a conversation with a person who turned out to be a Spotify representative and came to Russia to participate in negotiations on the launch of the service on our market. At that time, there was already a certain delay in the process, according to a company employee, they were trying to find an intelligible telecom partner. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find out more, and I did not want to burden the person with work, they chatted on general topics and fled. As a result, for some reason they decided not to launch the service in Russia, which is sad, but does not interfere with using the service. We will talk about this in a separate section.
Design
The application interface is made in black with green accents. Not to say that I am an adherent of one color or another, but the aesthetics of Spotify is somehow closer, perhaps, than the white and orange gamut of Play Music. With the visual part of the service, everything is definitely in order, in some places it is not entirely logical, perhaps subjective.
The application interface may differ depending on the version / mod, of which there are a decent number of them in the open spaces of the network. But their common features are similar, so you won't be mistaken. The service has its own design language regardless of the platform, and this is great, the same Play Music on iPad is somewhat out of the general appearance of the OS. Perhaps the design has become one of the main reasons for the transition, convenient and visually pleasing.
Cross-platform
At the moment, the application is available for a wide range of devices of different categories: smartphones, tablets, game consoles, cars, TVs, smart speakers. A web interface is also available.
Service clients are available to users Android, iOS, MacOS, Linux, Windows, WP. However, for maximum convenience and seamless transition from playback on one device to another, Spotify Connect functionality is required, available only to users with premium subscriptions. You get used to it instantly, for example, while listening to music on a PC, you open the client on your smartphone, insert headphones and playback continues in the mobile application. Such nice little things win over.
registration
Due to the official lack of service in Russia, registration must take place with an activated VPN connection. When registering, I advise you to choose your home region of Malta or the United States, not forgetting to indicate the valid zip code of the region of the selected country. The first option was 'prompted' to me, oddly enough, the service itself, but more on that in the next paragraph.
Premium subscription
It was at this point that I initially stumbled, not fully understanding and deleting the application after the evaluation period. The free version of Spotify is activated at the end of, if I'm not mistaken, two weeks, you can select the option in 30 days, after which the money for the subscription will be debited from the specified card. Let's dwell on the benefits of the premium version:
- no ads between tracks
- the ability to switch songs (in the free version you can switch 6 times per hour)
- support offline playback
- Spotify Connect
- support 320 kb / s
- unlimited catalog
An important point about paying for the subscription: Russian bank cards are not accepted for payment. The problem was solved quite by accident, Twitter prompted to create a virtual card onentropay.com, with which it turned out to pay for everything. At the time of payment, it turned out that the virtual country of the card issuer was Malta, so Spotify helpfully offered to change the registration information. Returning to the cost of the subscription, the following tariffs are currently valid for Malta: 7 euros for a premium subscription, 11 euros for a family subscription for six people (!!!), 5 euros for a student subscription, the cost is indicated per month. Well, the cherry on top is the current offer for 'beginners': three months of premium subscription for 1 euro, upon completion the monthly fee of 7 euro is automatically activated.
Catalog, exclusives
For almost ten years of its existence, the service has managed to collect more than one hundred million users, of which forty million are paid subscribers. The catalog of the service has more than 30 million songs, the number is constantly growing and, perhaps, it is impossible to accurately track it. This number can now be called a kind of benchmark among similar services. Some artists use Spotify as the main platform for downloading their music, playlists, and so on, as well as a vehicle for announcing new singles / albums.
It is the policy of the service that artists who have an exclusive contract, for example, only with Apple Music, may be excluded from the Spotify catalog, unless the user himself uploads the album to their playlist. Industry watchers may recall a few high profile cases. In general, the catalog of the service is 150% satisfied, I often climb on the pages of new artists and get acquainted with older works, among which there are quite rare things.
Instead of output
Of all the music services I've tried (Apple Music, Play Music, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Deezer, Yandex.Music, Beatport and just a glimpse of Tidal) Spotify seemed to me the most adequate, except for the 'tambourines' with registration and payment: a variety of genres, cool and really useful collections that do not require the user to independently select their preferred genres from a tedious list, playback on multiple devices, stable work, web integration, and not to remember everything. The impression is 100% of a holistic and thought out service to the smallest detail, for which I, as a user, are ready to pay.