End of free Spotify?

[Saracen]

I have been sucked in by the fact that I can have access to 20 million tracks for the price of one CD album per month. The problem I find is that with so much out there, I struggle to settle on something to listen to! I wonder if I'd be happier in the long run just putting that £120 towards some well-chosen albums.

Exactly.

For an unplanned variety of music, there's always internet radio stations. or even themed terrestrial stations like ClassicFM or Planet Rock. And with the internet stations, there's a vast array of themes, suitable for pretty much any taste or preference. I rarely use these because they mistly serm ad-powered and that drives me nuts. But they're there if I want random new stuff.

But mostly, I revert to stuff I already have, or buying the occasional new album. And it is always albums.

[chris_gg]

Exactly.

For an unplanned variety of music, there's always internet radio stations. or even themed terrestrial stations like ClassicFM or Planet Rock. And with the internet stations, there's a vast array of themes, suitable for pretty much any taste or preference. I rarely use these because they mistly serm ad-powered and that drives me nuts. But they're there if I want random new stuff.

But mostly, I revert to stuff I already have, or buying the occasional new album. And it is always albums.

Yeah, most of the stuff I listen to on Spotify is stuff from years ago that I've heard many times before. There's so much new music these days that I struggle to keep up. Sadly having grown up listening to Now compilation albums, I've never acquired the "skill" of sitting down and listening to a whole album which is something I hope to rectify someday.

One thing I do like about Spotify is the ease of creating playlists. I have an 800-strong playlist that I play continuously in the office. Obviously the same stuff comes up a lot, but there's enough variety so it doesn't seem repetitive, and it's easy to add and remove tracks on the fly. It beats our previous solution of listening to Absolute or Radio 2 as the DJs could be distracting. Another place I once worked at had a collaborative playlist, so everyone in the office could contribute, which had varying levels of success admittedly.

[Rob_B]

I'm not a big enough music fan to subscribe so I'd been using Blinkbox which went into administration a few days ago I moved over to Spotify but the free version has no offline mode so is useless due to signal isues (double )

Seems like I might be stuck for a free+offline service now?