Spotify large Streaming Music library, a subscription service worth paying for!

by Jonathan Lonczak Jul 29, 2011 12:12 PM – Leave your thoughts

Install

Spotify brings millions of tracks to Android. Your music is always with you. Spotify opens up your Android to a world of music. Take your existing Spotify playlists with you on the go – listen to them during your commute, in the gym or on a flight. With ‘Offline mode’ you can listen even when no connection is available. Wirelessly sync your local files to your phone to merge your catalogue with ours, no cables required! Download and get started directly from your mobile.

Price: Free Application, $9.99 for Monthly Subscription to Service

Tested on: HTC Droid Incredible 2, Sony Xperia Play
Content Rating: Everyone

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

Incredibly large music library including soundtracks and many eclectic artists and albums unavailable through similar services!
Extremely fast speeds for music streaming!
Gives detailed artist info using Last.fm’s Scrobble service!
Caches music for offline playing!
Allows you to create playlists for online and offline use!
Various syncing options!

Cons

No car mode.
Lack of music library sorting options.

Features:

Spotify is an incredible music service for Android. You can stream music on multiple devices, store music on your device for future playback, sync music over 3G or Wi-Fi, and has an incredibly vast selection of music.

One of the things that impressed me most about Spotify is its incredibly large selection of music. I have an extremely eclectic taste in music. Many of the artists I prefer to listen to are not available through other popular music services like Amazon MP3 or Rhapsody, but Spotify had all of them. It even had soundtracks from movies and musicals!

Upon opening up the app you are able to search for specific songs, albums, or artists by pressing your device’s dedicated search key or by selecting the search option on screen. After typing in your search query the application will suggest songs, albums, and artists that match your search parameters. For Artists it will provide an Album List as well as a full bio on the artist which is provided by Last.fm’s Scrobble Service. Spotify also shows songs, albums, and artists that are new and currently trending so that you can locate new music which you may enjoy.

After locating music which you wish to save you select the song or album and add it to a playlist. I personally went through Spotify and created playlists for about 30 of my favorite albums. Unfortunately, I have not found any way to catalogue playlists by Artists, but it is incredibly useful to have playlists of your favorite music for instant access.

When you click on a song or album to begin playing it, the application pulls up its own “Now Playing” screen with album art and basic music controls. The nice thing about the now playing screen is that it displays as a hideable tab which can be shown or hidden by pressing a tab at the bottom of the screen. This feature allows you to hide the “Now Playing” screen while navigating the application, but still allows easy access to music controls when needed. The downside of this feature is that the “Now Playing” screen will not go landscape, nor is there any car mode making this application extremely difficult and therefore unsafe to use when driving.

Spotify also has the option to save playlists to your device’s SD card for offline playback. This is easily controlled by adding songs to your offline playlists. You can also enable the syncing of these playlists over 3G or Wi-Fi from the settings menu of the application. As you are streaming music to your device the music is also cached to your phone providing for the temporary playback of many tracks without a data connection even when playlists are not created for offline use.

: Spotify Main Screen

: Spotify Now Playing 1

: Spotify Now Playing 2

: Spotify Top Tracks

: Spotify Whats New

: Spotify Album Playlist

: Spotify Album Info

: Spotify Widget

: Spotify Settings

Usefulness:

Spotify is extremely useful if you enjoy listening to music and prefer to listen to new music often. It has an incredibly large selection of music including many eclectic favorites, and the music streaming times are incredibly fast and significantly quicker than both Google Music and Amazon Mp3.

Unfortunately Spotify will not display the “Now Playing” screen in landscape mode and there is no car mode currently. This makes this application extremely difficult to use while driving and therefore an unsafe choice for easy listening while driving.

Ease of Use:

The app is incredibly easy to pick up and use. The interface is extremely well developed and encourages you to utilize the various features of the application while leaving all of the options out in the open.

The biggest issues that I have with using it is the difficulty of sorting playlists by Artists first and then sorted by Albums, and its lack of a workable car mode. I found that this application had me creating large playlists of various Albums and was frustrated by the difficulty of getting them drilled down by Artist and then by Album. Also as stated before this application is extremely difficult to use in the car, and that is where I do the majority of my media consumption.

Frequently Used:

Since signing up for Spotify I have been using it almost daily. I can listen to classical music while writing, rock when driving, and comedy when I am out and busy. The large selection of artists and albums ensure that this is a daily flyer for any music lovers out there.

Interface:

The interface for Spotify is excellent. There are some oversights as mentioned previously in this review, but aside from those issues I would say the design is almost flawless. The interface is easy to navigate and intuitive making it extremely user friendly. The design is certainly more appealing than that of Amazon Mp3′s cloud service.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

AndroidTapp.com Rating! (4.2 out of 5) Should you Download Spotify? Yes! Spotify is an excellent music streaming service for the Android platform. It includes a gigantic library of music and artists, soundtracks, artist info from Last.fm, music caching, offline playing, and various sync options. It’s main limitations are its lack of car mode and its limited options for sorting your music library. Despite these limitations I find myself adding new music and using this application on a daily basis and this is one application that is worth paying a subscription for!