New European streaming music service Spotify, which TechCrunch UK has been tracking since October, is getting increasingly good reviews. Spotify is a downloadable client for Windows and Mac users that lets you search, browse and stream a deep collection of music. Sadly, it is only available in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Spain and France and you need an invitation to join (InviteShare is actively trading them).
The user experience is beyond even the best web based streaming services like LaLa, MySpace Music and Imeem. It acts like a fully stocked iTunes, with everything hyperlinked to easily find related music. Creating playlists is a snap. There is no way to move music outside of the application, or onto music devices. But it is the best way to legally find and stream music for free that I’ve seen
I have no invitation and I live in the U.S., but I’ve been using Spotify all afternoon. There have previously been posts on getting into the service from a banned location once you have an invitation using a proxy server. Today on Digg, though, a commenter left instructions on how to use Spotify without an invitation. I tried it, and it works (for now).
Invite yourself from anywhere:
1) go to http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
2) enter the following URL: https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
3) Create your account, for UK postcode – check http://www.postcodesearch.org.uk/
It’s likely that the proxy server will be banned shortly, but there are countless others in the non-banned countries. The important thing is to visit this URL from that proxy server. And I recommend you do it now, before the hole is plugged.
Worked as advertised. Listening now – this thing is slick. Thanks, Mike.
I have been using Spotify for several months now, since October. Here is my review of the service, http://crenk.co...reaming-player/
Ek’s gang has really done something neat here. Nice that you wrote about it, Michael.
Thank you Mike. This is a great service and finally have access to it. I wonder how long it will last before they ban the proxy server…
With regards to Spotify, this is by far the best user-experience I have seen in quite some time. The user-interface is clean and much better than Pandora or its competitors. I would highly recommend it for people who want to get in now!
Derek said it all. In all of my searching for decent music, this is it! Thanks Mike.
Thank you Mike！
http://groups.im/
It will stop working very soon. Spotify checks your location constantly and not only when you download. It allows you to use it outside your original download country for 14 days. After a few days a bar will appear to notify you and after the two weeks it’ll stop working. The only option is to use a real UK proxy or TOR once after 14 days to give you another period of two weeks.
This is still good for UK users who don’t have an activation key yet.
Ha! For once, it is US-visitors who are banned and not the other way around. Now you know how it feels not being able to access hulu and countless other sites.
Not really, since we still have a billion other sites and services that you can’t use. Has the Kindle even crossed over to your side of the pond yet?
How about them apples?
No problem in that aspect, thanks to free VPN services like Hotspot Shield. As for the Kindle, I find it a bit bulky and ugly, but you could have a point there.
I think I’ll try the Sony eReader first, or the iRex though
I also happen to have US and UK iTunes accounts by the way…
You find the Kindle bulky and ugly? Are you blind? Someone’s green with envy.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Its not the american population you should poke at. its the f*ks that run these “controlled” sites, we should ban together and make a better open source app that does the same. but wait… since its open source it WOULD be a million times better.
Works great! Thanks for the tip!
Thanks Michael. The app looks pretty stunning.
Too bad somebody has stolen my nickname already.
Yeah.. it will stop working in 14 days… But this is a great piece of software.
Great service, fantastic software, huge potential.
Still works in the Great White North k:)
damn, this is huge. easily would pay whatever they want to charge
It just became painfully clear what utter crap itunes is.
Really great service! First music-streaming service that I actually enjoy…
OLD news.
Thanks!
Thanks Mike. Loving it!!!
Is it really going to stop working after 14 days?
Yes, but you can get around it. Go to your profile if you have one(at spotify.com) and set your location to your country. Even if you live in madagascar, it will work. My account expired after 14 days, but when I did the above, it worked again. I have not seen the annoying “14 days left” message since.
I tried going there, but the only option that comes up is the United Kingdom in the drop down list … cant change the country
You should change your postcode after registration.Maybe Then it will work.
I think this is neat, but I’m not as delighted as others here. I’m not affiliated with Grooveshark except as a happy user, but what I really like about *that* service in comparison with Spotify is the following:
- No need to run a separate application. Can access tunes from any web browser.
- Better selection.
and, most importantly,
- More sharing! I LOVE the ability to be able to provide a real, honest-to-goodness web link (not an app URI) that anyone can play anywhere, and that I can embed in my blog to share a favorite tune with others.
* * *
With that said, if Grooveshark is deemed to be not-legal in the U.S. or other jurisdictions, then I’ll view Spotify much more kindly in comparison. The app is straightforward, not unpleasant to look at (though a bit dark for my tastes), and the music sounds pretty good. Additionally, the music is clearly annotated/labeled/organized much better in Spotify than in Grooveshark, and over time that’s quite a plus.
* * *
With all this said, where do services like Grooveshark and Spotify leave companies like Rhapsody and Napster? Not in a very happy place, I’d think. Rhapsody’s app is creaky and slow. From what I recall, Napster’s wasn’t much better. And $10+ a month? I think having a universal jukebox is worth that to me, but if there are better alternatives for free (and that are legal)…
As i am living in Sweden i have been using this for many weeks now and yes, afaik it will stop working after 14 days IF you dont change what country you live in.
Since thats no prob for those here i Sweden who have used this trick, they just change it to home, so to speak, but for you americans…i guess you’re screwed.
I have no clue as to when it will come out of beta, but a guesstimate according to the many updates and improvements we’ve seen: a couple of months.
Nowadays it’s real stable and most of the time just works, but im guessing they want to tweak it a little more so it’s really done when they release it.
God, i hope so anyway.
The only problem is now I need to buy better speakers! An excellent music service
There is a way to solve the 14 days issue. I tried the UK version today and it has a lot less songs than my Swedish acc.. legal issues?
http://fileshar...ce-and-for-all/
There is an easier way, as I stated in my previous comment:
“Yes, but you can get around it. Go edit your profile if you have one(at spotify.com) and set your location to your country. Even if you live in madagascar, it will work. My account expired after 14 days, but when I did the above, it worked again. I have not seen the annoying “14 days left” message since.”
hey rakamor, i can’t seem to change the country though?? i only see UK as an option. is there another way or am i missing something
connection denied from daveproxy. iptables to the rescue…
The funny thing: Spotify isn’t particularly good, but all the rest (iTunes & Co.) is particularly CRAPPY.
Will the music labels ever learn? I doubt it. They’ll sue good stuff into the ground, as usual. Same will happen to spotify if they’re becoming too successful.
They actually already made the deals with the music labels… so all 100% legal !
In the UK, yes…they don’t have agreements with the US labels, (or in any other country) which is why Spotify is limited to the UK.
Hole appears to have been plugged.
Bummed as Brian Zisk has been praising this service for months.
I did it with Hotspotshield. Worked great!!
http://www.hotspotshield.com/
Free and it can also be used to listen to pandora or check out a video on hulu. Probably not the best solution for data intensive stuff but Pandora and the spotify registration worked perfect. After you got an account it doesn’t check anymore so yey!
Tried it for about an hour, pretty generic. Won’t ever replace my collection on my drives.
someone ratted us out… http://getsatis...spotify_spotify
its sad its not working anymore , atleast not here in india.
its says
“The requested resource could not be loaded. libcurl returned the error:
couldn’t connect to host”
If it’s banned, you should say why. If it’s because it’s illegal, you should report why.
This isn’t useful journalism, skirting around the issue like it doesn’t exist.
You are setting people up for liability exposure without advising them. I thought this forum had higher standards.
1) Not banned — just not directly accessible from IP addresses outside of UK, Sweden, etc.
2) This isn’t a news organization, it’s a blog. It’s never been held to the same standard of journalism b/c it’s never been anywhere close to the quality of professional journalism.
3) No liability…b/c nobody has jurisdiction over IP spoofers.
4) This is a blog, not a forum.
Got it before they banned the proxy. Absolutely amazing. They deserve every piece of success they have coming to them.
thats pretty slick…. i like
I wonder how long it will take for someone to make a ripper for this, like they did for Pandora.
Also, is there any place for non Euro/US music? I’m talking about Middle Eastern and Indian music, specifically.
By the way, although Spotify has some Chinese music, it doesn’t have support for rendering of Chinese characters. You can’t really tell apart all of the boxes.
It *does* support rendering chinese characters.
Could have something to do with your OS. I use mac and can see all kanji characters etc.
you can alway get very cheap music here
http://amazonbe...t.blogspot.com/
I used Pr.ivacy.com VPN to access Spotify. They have a UK server, so there’s no 14 day limit for me!
I got a 1GB Pr.ivacy trial at this site: http://tr.im/2wfv
(1GB is enough for Spotify)
So as a US user, how can I keep this working after the 14 day traveling grace period expires?
Use a VPN (eg http://tr.im/2wfv ) to connect ONCE every 14 days, then disconnect to ensure you don’t use up your traffic limit.
Spotify allows you to use it for 14 days outside of your country in your profile.
I’m already a proud Spotify user, but thanks anyway. I’ve used your trick to ask for a bopaboo’s private beta invite…
Umm – don’t know about all that proxy nonsense – which obviously doesn’t work now, but I have no invite.
I was, however, able to join from the UK without an invite by just entering this url:
https://www.spo...en/get-started/
So what’s the point of the invites?
That they probably can’t handle so much traffic. Bandwidth has a cost, and they have to leverage the amount of revenue they make on advertisement vs the hardware and streaming costs. Also, they’ll have to learn along the way to fix scalability issues, unless they’re using a big CDN (big bucks) to which they’ll just give money to be able to handle bigger loads.
I thought Spotify used p2p to distribute their music?
Yup, this worked for me as well (I’m in the UK).
Spotify is absolutely awesome. Apple should gobble them up and rebuild a music/video focussed iTunes around it, and create an iManager app for all the bloatware its created in the current iTunes.
i bet apple would love to see spotify in app store
Doesn’t work for me. I tried various uk proxies but I’m unable to get to any registration page.
Use a VPN (eg http://tr.im/2wfv ) as they’re more private.. unlike a public proxy site.
Bad luck …
The requested resource could not be loaded. libcurl returned the error:
couldn’t connect to host
Não gostei… Muito complicado!!!
O Pândego Endiabrado
http://opandego...o.wordpress.com
http://hidemyass.com web proxy seems to work
But I don’t have an invite. I’m waitlisted on Inviteshare.
This service is great, first heard about it in Oct when I was at FOWA. The guys are based in Sweden….good lads….hopefully we will not be banned in the US
I’ve been using Spotify for a couple of months now both in Luxemburg and Sweden and think it is quite simply the best thing to hit the web since Skype and YouTube.
In a few weeks, they should have their iPhone app ready for public beta (currently available to a select group of testers).
Am I willing to pay 9-10 EUR per month to have my playlists with hours and hours of my favorite music streamed LEGALLY directly to my iPhone…? H*ll YES!
(Nope, I don’t work for them – I’m just a great fan of killer apps)
One of my friends was in the dev team and therefore I was able to get early access to Spotify. If anyone wants a Spotify ‘Free’ account (no monthly charges to use the program) let me know.
Spotify is truly the best thing to happen to online music ever.
Hi Nouhad,
it would be great if you could send me en invite to spottify. My email is “scooba[at]web.de”.
Thanks,
Scooba
..and my mail is mackeli@me.com
Thank you Nouhad!
heres mine spuurty (at) yahoo.com
Thanks Nouhad
Nouhad! I’m very interested if you an invite code to share!
I have one. Do you still want one?
Hi Nouhad,
If you could help me out with a Spotify account, it would be very much appreciated! My email address is “changedman( AT )gmail( DOT )com”.
Thanks alot!
I’m the next in line. =)
I’ll understand if you run out of invites, but my fingers are crossed in anticipation!
Hi Nouhad,
I’d really appreciate it if you’d send me an invitation code. Thank you so much for sharing with everybody here!
maester.novies[at]gmail.com
Hello, I still have invites. Email Please
can you sen me invite? ellonen_anssi@luukku.com
I would LOVE an invite: charles.k.cox@gmail.com
Hopefully I can keep this working past the 14 days here in Thailand because Spotify is where it’s at.
Hi Josh,
I’d love an invite – lewyckyj(at)gmail(dot)com
Thanks!
Hi Josh,
If you still have an invite, would love one.
From Sweden!
if you have any extra invites, i would really appreciate one for me! please send to avocadoscantski (at) hotmail (dot) com!
I’d love an invite if you still have some to give.
Thanks!
sirwiz gmail_com
If you still have some that would be great
Thanks
curley.a (at) gmail (dot) com
If you still have one I’d like one Josh. Sincerest thanks RB
do you still have one invite? please?
Thanks a lot
do you still have one invite? please?
Thanks a lot
sorry,.. my email is
dmujica (at) gmail (dot) com
An invite would be awesome! I am so interested in seeing what spotify is all about my e-mail is bsnyder100@gmail.com.
THANKS!
nouhad,
if there are any spare invitation left. I really don’t know how to thank you if you could send me one. PLease? hehe.
Hi Nouhad,
I’d really appreciate it if you’d send me an invitation code. Thank you so much for sharing with everybody here!
bstolia@gmail.com
Hey could i have one please, i dont have enough money to buy one, both my mom and dad work and dont have enough money to keep buying it monthley, i would greatly appreciate it if you could give me one please. My eamil is roboto1914@gmail.com
Thanks!
Hi Nouhad,
I would def appreciate an invite. bikelikesales-AT-GMAIL-DOT-COM
I’d love an invite if you still have some to give.
sirwiz gmail.com
Helou Nouhad,
I would also be in need on invitation, if you have couple more.
Thanks very much, kimmoko@windowslive.com
As Chris said before me, http://www.hotspotshield.com is the answer. I have been using this for all the location restricted sites and it words like a charm.
@Mike
I checked with Notify and they said a client is available for Linux as well which runs through Wine. You might want to follow up with them.
Nouhad, I would very much appreciate an invite.
Thank you for your kind offer.
My email is “mw(at)gmail(dot)com”
Nouhad, good looking out! If you have any left, I’d love an invite at “outchy(at)gmail(dot)com”. Thanks!