Talk:Spotify

Who owns the Spotify company?

I read that Spotify is owned by major music labels, can anyone confirm this please? --Norz (talk) 08:34, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Streaming Rate

The statement "the highest streaming rate for any online service" is inaccurate. www.bluebeat.com has offered this rate for at least the last 6 years. PatrickHendry (talk) 18:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Compatible with C?

Somebody's on drugs here. You can never talk about operating systems being compatible with programming languages. Especially when you mention POSIX in the same sentence. Get a clue.

DominicConnor (talk)I agree, a system may support a POSIX interface, but being "compatible" with C is bizarre, you can write C code for your washing machine, some people actually do that, but it seems unlikely that mine will be playing music any time soon. I'll amend that to reflect technical reality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DominicConnor (talk • contribs) 13:41, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I suppose the author intended "operating systems for which an ANSI C compiler exists." I suspect this is misleading, since C99 compilers are few and far between these days. decltype (talk) 13:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Other language versions

There are no links to other language versions of this article - I know Swedish [[1]] and German [[2]] versions exist, not sure about other languages. How would one go about adding links to these other articles? MMad (talk) 14:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Read Help:Interlanguage links. --τις (talk) 21:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

cost of subscription

who ever did the coversion of the currencies has got it compleatly wrong some of them are off by a 30% or so might want to sort tht out —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.23.49.206 (talk) 14:51, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Past tense

Is there any reason that this article is written in past tense? Calibwam (talk) 19:34, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Not available in the US

According to their site, It's not available in the US. Probably should be noted in the article. Bios Element (talk) 08:40, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Why? How does that matter?

Example American thinking the US is the only country that matters in the world.

Wait, it's not? heat_fan1 (talk) 21:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

It lists what countries it is available in, it's not worth mentioning the longer list of where it isn't. Duke toaster (talk)

In Spain it requires an invitation to start an account. Is that worth mentioning? --71.191.173.80 (talk) 17:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Why put linux?

It says it is for mac windows and linux (on wine). Well a lot of windows apps work for linux in wine, I am going to remove it from the little chart thing but keep it in the article. If anyone objects speak out.

Out to catch those vandals (talk) 11:06, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Because Spotify under Wine is officially supported! 86.138.133.4 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 20:51, 8 January 2009 (UTC).

Wrong. https://www.spotify.com/en/download/other/: "We are sorry, but currently we only support Windows and Mac." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.78.167.76 (talk) 11:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

That conflicts with this

http://www.spotify.com/en/help/faq/

"On what platforms can I use Spotify? - Mac OS X 10.4 or later and Windows XP or later. You can also run Spotify in Wine on Linux." 86.16.153.191 (talk) 08:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

As it's not officially supported it should'nt be there... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.112.234.6 (talk) 22:56, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

There are official documents on how to run using Wine in the support section of spotify.com. See link above. It does run fine. What's the problem? Colorred (talk) 02:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

When something is not running on the platform without using 3dparty software its not officially supported, if a computer game is released for windows but you can play it in wine, would you say its supported? Ofcourse not! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.112.234.6 (talk) 09:27, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, if the company making the game says that it works under wine, encourages users to run it under wine and provide docs on how to do it then yes, I'd say it's supported. Nxsty (talk) 15:37, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I never understood the "Windows XP, Vista or 7" thing. Windows 2000 Pro SP4 runs Spotify absolutely fine without patches etc...81.156.12.205 (talk) 07:41, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I know that what I said above isn't related to Linux, but I wasn't sure where else to type. Could someone please reply? --81.156.225.83 (talk) 18:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

This is no longer an issue. A build of Spotify for Linux was officially released last year. http://www.spotify.com/uk/download/previews/

Availability

What countries is this available in? 79.97.217.231 (talk) 18:12, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Most of Europe - and that's in the article. Duke toaster (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The article does not explicitly state that it is only available in Europe, I don't see any harm in making it clearer that it is currently not available in the USA or Canada, so I have done so. Does anyone know what the deal is in Asia or Australasia? Does Spotify work anywhere outside of Europe? It's probably worth mentioning. Teenagelicks (talk) 04:03, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Download songs

You can't download songs in this program. It simply streams them. Please fix the article accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.158.160.75 (talk) 02:43, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

there is a link to itunes, but you cant buy directly from spotify. change it ;). By the way I am a fat lazy person who can't change it for myself. Just like the guy above me! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.182.129.53 (talk) 17:21, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

There's a right click "buy" link on mine but it is blanked out. Where is the iTunes link? Jellypuzzle | ^Talk 11:04, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The iTunes link seems to be greyed-out on some tracks and not on others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.199.179.35 (talk) 18:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Just checked and for me everything I look at currently seems to have the buy link greyed out including ones that worked last time I tried. Perhaps a temporary bug. Citizensmith (talk) 18:21, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

It does most certainly download the songs, its just that you can't save them on your hard drive in ordinary facion on computers streaming and downloading is exactly the same thing in reality213.100.152.146 (talk) 19:34, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

References

I've added a few references to the article but there are still a few things I can't find information for. Most importantly the list of countries the software is available in. Can anyone help out with that? Jellypuzzle | ^Talk 10:22, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Legality

It would be nice to see a section on whether this is legal (I have no idea). -- Amber388

I read an article about Spotify and they have deals with the major labels which provide their content. No users can provide content so they're clearly pulling from a catalog that is distributed through the "proprietary" cloud computing software (aka P2P). As a result of their licensing it's not currently available in the United States and is thus only available in select European countries as their market grows. I'll attempt to find more articles on this in a week if I can but someone else can likely elaborate on it if they have more information than me. --139.78.10.16 (talk) 13:24, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks legit to me, judging by this Guardian article from the UK. 86.132.138.159 (talk) 19:15, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Some artists song have been removed per their requests. So any artists who doesnt want to be streamed can ask. The catalogue is being managed separately for the different countries, so the rights issues are dealt with. The catalogue has been supplied by the copyright-holding music companies. The spotify about box prominently displays the logos of the big 4 - Universal, Sony-BMG, EMI and Warner as well as some others. So how exactly is it illegal? Peer-to-peer media applications are not INHERENTLY illegal, you know. --90.218.44.2 (talk) 21:02, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but they are often illegal and so it's quite natural to want to make sure, and make this explicit in the article. Just be happy Amber didn't burst in and kindly inform us all loudly that is is all very illegal without actually checking anything, as I've seen quite a few people do. --Jonnty (talk) 00:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Recent content removals

http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/01/28/some-important-changes-to-the-spotify-music-catalogue/ Apparently, a significant number of artists didn't want their music streamed and their content was removed from Spotify. This might be worth mentioning in the article, along with a list of affected artists. --217.76.87.120 (talk) 10:33, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I cant seem to find any metallica.... 86.16.153.191 (talk) 08:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Why is the absence of certain artists (Beatles, Metallica, Bob Dylan) in the features section? I don't see how this is a feature of Spotify. Perhaps a feature of the record label's policies but that applies to Last.fm, Deezer, we7 and all the other streaming sites. Afront (talk) 23:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Latest version

Your picture is of Spotify running on horrible Windows. The "latest version" doesn't match that found on Mac OS X. The build number therefore has to be removed. Once again: DO THE RESEARCH BEFORE WRITING. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.227.114.140 (talk) 11:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry but most people don't check every single thing that they think is correct. Also, congrats on getting ripped off by Apple. Also, are you saying that the latest version of Spotify is only on Windows, or only on Mac?

Availability

From the article: "Spotify Premium is available in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and the UK. The free version is only available in Sweden, Finland, the UK, France and Spain, and in some of those countries an invitation is required."

As far as I undestand invitation is required everywhere other than UK (and that was only made invitation-free on 2009-02-10). At least in Finland, an invite is required. Can anyone confirm this for the other countries? Perhaps ask Spotify about it? --ikajaste (talk) 12:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

History section

I just expanded the history section of the article to include the launch of the service. I wrote "the launch meant that paid subscriptions were opened to everyone". I would however appreciate it if someone could confirm this, as my information is only from the Spotify blog post. The blog post says that "premium access to Spotify has now been made fully available" (emphasis mine) - so I'm not sure whether paid subscriptions were in fact available before the launch, and if so, what the launch actually changed.

On a different issue, doesn't the potential security breach of Spotify user data get a disproportionally large section on the history? While it may indeed be worthy of mention, being over 1/4 of the history text and expanding to two paragraphs seems a bit aggressive. Opinions? --Ilari (talk) 13:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It's history now. Er... Afront (talk) 23:46, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The data is incorrect

The data on availability for Spotify Premium is incorrect. Please consult the Spotify site and get this right.

Added Norway to availability of the free version

I added Norway to the list of country where the free version is availible. I'm a norwegian user of the software and I'm using the free version. 81.166.40.211 (talk) 23:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge with Despotify?

No thats like merging: the windows xp and Linux article, cause both of them uses Internet or cause both are operative systems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.100.152.146 (talk) 17:38, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not really anything like merging the Windows XP and Linux articles. Despotify is a reverse-engineered version of Spotify. It uses the Spotify catalogue, the Spotify servers and would be nothing without Spotify. If Spotify shut down its servers today Despotify would not work. It has recently been banned from use on anything but Spotify premium accounts which is a sign the two companies, positive or not, are working together. Its article is also up for deletion/merging here. Jellypuzzle | ^Talk 08:27, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I do feel as though the Despotify section needs some clarification as to what precisely Despotify actually does. You could search for a separate Despotify article, but I feel it is important to give a brief description of the software here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.67.160 (talk) 12:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the Despotify section doesn't mention at any point what it does, just that it exists. Anylayman (talk) 01:43, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I think also at the moment there's much too much on Despotify in proportion to the amount of text about Spotify - Spotify is much more notable and at the moment it could be inferred that Despotify is as important, which it isn't. Thanks a lot, Drum guy (talk) 14:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Why is Despotify missing in this article?

How can "Despotify" redirect to "Spotify" when there currently isn't anything about Despotify in the article? Kernalk (talk) 18:08, 18 August 2009 (UTC) +1.

Despotify had its own section, but not anymore, I don't know why... --Norz (talk) 19:06, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It was removed by Dynablaster on August 6th, citing it as spam. Not sure why. danno 19:29, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

This programme, and others like it, do not meet the criteria for notability. Dynablaster (talk) 20:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Someone had added a new one-sentence section about Despotify. I reverted it to the one removed by User:Dynablaster (plus one new sentence). Here are four Swedish-language reliable sources that mention Despotify and thereby make it notable: [3], [4], [5], [6] (I added one of them to the article). brtkrbzhnv 17:02, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Do the artists gets paid?

I was wondering if the artists available on Spotify gets paid, and if they do, in what matter. Is it based on numbers of listenings to the respective artist's songs or will it be compensated in form of a one time sum? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.202.100.208 (talk) 19:45, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it is royalty based form the adverts. Don't quote me on that though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.21.31 (talk) 09:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

This was among the first questions that came to my head when I heard about Spotify and I still haven't really found out. Does it all depend on the artists and their contracts? Can I ask Spotify to add the music I've created myself? We really should say something about the licenses Spotify has with the record companies or tell explicitly that the contracts are secret if this is the case. At the moment this article seems just like an add for the users. Malitsu (talk) 12:42, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

>

This is exactly the question I had in mind when I searched for the article, but got no answer. It would be interesting to read about copyright fees. 82.181.84.89 (talk) 12:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The artist's labels get paid. It's then up to the label to decide how much to give to the artist. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek was talking on Twitter today. When asked about this he replied: "[artist labels are] paid by sharing our revenues depending on how many times a particular track is played." Afront (talk) 23:50, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

About missing bands and regions

Some bands are only available in Spotify when listening in certain regions. For example Oasis which is not avaiable in UK at all, but is in other countries. This should be mentioned on the page. I believe it's wrong to say Oasis is missing because of just one or a few regions. Colorred (talk) 10:58, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Also should note that this is not really Spotify's fault, it's down to the fact that the record labels license their music multiple times by having different deals in different countries (this worked in the past to increase income on rights, but seems increasingly archaic in the Internet age) Afront (talk) 23:54, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Is this article actually an ad?

Reading the text, this article seems like PR for the company/site/app. Anyone else shares this view? Rabend (talk) 16:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I don't think it quite rises to being G11'able, but it needs an advert tag at the very least. – ukexpat (talk) 16:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Do we need more consensus in order to take this action? Rabend (talk) 09:14, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I would be bold if I was you and stick the tag on. Then editors can have a bash at improving it. 89.243.156.225 (talk) 11:50, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I just read this article and, at the moment, it doesn't seem to read like an ad at all, while actually being comprehensive and well referenced. I will remove the tag in a couple of days unless an issue is raised. LjL —Preceding undated comment added 00:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC).

The article seems perfectly ok to me. It provides much useful information and I don't think it's written as an advert. My vote is to have the tag removed. Perhaps if anyone has any verifiable criticisms of Spotify they could add them to the article. John259 (talk) 11:36, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, costs should not be included in an encyclopedic entry, as well as feature "advantages" (in the Features section). To me, it reads like a "why should i sign up section". Rabend (talk) 12:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

It's been about a month, with lots of changes, and I don't think it's particularly ad-like, so I'm going to "be bold" and remove the ad tag. Somebody else can put it back if they disagree. Daedae (talk) 17:47, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Virus

McAfee (And I think some other virus software) thinks that Spotify is or contains a virus. When I opened it today, it popped up and effectively uninstalled the program. When I tried to re-install, it popped up with the same thing. The virus is W32/IRCBot.gen.z Should this be included? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.216.89.15 (talk) 14:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC) After more research - it's a false positive: http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?lc=2057&id=TS100682 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.216.89.15 (talk) 19:26, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

See official announcement regarding this issue: http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/05/22/spotify-and-mcafee-a-little-mix-up/ Bricklayer (talk) 12:37, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Under-represented or completely missing artists

Hi. My edit was undone, so I'd like to raise a discussion here. I took away this sentence from the features section: "However, some major bands are either very under-represented or are completely missing from the library, including AC/DC, Oasis, The Beatles, Metallica, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd." My argument: I CAN find all those artists in Spotify! The person who undid my edit said that I should first find prove before I can take that statement away. But how can I find prove for it?? Can't you just confirm my view by typing those names into Spotify yourself? Oh and about the existing reference: Yeah, it says that those artists are missing, but maybe Spotify added them after that article was written. I definitely can find those artists in Spotify! --Tilmanb (talk) 06:23, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I must admit, I found in the Spotify FAQ that they write themselves that they don't have those artists. But why oh why can I find those artists if I type whem into the search field of Spotify??? --Tilmanb (talk) 06:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, ok, I think I understand now the situation. The mentioned artists' original songs might not be represented in the Spotify catalog but what I find are some kind of reproductions, no idea what exactly they are... To me, they sound like the real Beatles etc. I make a note of this into the main article. Please let me know (here or somewhere) if you disagree. --Tilmanb (talk) 07:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Those artists are not represented on Spotify, what you are finding is tribute acts, and sound-a-likes. But the fact that such a major range of artists are not on Spotify shoudl be clearly mentioned in the opening paragraph of this article. My impressions seem to be that Sony are not releasing their catalogue, along with Geffen. It's definitely one of the 'Major' distributors that are withheld.--Macca7174_talk 12:02, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

A search on the UK Spotify for label:"sony" gives 56,276 tracks (inc. albums from Beyonce and Kasabian). Similarly, Geffen have over 8,000 tracks (inc. albums from Guns 'n' Roses, Aerosmith). Afront (talk) 23:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Map is outdated

Spotify Premium is no longer available in the Netherlands/ Holland. Don't know about the situation in other countries. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.74.120.30 (talk) 12:34, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know it's never been available in any other than the countries where it is free, not even as Premium product. For sure I can state that for Germany. So the map is definitely misleading. 91.32.108.79 (talk) 08:19, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the premium version was available in Holland (not the free version), only to mysteriously disappear when the Iphone app was launched. The Spotify people never mentioned anything about this in a press release or on their blog of course.. Bad PR I guess. 82.74.120.30 (talk) 14:32, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

It is available, you just need to mask your IP adress. This is the internet, it does not belong in any one country. Also, if you google around in Sweden (or ask a Swedish person as I did) you can find the crack to the premium version without having to pay. Dunno if that should be in the article or not.

The current map is correct. Spotify is available in the Netherlands as of May 2010. Please don't replace the new map with the old map again. Perchrc (talk) 21:39, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Cost of the application

The cost of the application, the free verison or the premium version should be mentioned at the introduction and in the cost section clearly. I couldn't find it at the moment. Georgepowell2008 (talk) 07:56, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Cultural impact

Reading this article as an occasional user/editor I feel it's missing something about the cultural impact of this service and those like it. Spotify is already having major effects in terms of the way we feel we should be able to interact with our media; it's still a bit cutting-edge at the moment, but as its user base grows, several authors I've read have predicted the effect will be revolutionary - we can only speculate on the impact a hypothetical movie version, delivering high-quality media reliably, on demand and funded through advertising and/or subscription, once the technology is there. Recently, for example, Spotify made the news when the British Conservative Party became the first UK political party to advertise on Spotify - there are plenty of sources, most notably The Times (http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6883696.ece). Meanwhile, Douglas Carswell MP has recently made a number of posts about Spotify on his blog, linking it with his beliefs concerning wider trends in politics fuelled by possibilities created by the internet (see most recently http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1079).

I would be bold and have a go at this, but I'm concerned that as the sources I have access to principally relate to the British Conservative Party and I am a member of that party, it would place me in a conflict of interests to begin such a section myself. I will of course happily contribute if someone else will start a section like this, provided I can satisfy myself as to my own impartiality in what I post. Lordrosemount (talk) 19:28, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

GL: I am not interested in the politics, but for me the introduction of Spotify was a truly major change. It was the biggest development since ... well probably the web itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.23.76.81 (talk) 12:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Content Save

Someone deleted my text about the saving of Spotify content. It said that "you could not save Spotify output". But there are hundreds of free programs that simply record all speaker output. Its not warez or a crack, its simply my right to record what ever plays out of my speakers. I think it should stay in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.217.69.77 (talk) 20:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I've worked your changes back into the article. I agree that there was no issue there - regardless of whether you should be allowed to, the fact that people can and do is notable and should be on the page. I'll raise it with User:Ukexpat. I haven't put back the '90% of users are from the US' statistic, as that's just dying for a source. Presumably you must have read it somewhere, so do you have one? --Jonnty (talk) 00:59, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

If a reliable source can be found showing that these activities are notable then I have no objection to a brief statement about them. As it stands now (and as was the case with the changes I reverted) they are unsourced. – ukexpat (talk) 02:05, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I am unsure how this Wiki thing works or who is in charge. But I googled the 90% of users based in the USA. Is "Google" a good enough reference source? Apart from that, it is certainly necessary to state while the Spotify does not include a save button a 5 year old can work out how to record sound coming out of the speakers, like DUH! - And that fact surely does not need to be sourced because its knowledge in the public domain. You just press record on a tape machine next to the pc, or you stick a record jack in the headphone output, or you use any one of 200 programs that record sound from the sound card as it is played to the speakers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.217.69.77 (talk) 14:56, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

First, no one is in charge, we work by consensus. Second, if you are unsure how "this Wiki thing works" maybe you should read up on that before you edit any further. I have left a welcome message on your IP talk page with a number of links for further reading. Third, no, Google is not a reliable source, it is a search engine - see WP:RS for guidance as to what is a reliable source for Wikipedia purposes, and WP:CITE for how to cite those sources. Fourth, when you make bold statements of fact as you have done in the section that you added back (without consensus I might add), you cannot rely on "knowledge in the public domain", you have to support that statement by reference to a source, so that readers can verify the statement. Hope I have helped clarify. – ukexpat (talk) 16:29, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I am at a library (which I use a few times as week), so the Ip changes all the time and is used by different people, so thats not really a great help. How can I source something as obvious that by placing a tape recorder next to the pc you can record Spotify output? It is widely known that there a large number of programs that record spotify output, identify the songs, the pauses between the songs and all those annoying adverts. Result - you can have large numbers of Mp3 files just as in the day of Napster, except this time its legal. Why do you think The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Metalica and AC/DC have refused for their songs to be played on Spotify? Its difficult to source what is public knowledge. You say "bold statements" but you have not defined bold, the meaning of the word bold is public knowledge and does not need to be defined. You can take sourcing too far, and this will defeat the object of Wikipedia and it will crash. Remaining will be a few boffins with a vast knowledge of how to quote, source and post, and the rest of the world will feel alienated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.217.69.77 (talk) 19:09, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Create an account so that you have a user talk page - it's also more anonymous than editing from an IP as your IP address is hidden. As I explained above, please read WP:RS for guidance as to what constitutes a reliable source. I am not trying to be difficult here, but this needs to be sourced. If it's "widely known" presumably a reliable source has covered it? Sourcing is the only way that article content can be verified so in fact it strengthens Wikipedia. Let me make this offer -- find a source or two, list them here and I will add them to the article for you, deal? – ukexpat (talk) 21:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't adding information on how to circumvent the DRM in Spotify be illegal and against Wikipedia rules? 149.254.58.36 (talk) 04:00, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Fastest streaming ever?

"Audio streams are in the Vorbis format at q5 (approx ~160 kbit/s)[14], or optional q9 (approx ~320kbit/s)[15] for premium subscribers, the highest streaming rate for any online service."

Is that true for the UK or for all the countries? It would be nice with a reference. Marcusroos (talk) 22:07, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

198.214.235.51 (talk) 19:29, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Citation for investment by major labels.

Not sure about wikistandards, so here's my contribution. The Wired article below puts the number at 17.3% of shares owned by major labels. Not exactly a "controlling share" necessarily.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/ka-shing-spotify-investors-include-chinese-billionaire/

Rewrite

Per the {{cleanup-rewrite}} tag on the article, I had a go at the introduction:

Spotify is a proprietary peer-to-peer music streaming service and application for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Developed by a Sweedish startup, it is available in Sweden, Spain, Norway, Finland, France and the United Kingdom. The software allows unlimited streaming of selected music from a multitude of major and independent record labels including Sony, BMI, Warner Music Group and Universal. An ad-supported version of the software is free, but for a monthly fee, users can upgrade to a "Premium" account, which offers higher bitrate streams, offline access to music and use of Spotify on mobile devices. Music can be browsed by artist, by album, record label or playlist as well as by direct searches, and a link allows the listener to purchase selected material via partner retailers. Launched in October 2008, Spotify now has over 5 million users.

Is there anything important I've left out? Thanks, Aqx (talk) 18:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Currently the introduction reads regarding platforms:

The system is currently accessible using Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and mobile devices such as the iPhone and those running Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile or Palm's HP webOS.

I would suggest adding mobile platforms and rephrasing the platform names to be consistent so it reads more like:

Spotify is a proprietary peer-to-peer music streaming service and application for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X as well as Android, iOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile and HP webOS. Developed by a Sweedish startup, it is available in Sweden, Spain, Norway, Finland, France and the United Kingdom. The software allows unlimited streaming of selected music from a multitude of major and independent record labels including Sony, BMI, Warner Music Group and Universal. An ad-supported version of the software is free, but for a monthly fee, users can upgrade to a "Premium" account, which offers higher bitrate streams, offline access to music and use of Spotify on mobile devices. Music can be browsed by artist, by album, record label or playlist as well as by direct searches, and a link allows the listener to purchase selected material via partner retailers. Launched in October 2008, Spotify now has over 5 million users. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.92.152.19 (talk) 23:53, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Criticism on bandwidth use

Theres no mention in the article that users are largely unaware of the p2p element and its affect on bandwidth, admittedly this is probably hard to find sources for but spotify is the bane of many network admins. I do have Oxford university banning spotify over bandwidth usage concerns > [7]. 77.97.99.75 (talk) 20:41, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

You can block outbound connections at the firewall and still use Spotify, so you are cutting out the P2P element. You can also restrict ports (only 80 or 443 is necessary for logging in and streaming from Spotify servers). Is this worth a mention in the article?

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.101.150.121 (talk) 06:58, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Photographer advertisement

Under the history section, the photo therein has been captioned with (Photo by x), with a link to their personal Flikr. Since I don't know if this an offense or not, I don't want to make an edit, but rather point it out if anyone else wants to. 75.39.189.101 (talk) 10:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I removed the credit per WP:CREDITS. – ukexpat (talk) 16:52, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

See Also Section Cleaned

Spotify#See Also was a fairly long list mostly consisting of related media distribution services but also a few dead links and unrelated material, which should not be present in a See Also section (see WP:SEEALSO). I have removed all dead links/unrelated material/material that has already been linked from within the article from the list. In addition, I have removed related media distribution services from the list and instead added the NavBox Digital Distribution Platforms. This is a better way of linking users to large amounts of related material.--kikumbob (talk) 11:26, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Despotify - really worth mentioning?

Im not sure Despotify itself, as a single computer program, is worth having on the page in its own right? What are other people's thoughts? (Am not saying it should be removed from the article completely, my preference would probably be to restructure the section, maybe as a general 'piracy concerns' section?) Mike1901 (talk) 22:35, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Language of Despotify Section - Overtly Technical

I've read this article and it is generally written in a way that is easy to understand for anyone, I think. However, the Despotify section looks like it is pasted in from a piece of writing designed to be read by those who are well-versed in computer programming and associated lingo/jargon. I am a professional tech so am not a computer dunce by a long shot, however I do know nothing at all about programming. A lot of this section is therefore incomprehensible to me, and indeed it took a couple of reads to figure out exactly what despotify was. All this information about what compilers and other stuff I've never heard of is surely both too hard to understand for the casual reader (if I don't get all of it (I know what a compiler does but that's about as far as I can go with it) then someone with very little computing knowledge has no chance) and also surely such detailed technical descriptions of despotify are pointless on a spotify article. I can't change it because I don't understand it but someone should look at it.Duster (talk) 18:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)