How did you spend last weekend? At least a few industry people were busy playing with Spotify, which was introduced in America last week after three years of immense European popularity. On Friday night, the music streaming service (which, among many other features, allows you to see playlists from your Facebook friends) had a pretty heavy crowd of industry users. Five days later, as invites become easier to get, I'm seeing some of my non-industry friends show up as well.

Critics are quick to point out that a lot of Spotify's utility was already available elsewhere—all you can eat music through Rhapsody, playlist sharing of some sort in Last.fm and iTunes' Ping. And that's true—but Spotify was the first time that I'd felt the need to bother with any of those functions. (I got to Spotify before Turntable.fm, despite the enthusiasm of some friends for that service.)

At this moment, Spotify doesn't have last.fm/Radio.com or Pandora's ability to create artist-driven streams. It has relatively few pre-programmed playlists, although one of them is a "Top Tracks" mix that essentially functions as a broad CHR. And to use it in the way that Clive Dickens did to create the U.K.'s Glide FM, you'd have to go further into Spotify's social networking functionality for collaborative playlists than I have yet. The debate about whether streaming services replace radio or CD players is a mostly specious one, but I've been using Spotify more like an uber-iTunes than like radio, if it matters.

One major issue with Spotify, particularly once you decide to link it to Facebook or other social networking, is how much of your personal library you really feel comfortable sharing with people. The one playlist I decided to make public (a collection of uptempo songs called "Pumped Up Stiffs") went live before I intended it to, as evidenced by having "followers" before I was even finished adding songs. The "publish" button wasn't to share the playlist, as I'd thought, but to post its availability to Facebook, as it turned out.

Other people I've talked to since then have expressed similar concerns, or surprise that their playlists were even posted. Any regular reader of this column knows that I don't believe anybody should feel guilt about the music they like. But I'm still not sure that the industry colleague I saw in a meeting this week really wanted to bond with me over us both having "Give It To Me Good" by '80s teen-hair-band Trixter in our iTunes. (I did try to bring it up discreetly and away from the rest of the group.)

It's also interesting what people want to post—other people's playlists ranged from single albums to single artists to some that had clearly been programmed with some thought for other people. I'm not sure why one well-known programmer chose to post a Dave Matthews Band mix when DMB seems easily findable by just a search. But his mix had followers.(And other users have complained about getting, say, scores of unsorted Dave Matthews Band tunes.)

I also noticed a number of record reps posting their label samplers. Unfortunately, Spotify only makes a song on your playlist listenable for others if it can be found in the system—and some songs that probably would have been available if they were correctly labeled were not findable because the album was shown as, say, "Spring 2009, Sampler 2."

For me, the biggest winner so far in Spotify has been the ease of streaming songs and streaming most in-print songs or hearing new albums in their entirety. It's been a while since I was obsessive enough in my record collecting to want to buy every major new CD release just to hear them once. Spotify makes that kind of sampling easier: I've also found one superstar album with at least three more potential singles that are as good or better as the ones that have been released. It would be nice if the novelty and ease of Spotify made some PDs interested in once again listening to whole albums.

Spotify has already sent me in search of one full CD at Best Buy. That said, it's also amazing that there's no direct purchase link—they would have sold me at least a few other songs since Friday.

Had any experiences with Spotify? Leave a comment.

Disclosure: My other employer, Edison Research, works with Pandora, although I do not.

More Ross On Radio

This article is part of the July 21 Ross On Radio. You can link directly to other ROR articles below:

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