Two different music subscription services, both compelling in their own ways.
Several days ago, Loren Baxter shared something that nudged me about trying Spotify. Despite many other friends signing up through various promotions around their launch, I didn’t. I had used Rdio and have been quite happy with the service.
Still, Loren’s tweets compelled me enough to take notice. Loren is a fantastic UX designer and I respect his insights when he makes such a switch, I tend to want to explore why.
And with that, I activated Spotify. I replicated some playlists I created in Rdio, I integrated my Facebook account and was surprised to see a few friends of mine using Spotify, and some people who are using both Rdio and Spotify.
I observed right away that many friends were making playlists that were entire albums. I didn’t understand why they were doing this, but I use playlists much the way one used to make mixtapes.
After several days of playing with Spotify, though, I’m a little less impressed. I thought I synced my iPhone locally, but yesterday nothing was on my phone when I was on the road and needed my tunes.
Other observations follow…
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Playing with @rdio and @spotify. Love the Spotify mobile app, but no reviews; no insight into what my friends listen to.
Love Spotify…but I’m with you. I miss “lists” like Apple iTunes does – I love looking for lists so I have suggestions for music. And just clicking my friends name to see them isn’t good enough. Should have better list discoverability.
That’s why I like Rdio so much. The visibility into others’ playlists (even what they’re listening to) is just greater than Spotify. I also like that the comments and the reviews are kept inside of Rdio, rather than forcing every message into Facebook and out of the application.
Love Spotify…but I’m with you. I miss “lists” like Apple iTunes does – I love looking for lists so I have suggestions for music. And just clicking my friends name to see them isn’t good enough. Should have better list discoverability.
That’s why I like Rdio so much. The visibility into others’ playlists (even what they’re listening to) is just greater than Spotify. I also like that the comments and the reviews are kept inside of Rdio, rather than forcing every message into Facebook and out of the application.
Yeah and I’ve tried these other sites like spotifylists.com and really lame.