Spotify has been released in the US, and I´m really hoping for their success. I´ve been a proponent of Spotify since the very beginning, and cheer them on for pushing real change in the record industry. As the US is coming along I just wanted to share some tips and sites I´ve found that makes the experience better. The client is super for the features it implements, but lacking some features. Luckily they´re pretty open, so it seems like it´s easy for others to extend and build on the platform.

Tips and habits

Buy premium. Seriously. 🙂 Having all the playlists updated across computers and mobile devices is the killer feature for me. Offline is super if you have data constraint on mobile, or for the rare occasions where you don´t have internet. Yeah, they still occur, and is usually the times when you really miss your music since you never carry CDs anymore. 😉
Use the starring feature to collect all your favourite tracks. This is a really feel good list for me that I don´t listen to enough.
Create a list that contains one song from each artist that you usually listen to. This isn´t as much a listening list as much as a list to emulate browsing your CD library. It´s much harder to figure out what you should listen to when everything is at your fingertips. 🙂
Keep a “new stuff” and “heavy rotation” list. I use this to listen to new music before I really decide if it´s something that I´ll include in my regular listening and library. Trash or move to heavy rotation list based on what has been the longest in your new list (sort on added time).
Use last.fm scrobbling. This helps you discover new music, as well as better integration with other sites. You´ll find it under settings.

Useful sites

Spotibot.com – Generate playlists from a given artist or your last.fm profile.
Pitchify.com – Discover newly released music with great reviews.
Songkick.com – Get notifications about concerts from artists you listen to. This is really integrated indirectly though last.fm .
Spotify.wearehunted.com – Nice way to discover new music, havn´t used much yet.

Tools

Airfoil – Best solution I have found for streaming to multiple sources (in sync). Airport Express isn´t too expensive, and AirPlay is bound to be supported in more and more Hi-Fi devices.

Let me know if you got some more tips or sites, I´ll update as I get them. I really love discovering new music, although i get round to doing it only once in a while. 🙂

Oh, and you can find my Spotify profile at anderssv . Let me know if you need an invite, still got some left.

The Hotel Cafe Tour 2008

I don’t post much stuff here that isn’t ultra nerdy, but I just had to write about The Hotel Cafe Tour concert I attended yesterday.

The main attraction was Tom McRae (which is sort of a big artist here in Norway, and one of my favourite artists), but I was so incredibly impressed with all the other artists too. Some of them are apparently quite big in the US, so I think Tom McRae headlining was a local adaptation.

I’ll probably not buy the all of their CDs (which one guy did, and McRae dedicated the entire concert to him), but they all were wonderful and the atmosphere was awesome. I really love it when a concert feels intimate and the artists take the time to talk a little and tell stories. Alright, I know I’m there to listen to the music, but it changes the whole mood of the crowd when the artist communicates a bit.

The Oslo gig featured Cary Brothers, Catherine Feeny, Brian Wright, Jim Bianco and Greg Laswell. I especially liked Brian Writght and Greg Laswell (just referred to as ‘the gimp’ during the show 😉 ) Your local gig might differ, but go see them anyway. It’s extremely good value for money to see so many great musicians playing and having fun for three plus hours.

UPDATE: Check out the links below for some live footage. The Oslo show was of course much better, but you get the idea. 😉