Spotify's mobile app finally goes free | Hacker News Reader

Spotify's mobile app finally goes free

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Google Music is pushing into more countries. The only logical consequence.

I switched from Spotify to Google, because:

1) Found a few albums, that disappeared from Spotify a few months ago.

2) 7,99 € vs. 9,99 €

3) Google Music allowed me to shuffle all of my music

4) The app is way better. I can always stop the player from the notification bar (on spotify that was a sometimes pain in the ass )

5) When listening to music on Spotify and someone calls, it wasn't possible to adjust the volume, resulting in your ears getting voice-bombed by the caller

I just wish google music had a desktop client (or support in chrome) to hook into operating system keyboard shortcuts like play, pause, forward, next, etc.

I've been using sway.fm chrome extension and it seems pretty decent: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/swayfm-unified-mus...

I just found Sway.fm for Chrome last night, and it's been awesome for playing SoundCloud.

Ah, yes forgot about this. Play music doesn't allow you to save your music for offline listening on your laptop (windows/osx). Which sucka, but wasn't a problem for me, because I always listen on my phone/tablet,

The smartphone app, however, doesn't work exactly like the PC service. Users can access their playlists and music albums, but they have to scroll through their lists randomly using a "Shuffle Play" button. Users can't pick the exact song they want to play right away, and will have to shuffle through their playlists.

I pay for Spotify specifically for the mobile app (the ads didn't bother me) and I do not want these changes. I can't tell from the article, but will this pricing change have any effect on the way I currently use the app? I want direct access to songs on my phone, not a Pandora-like system...otherwise I would just pay less and switch back to Pandora...

Spotify employee here - it's only for free tier. Your service doesn't change.

Hey I just switched over from rDio to spotify. The reasons are that spotify lets you sync different songs/playlists to different devices and rDio does not. Spotify has a better library than rDio.

However, why can I not browse/sync my 'Collection' on spotify's ios apps? Is this feature on the cards ? (I guess having a 'Collection' just on the desktop app makes little sense...) Would love it if you could answer!! Thanks for a great service!

Hey ashray - pretty much what publicfig said. If you'd like, sign up for the beta testing of "Collection" across multiple platforms: http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Announcements/Collec...

And here's a link to follow for any information on the beta testing program:

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Announcements/Beta-t...

    Thank you for your interest. We're no longer accepting applications.

Spotify will offer a Collection service in the future. It was announced about a year ago, and beta applications just closed for it. I'm hoping we're going to see it sooner rather than later because it's a must-have feature for me.

I'm pretty sure these shuffle restrictions apply to users of the free service only.

Your functionality is unchanged. Free users who previously had no or limited mobile functionality have more functionality.

Except that what I think of as "Spotify" is the ability to pick a tune from their enormous library and play it with some ads thrown in.

What is actually free, today is the ability to play random songs. Basically no different to other streaming services. Massively caveated mobile experience which is not immediately obvious in the announcement.

I installed the Android mobile app. It took me about 10 minutes to work this out at which point I uninstalled it again.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

On mobile, you can listen to artists, albums and playlists in shuffle mode. Or choose a ready-made playlist to suit your mood.

Even though I have a Spotify premium subscription, this is what I do 99% of the time. Thanks, I will be cancelling my premium subscription today.

You're not annoyed by the ads?

Not much, because I primarily use Spotify in car. I am sure the ads would be annoying if I am listening with earphones.

Nah, just like listening to the radio.

Surely there's one significantly bigger catch - only paying members can save playlists offline.

This seems like a surprisingly dumb move. Making a virtual Ipod Shuffle will only serve to annoy users. Which on the other hand is their business model, but I think users will rather uninstall than upgrade to premium because of this.

Agreed - I say this as a premium subscriber and have vast experience of the awfulness that is their paid for app, be it on android or ios.

Really? I'm quite happy with it.. I've been a subscriber for years, definitely worth the $10 if you listen to a lot of music.

For me it's more like $14, but everything is more expensive in Scandinavia :(

I switched from Spotify to Rdio specifically because of the crappiness of the iOS Spotify app. This was in the past couple of months, too. I wrote about it, if you want more details: http://www.3till7.net/2013/10/07/why-i-switched-from-spotify...

The vast awfulness of their app? Are you using the current version? I think it's pretty good! What don't you like about it?

For one you can't sort playlists. At all. So I have a shared playlist with a few friends, and since its being going for a while, if I want to listen to the new stuff on it I have to spend a good minute scrolling down - not optimal.

Adding stuff to playlists is annoying, could do with a bit of help. The search on the ipad app is a mess; I appreciate the thinking behind being able to follow your search history and go back a bit, but if I hit the search button I want to search for a song, not search through my history!

Generally just little niggles, I can't complain about the overall service.

Why would you uninstall so you can listen to your music in order vs. unsubscribe?

I upgraded long ago to get rid of the annoying ads. I don't know if the mobile service has just the shuffle portion, or shuffle plus ads, but that would make me upgrade even quicker if that is the case.

I used Spotify all the time at work, and premium is a big part so I can listen to it via my iPhone in my car also.

The problem with this "shuffle" order is it tends to be the same songs over and over. The songs they get a bigger cut for are played more frequently. Same happens on Rdio stations and Pandora most likely.

There is a mismatch between the 2 Spotify experiences (desktop free vs. mobile free) which is not obvious until you try it out. That's the annoying bit.

My guess is that will get better pretty soon. There was a massive mismatch between Spotify desktop and mobile paid for the longest time, but with every new update it gets better.

I like Spotify, but the radio feature leaves something to be desired. My buddy recently released an an android app called "SSradio for Spotify" (http://www.ssradio.me). It uses libspotify to re-create SiriusXM like channels over Spotify.

Libspotify was restricted to premium subscribers only (probably still is). But his app was the reason I'm sticking with Spotify. Its like having a sub to Spotify and Sirius.

Best part, libspotify restricts people from displaying ads or charging money..so its free :)

Spotify is currently not available in your country.

(canada)

boo

Rdio, in my mind, is far superior in a lot of ways anyway. I had a friend paying for a Spotify for me a few years ago, and switched to Rdio because I liked it better (and not because it was available in Canada too).

Unfortunately, Rdio's Canada library is different (and from what I can tell, smaller) than the US one.

True, tho I haven't, myself, been able to reach a point where it bothers me. So far, my biggest annoyance was The Neverending Story soundtrack became unavailable (my daughter loves it).

And I have very broad taste in music.

I've tried rdio for a couple weeks (free trial), and have been very happy with it so far.

No selecting individual tracks? I'll show those jerks at Spotify with my ten thousand single song playlists. Thanks for adding search filtering on mobile too.

I just installed the spotify app on my phone (it's pretty big by the way ~20mb, I wonder why that is) and this latest change doesn't seem to be in effect for me. Is it not rolled out in the UK yet? Personally what I would like to see is the ability for Unlimited users to use the mobile app.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's US-only due to music licensing agreements. (Getting rights in different countries often requires negotiating with different labels...)

The only feature I want is to be able to queue specific songs and then have it resume playing a radio station.

The expectation of spotify, mobile or desktop, is that I can select the songs I want to listen to. This feels like an unexpected behavior to me. That said, I'm sure they have tested the crap out of this to make sure they aren't going to leave a bad taste in users' mouths.

Led Zeppelin exclusive to Spotify? Then I won't listen to Led Zeppelin. I hate this exclusive access shit. It doesn't make me pay for the service that has the rights, it makes me avoid the product altogether. Rdio is doing just fine for me.

Is it the rights holders who specify the weird distinction between "tablets" and "smartphones"? Otherwise, I can't understand that.

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I venture not.

Just read the app description in AppStore. Offline is for premium users only.

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