Hacker News Reader

Comment by megaman821 | Hacker News Reader

A couple of questions to Spotify users:

What advantages does Spotify have over Rdio? Can Spotify be used as a streaming service and a digital locker for tracks they don't have?

View on HN

Im not sure since I've never used Rdio. But here is what I love about spotify (I am a premium subscriber for a laughable fee of £10 per month for all the ad-free music I want).

- The collection is enormous, and newly released albums become available pretty quickly. There are of course artists who are not available but there is so much out there its insane.

- The speed. Since its pretty much legalized P2P, I never need to wait for a song (well maybe sometimes there is latency but its rare).

- Its mobile, across international borders. I live in the UK and travel a lot. I can still access the service from anywhere.

And also, yes I can index my local catalogue (but the local tracks are not available on other machines/devices).

The most important: Audio quality. If you have a paid Spotify subscription, you get 320kbps ogg streams (when they're available).

Almost forgot about that - my speakers don't do the service justice :)

> And also, yes I can index my local catalogue (but the local tracks are not available on other machines/devices).

They sync just fine to my phone and iPod, so long as they are in playlists.

I'm a former Spotify user. Rdio is better. The thing I disliked about Spotify was there wasn't a way to save an album or song to a collection or library. You could only create a playlist which lived in the left pane. So if you had 1 artist you liked you might have 5 different playlists for 5 different albums. Do this for a few artists and it quickly turns into an innavigable nightmare.

Also, it doesn't have a web interface.

For one thing: user interface. The one of Rdio is pretty confusing, whereas the one of Spotify is, for me at least, the best UI of a music player ever. That's the great thing about Spotify (and I think it's often overlooked): it's not only that their idea is great, but also that the execution of that idea is stellar (for the same reason I prefer Spotify over Grooveshark).

Yeah, exactly. I've used the mobile apps of both, and Rdio's has 9 confusing icons and requires you to learn a complicated mental model of your music library will work, whereas Spotify just has 'Playlists', 'Search', and 'What's New' - couldn't be simpler.

Yes, you can upload tracks they don't have (at least in the paid for version, not sure the free service lets you).

I don't know Rdio.

You can't really upload tracks, as in upload to the cloud. You can only import tracks into the client so that you don't need another media player to play them.

You can upload tracks to the cloud, but you can only play them with a Spotify client.

Further: if the track is in the GraceNote database, you can share the track (via a playlist) with friends on Spotify.

To clarify if I upload a few track from my home computer that Spotify does not have a license to, I can then play these tracks later on my phone?

You have to manually import the tracks in both the client on your home computer and in the client on your phone. Spotify doesn't provide any upload / cloud functionality.

No, that's not correct.

I have loaded several track to Spotify on my PC, and can listen to them using the client on my phone without having to manually load/import them there. They sync automatically when you connect.

Is your computer running when this sync happens or is it uploading to the cloud?

Not according to Spotify themselves:

http://www.spotify.com/nl/help/faq/local-files/does-spotify-...

As I have always understood it, your local music collection is included in the client. If you share playlists containing tracks from your local collection. But if they are not provided by Spotify, friends need to have the same tracks locally as well to be able to play them.

I have used both and the only real difference for me has been the availability of music. However this is probably just a result of a US Rdio account and Swedish spotify account. I have found finding new music to be slightly easier in Rdio.

You cannot upload tracks to Rdio

I am aware. I am just wondering if an Rdio/Amazon Music mashup service exists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com