Expert view: Life-changing experience starts here

 

Every once in a while, an online innovation comes along that's so good you soon wonder how you lived without it. Google is an example (logged on to Alta Vista or Lycos recently?), YouTube another. Spend a little time with Spotify, and you could well be adding it to the list.

Scrabble Word Finder

Your potentially life-changing experience begins with a little form-filling at spotify.com. Register a free account and you're able to download the Spotify player. This iTunes-esque application is where Spotify works its magic. At about 6MB in size, it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to reach your desktop.

When it has, you're clicks away from installing the player and logging in. At the top of Spotify's little grey window is a Search box. Type in any song or album by any big artist from the past 50 years and there's a good chance it'll be there, to listen to in its entirety. Thus, Spotify transforms your computer into the mother of all jukeboxes, with several million tracks available on demand, free of charge and entirely legally.

Some bands and labels have refused to license their material (notably the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Oasis), but the majority appear to have agreed. Want to hear the latest Franz Ferdinand, Bruce Springsteen, Fleet Foxes Lily Allen? Or every album made by New Order, Blur, Eminem or Madonna? A 90-track Doors obscurities boxset? Or all of Coldplay's B-sides? A clutch of rare live albums by Marvin Gaye or Bob Dylan? Without paying a bean? It's all there.

The streaming technology which Spotify's Swedish founders have developed is the cherry on top. If you've played music via MySpace or YouTube, you've had to wait while tracks load or buffer. With Spotify, songs start to play the moment you click on them. This is apparently down to clever caching technology. You won't own the music you play, but then you don't need to; it's there whenever you need it. You'll find yourself using Spotify to play albums you own on CD, but can't be bothered to find on the shelf. You can playlist favourite tracks, then email your Spotify-using friends a link for them to hear your compilation.

The only real catch is that a short audio advert pops up between tracks every 20-25 minutes, but you soon stop noticing them (a friend of mine swears he's never heard one). The ad revenue ensures artists make some money out of your listening and that Spotify can continue to boggle music fans' minds with this amazing service.

• Chris Salmon writes the Click to Download column in Guardian Film & Music

On song

Meet our Role Models working with music and sound.

You’ve read it. Now review it.

Back to top

Back to top