Music streaming service Spotify is considered to be the application that kicked off the music streaming business. It’s still the market leader with over 24 million users and is available on many platforms and devices, offering both free and premium service levels. They’ve just announced that after a two month beta, the service is available in country fifty eight: Canada. To celebrate this, Spotify have produced a playlist, which also serves to highlight one of the app’s features.
I’ll refresh my readers about the Spotify proposition. To start to use Spotify, you need to create an account, which is free. This gives you access to free music and radio almost anywhere you might want it through applications for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and a web application. The free service is supported by adverts and supports playback at either 96 kbps or 160 kbps bitrate quality. Spotify support the 96 kbps bitrate for mobile users wanting to reduce their data use. Or you can pay a regular, commitment-free subscription to give you ad-free playback. In Canada, this is just $10 Canadian dollars a month; this gives you the ability to play music at the higher quality 320 kbps bitrate. As Spotify are the largest streaming service on the planet, this has helped them sign up artists and labels that some of the smaller services have been unable to get onboard (or took longer to sign in); the service offers subscribers over twenty million of tracks and some of these are exclusives.
Spotify has a couple of special functions, too. The music recommendation engine is sophisticated and you’re able to save artists as well as create playlists, which it uses to help find you other music you may be interested in. You can also check out what your friends or favourite celebrities listen to, as well. Spotify have also released Spotify Connect, a way to control Spotify streaming in and around your home without needing to use a Bluetooth connection or a 3.5mm audio cable. You’ll need either a speaker with Spotify Connect built in or connected to a mobile device running the application, but it does mean you can put an old device to a good use if you connect it to some speakers: you’re then able to control the music through another device or computer around your home.