Spotify reliability

David_Aston

Hi Everyone
I have to decide if the six month Premium Spotify trial I have generally much enjoyed, is worth paying ten quid a month for. To that end, can I ask how frequently other users have found that a song, or possibly the service itself has failed? I reckon maybe 10% in my experience. Thanks for any info.

esuhl

How does a song fail, but not the service...?

I would say that the system is unusable far less than 10% of the time...

In fact... apart from crashing once or twice when running under WINE, and the appearance of occasional audio artifacts and the generally low sound-quality, I'd say that it's pretty reliable. But I haven't tried using it on anything other than a PC...

johnnyboyrebel

esuhl wrote: »

How does a song fail, but not the service...?

I would say that the system is unusable far less than 10% of the time...

In fact... apart from crashing once or twice when running under WINE, and the appearance of occasional audio artifacts and the generally low sound-quality, I'd say that it's pretty reliable. But I haven't tried using it on anything other than a PC...

This costs now????

I used it years ago when it was free, sure there was the odd advert but it wasn't really noticed.

So is the free version still available with the ads?

spannerzone

I find occasionally (2 days ago for example) some songs would fail halfway through and others were fine, the same song kept failing at the same point. A day later is was fine again.... all rather random. This was on Spotify £5 monthly.

spannerzone

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

This costs now????

I used it years ago when it was free, sure there was the odd advert but it wasn't really noticed.

So is the free version still available with the ads?

They changed it to allowing a certain amount of time for streaming and 5 plays of each song. There's still Spotify Free but with much less free songs.....

http://www.spotify.com/uk/help/faq/unlimited/how-much-music-can-i-play-with-spotify-open/

Quote:
"
How much music can I play with Spotify Free?

When you create your Spotify account, for the first six months, you will have unlimited streaming with Spotify Free. After these first six months some limitations apply."


basically the adverts don't pay enough to cover the cost of the songs I suspect.

esuhl

spannerzone wrote: »

basically the adverts don't pay enough to cover the cost of the songs I suspect.

The time limitation was introduced to increase the conversion rate to premium products. From what I read, they'd originally anticipated a far higher proportion of people would pay for a subscription.

The main reason for the limit to the number of times the same track can be played was pressure from the music licensing industry. They were worried that unlimited free streaming was eroding download sales.

FreddieFirestone

I think esuhl, I have had times when a specific song would not select, but others would. My son reckons the ads are rather intrusive these days. I was perfectly happy with the quality, played via Sonos equipment through my hifi. Perhaps 10% failure is an overstatement, but at a tenner a month I would want the service to be more reliable. I will probably give the free service a go. Thanks for all your responses.

FreddieFirestone

Sorry, I should also have mentioned that for some reason, today, I can't log in under my longstanding Username and password.

spannerzone

You can pay £4.99 for the unlimited Spotify or 9.99 for the higher spec version.

David_Aston

I assume spannerzone that the six month free premium trial would be the highest quality streaming. Perhaps this is the reason I have found the actual quality to be fine. I am waiting to see what Virgin offer as my trial expires on the 17th of this month.

Dussed

I've been using it for months on my pc and ipod, I've got the premium version. If you can't find a song on there, then you can always get it somewhere else and import it into spotify. Works syncing it from PC to iPod as well.