A few days ago Spotify made its USA debut and wow wee wow what a service. If you know me even a tiny little bit you’ll know that I am really hard to impress when it comes to apps and/or web services and Spotify knocks this one out of the park.

The music industry has been hurting for a LONG time thanks to Napster, P2p, and Mp3s and while iTunes put a bandaid on the music labels, the artists themselves (at least indie ones) have still been hurting. While I can’t say I’ve always acquired all of my music via iTunes or some other legitimate online music store, the process of purchasing, downloading, dealing with DRM issues, backing up and syncing music has been broken for a long time- making it easier to pirate music than to actually pay for it.

Last night after two glasses of Gosling’s I signed up for a Spotify premium account. Holy. Shit. All I can say is Spotify will trick you into paying for music again and you’ll feel good about it.

Spotify Key Observations

• SUPER FAST – searching seems almost too fast. WAY faster than the itunes store hands down.
• OTA Syncing – syncing is so seamless  you won’t have to think about it
•  An interface that makes sense both on the desktop version and the mobile version
• Sharing with other Spotify friends is really easy. You can drop a song in someone’s inbox and they have it!
• Spotify seems to have a good majority of the music I like (even the obscure stuff).
• Since everything streams (although you can make things available offline) you save A TON of disk space

How does Spotify stack up against iTunes
I believe Spotify just took a shot across the iTunes store bow. With the feature set iTunes Match introduces it might be too little too late. Although iTunes Match is $25/yr vs Spotify’s $120/year for a premium account, the functionality you get with Spotify is well worth it. From my understanding, iTunes Match will find music you’ve previously downloaded (from anywhere) and will match that song to one in the iTunes Library if it exists. In the other corner Spotify removes the need to even think about illegally downloading a song or album. It’s all right there in Spotify’s library and ready to sync. So from a user experience perspective, Spotify crushes the iTunes and the iPod ecosystem. All I can do is hope Apple is paying close attention to what Spotify is up to and continues to innovate the iTunes Match and iCloud system. People like things that are ‘easy’ to do (like illegally downloading music), so if ease of use is backed up by a large music library, an awesome feature set, and is also significantly easier to use that iTunes … that sounds like a recipe for [something].

It’ll take sometime before Spotify is a household name but mark my words in this permanent blog post that will live on the internet for eternity: Spotify will become a household name.

UPDATE:
After a week of using Spotify I have noticed that the one important feature it is missing is the ability to browse for music.  You can check out “What’s New” but there is no way to browse music by genre. Essentially Spotify needs a solid music discovery layer. Only a matter of time but this is an area where services like Pandora and Last.fm shine a bit more than Spotify.

The Body, The Circuit, The Computer and The Voice: robot cowboy from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo.

Thanks @tjnelsonjr for the heads up on this musical gem. It comes from across the sea by a band called Marina and the Diamonds and its called “I am not a robot”. Though its not actually our theme song, I can dig it.

Miss marina diamond undoubtedly has a great voice and I will definitely be keeping an eye on this ensemble.

Take a listen: I am not a robot – Marina and the Diamonds

This year has been quite the doozy! So much has happened this year, that one must take this time to reminisce on 2008 and think about what you would like to see in 2009.

I for one, did not write any music in 2008. That is unheard of. So for 2009 I am planning on writing a lot more and hopefully recording  and sharing with you whatever it is I conjure up. I also want to take a stab at reviewing music for local bands. I think it could be fun and hopefully it stirs up the local non-existent music scene.

We all know we never stick to resolutions, so this year I am proposing: New Year’s “ReVolutions”. Write down a few things you’d REALLY like to stick to next year on a small piece of paper. Tape it somewhere you’d see it often. Perhaps your mirror or somewhere on your desk. This way, hopefully, you will remind yourself that this year you’ve opted for a Revolution!

What are your New Year’s ReVolutions?

Daft Punk

Toyota!

Random (but pretty cool)

Wow our economy is tanking! Yes, this is not good. However, it is a VERY good opportunity for people to start investing in companies since shares are selling for dirt cheap. Take for example SIRI XM, as of this post it is selling for .49 a share. Wow! It’s only a matter of time before some form of satellite/digital radio will replace FM/AM radio broadcasts. Similarly to what we are seeing with television broadcasting going to only digital. 

So, take a few hours and research companies you may be interested in. Sign up for an E*Trade account and create a portfolio. Read the headlines and the news. Now is the time to invest in companies!

Am I the only one??

There are always those staple albums or artists that you quickly navigate to when you need a sountrack to something you are doing. If you took my iPod and searched for the most played song on it, it would probably look something like. “Human After All” – Daft Punk: Played 6,938 times. Yeah, I know Daft Punk is awesome but I could’ve listened to that song maybe just 1,000 times and instead listened to 5,938 other songs I never knew existed on my own iPod.

So for the remainder of the month of September (and hopefully longer if I can survive) I will be only listening to my iPod (in my car) on shuffle =0

I think it’ll be really interesting to find out how many random songs I’ve actually never heard that are ALREADY on my ipod …