As a tool for keeping track of and hearing new music, I’ve really appreciated Spotify since its U.S. debut earlier this year. Spotify has been my go-to place to listen to a prospective new album purchase. I’ve described it before as more of a pumped-up iTunes than a direct competitor for Pandora, since there weren’t many custom playlists at the outset, and since listeners had to know what they were looking for to hear it.

Since then, Spotify has added more genre-based playlists. Last week, it added the ability to create artist-or song-driven stations and skip an unlimited number of songs, a function that other services haven’t been able to offer on their free tier. So it was time for a First Listen to three artist-based Spotify channels and one format/decade-based channel. (Disclosure: my other employer, Edison Research, works with Pandora, although I do not.)

Spotify doesn’t have the thumbs up/down functionality of Pandora, or the ability to enter multiple variables (other bands or songs), or the ability to adjust your music discovery level that has been one of the calling cards of Clear Channel/iHeart Radio’s new personalized stations. That said, the ability to skip songs indefinitely until listeners find something they like probably takes the onus off adjusting the mix for many. And being able to offer both personalized stations and a huge library further melts down any distinction between “your music library”/“our programmed radio station.”

If you’ve read previous First Listens, you know that my issue with many of the existing services is the surprising lack of new music discovery. Listeners who use a hit song at most of these services are often likely to get another hit of the sort that you’d hear on major-market, over-the-air radio—the variety is usually in the depth of gold, not in hearing the next great hits. There were stretches on Spotify Radio like that—but when it hooked left, it hooked left pretty sharply.

NICKELBACK RADIO

Spotify started by offering me a radio station based on my “current top artist,” which it deemed to be Nickelback. I’d used Spotify to check out the new Nickelback album a few weeks ago (Sean’s recommended next single: “Don’t Let It Ever End”), but I’d also done the same with several other new albums more recently. So I’m not sure why it didn’t give me Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson or Paulina Rubio Radio.

You won’t find any Nickelback-bashing here. I was listening to the new album in the first place because of its surprise No. 2 debut. That didn’t mean I wanted an entire playlist of minor-chord balladry by less talented imitators. But, since I could skip songs, I can still bring you this hour or so worth of proffered music:

Linkin Park, “What I’ve Done”
3 Doors Down, “When I’m Gone”
Kid Rock, “All Summer Long”
Jay Smith, “Like A Prayer” (rockin’ Madonna cover from an artist whose album also featured “Enter Sandman” and “Against All Odds”)
Daughtry, “It’s Not Over”
Creed, “My Sacrifice”
Nickelback, “This Afternoon”
Nomy, “Cocaine” (Swedish hard rocker from the 2008 album, “Song Or Suicide”)
Evanescence, “Bring Me To Life”
Dead By April, “Losing You”
3 Doors Down, “Here Without You”
Daughtry, “Life Without You”

As far as artist repeats, it’s worth noting that I skipped through a lot of songs, so some of the repeats were technically of artists (and songs) that I had not actually listened to. But you’ll see that become even more of an issue when I switch to the next channel.

SPOTIFY ’70S

Elton John, “Bennie & The Jets”
Paul Simon, “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover”
Gordon Lightfoot, “Sundown”
Smokie, “Living Next Door To Alice” (a long-forgotten mid-charter here; a standard record at European oldies stations, particularly once it became an R-rated call-and-response record in the bars, like Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony” is here)
Maxine Nightingale, “Right Back Where We Started From” (an obviously re-recorded version)
Wire, “Three Girl Rumba”—1977 song by the experimental British band that got most of their U.S. airplay on late ’80s Alternative radio. Didn’t quite fit here, not the least of which is because it sounded so ahead of its time
America, “A Horse With No Name”
Michael Jackson, “Rock With You”
Mott The Hoople, “All The Young Dudes”
Suicide, “Cheree”—Another early synth/punk/experimental band wanders in from nowhere
Steely Dan, “Do It Again”
Billy Ocean, “Red Light Spells Danger” (one of his ’70s R&B-throwback follow-ups to “Love Really Hurts Without You”)
Dire Straits, “Sultans Of Swing”
Rupert Holmes, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”
Maxine Nightingale, “Right Back Where I Started From” (this time the right version)
Mountain, “Mississippi Queen”
Fleetwood Mac, “Songbird”
Lou Reed, “Walk On The Wild Side”
David Bowie, “Oh! You Pretty Things”

MUSIC EXPLOSION RADIO

As with previous First Listens to Pandora, CBS Radio’s Radio.com and iHeart Radio, I also tried two artist-based stations—one obscure, one less so. The first was Music Explosion, the ’60s band whose “Little Bit O’ Soul” was a bridge record between mid-’60s garage rock and late ’60s bubblegum. So far, you may recall, the various services defaulted to either deep garage or pure ’60s pop. Spotify did a pretty good job of finding other songs that went down the center:

Outsiders, “Time Won’t Let Me” (another obvious re-recorded version)
Tommy James & Shondells, “Hanky Panky”
Bobby Fuller Four, “Love’s Made A Fool Of You” (the similar, and even better, follow-up to “I Fought The Law”)
Jan & Dean, “Dead Man’s Curve”
Buckinghams, “Don’t You Care” (another re-recording)
Jarmels, “A Little Bit Of Soap”
? & the Mysterians, “96 Tears”
Knickerbockers, “Lies”
Box Tops, “Soul Deep”
Young Rascals, “A Girl Like You”
Love, “7 And 7 Is”
Outsiders, “Time Won’t Let Me” (again, this time might have been the original)
Fifth Dimension, “Wedding Bell Blues”
Paul Revere & the Raiders, “Hungry”

LADY GAGA RADIO

Finally, I went in search of a more Top 40 experience by entering Lady Gaga—clearly the format’s leading image artist when I first tried this experiment. As with most of the other services, this artist station got me the least quirky mix—another pile of CHR recurrents, albeit with two interesting choices:

Lady Gaga, “Poker Face”
3Oh!3, “Starstrukk”
Shakira, “Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)”
Lena, “Satellite” (Huge German hit from 2010 that should have been a hit here)
Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin’”
Jason Derulo, “What’cha Say”
Katy Perry, “Firework”
Ke$ha, “Take It Off”
Britney Spears, “Womanizer”
Rihanna, “Disturbia”
Shakira, “She Wolf”
Keri Hilson, “Knock You Down”
Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling”
Lady Gaga, “Bad Romance”
Ke$ha, “Your Love Is My Drug”

Perhaps because it’s in what’s being described as a preview mode, the custom stations I heard were almost entirely commercial-free. I got one Spotify promo on the ’70s station, but nothing elsewhere. By contrast, I usually hear at least 2-3 Spotify promos in the course of listening to an individual album.

A lot of your reaction to the above Spotify monitors will likely depend whether you’re reading this through a radio programming filter (in which case Wire among the ’70s hits is pretty goofy) or a music geek filter (in which case it was the coolest thing in that hour). Some of the quirkiness may stem from being a European-based service. On the ’70s and Lady Gaga playlists particularly, it was as if somebody had swept the list for Euro-only hits, but missed a few. (Or hadn’t been able to separate the songs that charted in America from those that endured.)

One other place where you saw the Euro-effect: on the Lady Gaga channel, the artwork that goes with the songs is almost entirely from European compilation albums, many of them radio-related. So Shakira’s “She Wolf” is from “RTL Megastars 2009.” Ke$ha’s “Your Love Is My Drug” is from French Hip-Hop station Skyrock (“Toutes Les Bombes”).

Have you listened to Spotify radio? Leave a comment.