I have been using Spotify in the US in closed beta as well for over a month, so just wanted to give my two cents on these points. I will respond in order:

1.The ads on the free plan are obtrusive, but it's free. I didn't find them any more obtrusive than Pandora's ads. That said, I love the service and wanted to take it mobile, so I upgraded to premium, so I'm no longer hearing ads.

2.I didn't experience disappearing playlists. I'm sure this happened to you, just pointing out that it's not a super common occurrence b/c I'm on Spotify hours per day with plenty of playlists and haven't seen the issue.

3. Agreed. I miss my Beatles and Pink Floyd. However, the Stones' library is on there.

4. Again, I'm sure you're seeing this issue, but I use both Skype and Spotify on my PC fairly often and haven't had any issues.

5. In fairness, I'm just interested in a streaming music platform - not starting a movement. There are plenty of inefficiencies in the record label industry, but I'm. Just a startup guy, not an artist so it's not my fight ;-)

One issue I will add is that Spotify stopped streaming on my Droid about two weeks into my premium subscription. However, customer service couldn't have been more responsive and helped me fix the issue pronto.

The "disappearing playlist" the parent refers to is a licensing issue, not a technical one, as far as I could tell. When I was in the UK (now in the US), whole artists catalogs would go missing all at once. I eventually stopped paying for the service because of this (it wiped out about 10% of the content from my playlists).

Correct, this was probably the biggest "disappearing playlist" event: http://www.spotify.com/us/blog/archives/2009/01/28/some-impo...

Agreed. As I recall small labels started removing themselves as they weren't making any money from it.

Hmm. I wonder if they were making money from it indirectly, though. I use Spotify mainly as a try-before-you-buy service, and I wouldn't be suprised if others did too.

From their POV it's only marginally more profitable than piracy. Thus I expect the attitudes to be similar (and varying between artists).

True. I have on a number of occasions tried on Spotify and bought on iTunes.

This is great insight: something I haven't experienced and therefore didn't address in my original response to the parent. Thanks.

Sorry, I wasn't clear that that I have a UK account so the disappearances happened over a long period over a year ago.

My bad about The Stones. Maybe they were there that xmas.

I suspect that the issue the small independents have with Spotify is exactly linked to Artists' fees. Selling small amounts of CDs is actually worthwhile for a small artist - being on Spotify isn't.

Queen is also there.

2. Probably a month may not be enough to experience the disappearing playlists (actually, that should be called disappearing tracks, as playlists are still there, just tracks are greyed out and you cannot play them anymore). I've got whole disks greyed out from my playlists and created a ticket on getsatisfaction about a year ago. Their answer was that this is not their fault, but the industry's… copyright, etc.

I don't blame them, we know what the industry is like.

3. Beatles not so much for me (I've got their discography on cassette, cd, mp3… so I sync it with spotify), but Metallica… sad but true.

4. Never had a problem with Spotify + Skype, but I would suspect it's Spotify's fault. Why? Because on OSX I use BetterTouchTool and I get this message everytime I resume from sleep: http://cl.ly/1Z1u2n0R3H3o0w27243d ← I believe it could be related.

As I think you have realised some of your issues (ads and artist payments) could be solved by paying for premium. Premium customers also get access to some music that isn't available for free (and early access to lots of new albums).

I think the problem for you though is the music you listen to. I have never seen music start to disappear (and I listen to a wide variety of music). It's also not reasonable to expect artists such as the Beatles to be on Spotify. They've only arrived on iTunes after years of Apple trying to get them. There is no way they will ever let you stream their music for free on Spotify.

EDIT: And as jsherry said the Stones are on Spotify. I have a lot of their stuff in playlists and listen to them regularly.

I think the best way to use Spotify is in addition to iTunes. I use Spotify premium to listen to music that I would never buy. And then I buy music from iTunes that I regularly listen to or isn't available on Spotify (like the Beatles). For the price of one album a month I don't think that is a bad way to use the service and probably how the record labels hope it would be used.

I never noticed the loss of the Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd because I already had the albums and they were pulled into Spotify via Local Files.

In the UK albums and tracks on Spotify often have a "Buy" button (links to 7digital) so you can guarantee access and high quality. But I think they are missing a trick by not showing music that is not streamable but can be bought. This doesn't help the Pink Floyds of this world but this would work for plenty of indie acts.

> I think the best way to use Spotify is in addition to iTunes.

I agree. I previously used Grooveshark for this purpose, but the number of times I found mislabeled or corrupted tracks sparked me to switch to Spotify a while back.

A win for iTunes over Spotify, for me, is AirPlay. I know I could use AirFoil with Spotify and achieve much the same thing, but then I lose the (fabulous) remote control from iPad/iPhone capabilities.

My bad about The Stones. To be clear this is my parents' taste in music rather than my own but lack of their favourite artists was enough for them to dismiss Spotify out-of-hand.

About 5): In Scandinavia, Spotify is the largest single source of revenue for labels. Three times the size of iTunes. If the artists don't get money, they should take it up with their labels.

I had a similar experience; falling-out-of-love gradually. They have a good selection of music, I think, although of course there are things missing. But, its all big-label music and when I was using Spotify all the time, I felt that my music tastes were gradually becoming less interesting. There is very little indy music and while you can look at your friends music/listen to radio/look for similar artists its not really suited for music discovery. It was when I realised that youtube would let you create playlists that I knew it wasnt for me (I don't need mobile and the restrictions on the free spotify service are quite severe now).

Your point number 5 is interesting because it's been backed up with that link. It shows that Spotify is at the bottom of the list but really you're comparing apples and oranges. iTunes sales are a one off amount but Spotify is a revenue stream.

I imagine that I would listen to some of my favourite tracks 1000 times over the next 10 years. That adds up to pretty much the same amount of money going to the Artist. That seems reasonable.

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If you have the paid version you'll never hear the ads. I find it hard to see why anybody would use the ad-ridden version.

I don't know why a company hasn't bought up all the ad spots with a short whispered message every ten slots that says "Ad free Spotify... brought to you by AwesomeCorp".

As I said: I wanted to pay for it but baulked when my playlists started to disappear.

I've thought about bailing out because of this… but they've "promised" that it won't happen again. Still, some things are not available and I'm tired of paying premium for a limited catalog. La Roux suddenly disappeared for no reason even after they promised to behave.

The ads are obtrusive because streaming the better part of the earth's digital music collection to your doorstep at speeds that make iTunes seem like a turtle costs money. That bit may have evaded you.

Refuting your (IMO somewhat unfounded) statement on who in the US are going to love it, I'm a heavy music consumer (both in breadth and depth), and Spotify works especially well for me. In a purchase-song model, I'd be out many, many times as much per month than I am now (which also forms the disclaimer for this reply: I've been a premium subscriber for ages).