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Spotify, how do you use it?

I've been running premium Spotify for the last couple of weeks via airfoil into my Apple TV and it's all I've listened to. I haven't put a CD or played a ripped track since.

I think it's a great tool with which to explore new music.

PS. Tony, friend request!
 
I just upgraded to Spotify Unlimited ( no effin' ads!) and applied the dsbridge fiddle on main PC. Definite difference in quality even just through crappy PC speakers. Need an Airport Express next...
 
It does have frustrating holes in it's content though. Dexy's Midnight Runners. First album - OK. 2nd and 3rd - no. But it does have a thing called the Projected Passion Revue (live stuff and sessions) which is brilliant.
 
Not sure if this is still the case but when I joined Prem I still had to go in and manually select high bit rate...

"If you are a premium subscriber you can enable higher quality streaming by going to the preferences menu and clicking “Enable high bitrate”.

If yours is 'greyed out' then you can't have it!
 
Pete the Feet said:
While you lot are having a crisis of conscience here's another method to stream Spotify which I just heard about today. I have tried it and it works, not sure about the reliability but time will tell.
This method depends upon you running Squeezeserver which is free anyway.

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=79706
Click to expand...

I was just about to post this up myself after stumbling across it, but you beat me to it!
For some reason the original method of streaming using DSBridge stopped working for me today and I stumbled across the link you mentioned from the original thread.
It seems to work well so far, plus it has the bonus of controlling the selection from the squeezebox rather than the PC which I prefer.
Also I reckon the sound quality is better for some reason, I seem to have lost the bass bloated sound that had always niggled me, in fact it sounds pretty damn impressive. Certainly worth ago to anyone who hasn't tried it yet on their squeezebox :D
 
Stu_cj said:
I seem to have lost the bass bloated sound that had always niggled me, in fact it sounds pretty damn impressive. Certainly worth ago to anyone who hasn't tried it yet on their squeezebox :D
Click to expand...

I think you have solved a conundrum for me here. Since I acquired a NAP250 in place of a 110 I have enjoyed a significant bass extension marred by the occasional blooming. This was also apparent when I more recently acquired a NAC52/Supercap. Then after the install of this plugin which is such an improvement not only on sound but usability I thought the system sounded a bit thin in parts but one becomes accustomed to a certain sound and the accentuated bass is noticeable in its absence.
I have undergone quite a few system changes of late and it is sometimes difficult to pin down where the changes have come from.
Nice one Stu.
 
can anyone send me a spotify invite code please I'm hacking an O2 Joggler touch screen thingy as a media player for the Kitchen and I think Spotify in there will be ideal. I used up my free month of Napster on the Sonos S5 in London and found it very convenient.
 
many thanks. Let's see what its all about (and if it'll work over a 2Mbit rural line!)
 
I love the way Spotify has no problems with paying users using despotify and open-source apps so people can get the service running on as many platforms as possible. Phones, gadgets and so on...

Rather than a proprietary lock in like Sonos, I'm working on a Kitchen system for streaming audio/video from my NAS and the Internet as well as offering up iPlayer and Internet Radio plus web access for recipes.net and so on and a very tidy setup its shaping up to be based on some Alesis M1 mk2 Studio Monitors for sound and a hacked Openframe Tablet with touch screen (aka the o2 Joggler) I picked for running boxee and so on. But Spotify is a helluva new can-o-worms.

The Joggler is the new AppleTV. Shit out of the box but hacked and running open source its a very capable core2duo touch screen tablet interface with 9" screen for just £50! I reckon I can get one to control the HiFi as well, cheaper than an iPhone and more able to do what I want than an iPad.

I can do it in Java or there's XBMC or running the Windows client native Linux under Wine as well which seems seems do-able...

Fan-bloody tastic. Hacks away!

JogglerSpot.jpg
 
Any heavy Spotify users figured out how much of an impact the app has on their bandwidth usage? I've been doing a little research and also looking at what it's doing behind the scenes. It seems to work on a peer to peer basis like a bit torrent - mine is currently sending packets of data out all over the world, and most of the time it's sending out a damn site more than it's bringing in, i.e. it's leaching my bandwidth. A lot! In fact I've just hit 'pause' and it's still sending stuff out all over the place at the same rate, i.e. best to work on the assumption that if it's open, it's leaching. My curiosity started when I figured out is was storing a lot of data on my HD and making regular access, this annoyed me as I hoped on a 2Gb laptop with only a browser and mail client open it wouldn't need to spin the HD up (and therefore wear it out), but it was clearly doing something there dispute sufficient available RAM. I'm not too keen on this aspect I must admit...

Tony.
 
Why not just throttle Spotify's upload port? OK so if everyone did it they would be ****ed. ipfw is used for brute-force traffic shaping, I think there are apps that simplify/prettify this as well. Throttler (i think) for OS X. Locate the Port Spotify uses and gag it!

Edit here ya go!
 
Tony L said:
My curiosity started when I figured out is was storing a lot of data on my HD and making regular access, this annoyed me as I hoped on a 2Gb laptop with only a browser and mail client open it wouldn't need to spin the HD up (and therefore wear it out), but it was clearly doing something there dispute sufficient available RAM. I'm not too keen on this aspect I must admit...

Tony.
Click to expand...

Tony, the revolutionary way that Spotify works is by streaming the music onto a portion of your HDD then allowing you to listen to it from there with a small delay thus allowing the time between the stream into your laptop and the replay to your speakers to flatten out any streaming problems. This way (in theory) music played via Spotify shouldn't skip and jump and freeze like (for example) Youtube. Without this function the album you were listening to MIGHT skip and jump as the bandwidth is stretched.

But you have identified a major drawback which is that your HDD takes a battering.

You can go into preferences and allocate the amount of disk space ( Spotify default is 10% of avaliable space) you are prepared to allow Spotify to use. (I apologise if you already knew that.)

As to leaching outwards...I have to be honest and say that I have never looked into it but I will as soon as get home (I am away)

Gordon
 
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