Spotify launches in USA, but is it the best music service for mobile needs?

By Matthew Miller July 14, 2011, 8:18am PDT
Summary
Spotify is now available in the USA, but I still find Slacker Radio and the Zune Pass to be better for my listening habits. Are you excited about Spotify?
Topics
Microsoft Zune, Zune Pass, Spotify Spotify, Slacker Slacker, Microsoft Windows, WebOS, Mobile Operating Systems, Apple iOS, Operating Systems, Software, Matthew Miller more +
Matthew Miller

Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. He is one of three hosts on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and runs the Nokia Experts website. Matthew started using mobile devices in 1997 with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 90 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, Mac OS X (iPhone), Google Android, and Windows Mobile operating systems. His current collection includes a Nokia N85, Nokia E71, Nokia 5800, Nokia N810, Apple iPhone, HTC Advantage, T-Mobile G1, Palm Treo Pro, HTC Fuze, MSI Wind, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew co-authored Master Visually Windows Mobile 2003, was a member of the Nokia Nseries Blogger relations program, and is a member of the invite-only Microsoft Mobius mobile device evangelist group. He can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".
Joel Evans
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Joel Evans
With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands, technologies and services into the mobile and wireless space. Joel is currently serving as the Managing Director of Cronk Software, Inc., a company he founded to offer full-service, end-to-end mobile strategy, design and development services.
Joel is the former founder and "Chief Geek" of Geek.com, a website praised by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and others as one of world's best sources of information for technology professionals and enthusiasts.
Joel also serves as a technology expert for a number of well-known publications and regularly advises corporations, analysts, journalists and bloggers on what the future of technology will bring. He brings decades of relationships with leading game publishers, online communities and publishers, along with both hardware and software product management and delivery expertise. Joel can be found online as "JoelGeek" and you can follow him on Twitter @JoelGeek.
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As Zack pointed out Spotify is available starting today in the USA. Invite codes were sent to some of those who signed up early, but anyone can get in on the action with a $4.99 unlimited or $9.99 premium plan. I subscribed to the premium plan to try it out. While I am feeling my way around the service I have a few thoughts about it compared to Slacker Radio Premium and the Zune Pass subscription.
Spotify
Spotify has something like 13 million available tracks for you to listen to with Mac and PC clients designed to help you setup your service. There are mobile clients for iOS, Android, Symbian, webOS, and older Windows Mobile devices. You can actually go to m.spotify.com to see if your phone is compatible with the service.
Spotify for the USA looks to be all about the playlists and that is not how I use my subscription services so in order for me to find it useful I will have to change how I enjoy music right now. I like how I can find a genre in the Zune Pass or radio station in Slacker to then just have music streamed to me randomly. I do see that Spotify connects through Facebook so you can share and subscribe to friends’ playlists and imagine this is the most efficient way to get playlists with various song selections setup with Spotify. If you are someone who already has a ton of playlists then I am sure you will appreciate how Spotify brings those in and gets you running. I personally have a rather small music collection and prefer to listen to streaming collections of genres with services like Pandora, Last.fm, etc.
Slacker
Slacker has a Premium Radio subscription plan for the same $9.99/month that the Spotify Premium subscription is priced at. This subscription plan gives you full control over your music (songs, albums, and artists) while also supporting genre stations. You can create custom playlists too so it is very similar to Spotify. Slacker has a catalog of something like 8 million songs so there is one advantage of Spotify. However, 8 million is plenty for me and I haven’t found much lacking in terms of selection. Slacker can also be enjoyed on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and webOS devices so they even have more mobile clients than Spotify.
Zune Pass
I have written before why I think the Zune Pass subscription is a major value and with over 11 million tracks there is not much of an advantage by Spotify in selection. The Zune Pass is only available on Zune devices and Windows Phone 7 so it is quite limited in the mobile aspect. However, if you have a Windows Phone 7 device then you get the benefit of streaming or offline play, genre, artist, album, song selection, playlists, and 10 songs a month to keep forever too. There is also an excellent Windows Zune client that is enjoyable to use and supports social interaction with other Zune Pass members. One issue with the Zune Pass is that it is a pretty closed system that still has a limited following.
There are other solutions like Last.fm, Rhapsody, Rdio, Pandora, Napster, and more available too so there is a lot to look at for the consumer. I likely will not continue my Spotify Premium account past the first month because I find both Slacker and the Zune Pass to beat Spotify for my listening habits.
What service do you prefer and why?
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