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Comment by pitdesi | Hacker News Reader

Here's my free passalong for free invites, it should work: http://klout.com/perk/Spotify/SpotifyFreeAccounts?passalong=...

First thought: How is this any different from Grooveshark (from a user experience perspective - I know Grooveshark doesn't give a shit about artists rights etc).

Edit: So far, search on Spotify is much faster, but the music library is nowhere near as complete... and I like that in Grooveshark when I search for a song I can see other peoples playlists that it shows up in and play those.

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Grooveshark does care about artist's rights tremendously (just a few examples):

http://www.grooveshark.com/labellist

http://blog.grooveshark.com/post/7090813892/grooveshark-anno...

http://blog.grooveshark.com/post/7543767530/breakthroughradi...

http://artists.grooveshark.com/

They care about THEIR artists' rights, and by that I mean that they only care after an artist comes to them and agrees to their license. Until then, they'll play that artist and claim DMCA, even though it should be very straight forward to ensure this music doesn't end up on their platform.

From what I know, music rights are a lot more complicated than you may realize. That's not to say labels shouldn't get compensated, simply that things aren't ever as cut and dry as they may seem.

I don't know much about Grooveshark (or Rdio) but one of the early selling points of Spotify is that it uses P2P - the first minute or so of a song is streamed from their servers but the rest is P2Ped from other users. Which means you very very rarely get buffering (apart from today :-/)

Don't think I've ever experienced buffering with a modern connection on any of the services I've reviewed (MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, Grooveshark, etc). It's really just a cost saving mechanism for them more than an anti-buffering agent for us.

There are some great websites dedicated to sharing playlists around, particularly http://sharemyplaylists.com/

Thanks.. Your klout link worked for me (Had never used klout before)

Is there a way to play a personalized station? I am a fan of having my music selected for me.

There's a Radio section. You can choose genres and decades, but nothing equivalent to an "Artist radio".

Where would that be? Certainly not highlighted in the UI

Second item in the left-hand navigation pane.

Possibly only for paid accounts?

On the Mac app, the 2nd item is "Play Queue". "What's new" is first and "Inbox" is third.

Ahh yes, that would explain it.

http://www.spotify.com/us/get-spotify/free/

This table shows that it's only available for paid accounts.

If you go to an artist, you can also select an artist radio. Select the artist, and it's in the top tabs to the right.

"For now, the Radio feature will not be available for U.S. users."

"The radio feature will eventually be available. However, I can't say exactly when that will be. Be reminded, that Spotify is not chiefly a radio service. The lack of a radio feature for the time being is a factor of licensing agreements with the rights holders but it will eventually be available.

So the lack of a radio feature in no way limits your ability to search for and play the song of your choice. Just to be clear, when the time comes, the absence of a radio feature will be available for free as well as Premium users, as it is not typically one of the main benefits of a Premium subscription. "

http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/radio_mode_missing...

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