Spotify. The answer to getting free music 23.01.2010...

One of the most regular discussions we have with customers concerns machines infected through the use of music/video download programs such as Limewire and BitTorrent, and the legal stand point regarding their use.

As you probably already know, the use of these programs is essentially and effectively illegal (see here http://www.bpi.co.uk/digital-music/article/online-faqs.aspx ), and aside from the legal standpoint they effectively dismantle your existing security programs, and will inevitably leave you with an infected machine. The use of them on university campuses, for example, is heavily monitored, and can lead to being excluded from the course.

Along comes Spotify. This program allows you to select from an incredibly large library of songs, and listen to them there and then (it’s called streaming). You can set up playlists, and log onto any PC with Spotify on it to listen. If you want to permanently download songs to transfer to an MP3 player or iPod, then this can be done at a lesser cost than many other services such as iTunes. So, the obvious question is, how does this work? Spotify has two service levels, Free and Premium. The free service is driven by advertising between every few songs, and adverts within the program itself. It’s no different to listening to live commercial radio, except you get to choose all the songs. The premium service means no advertising, higher quality, an offline mode, and can be used on mobile devices as well. The premium service can be used virtually anywhere. What’s more, the music industry in general thoroughly approve of it, seeing it as the way forward against piracy.

Unfortunately, due to such heavy demand, Spotify is restricted in its availability for the free service at the moment. In order to use it, you have to be invited by another premium user. It needs more people to sign up before it can allow unrestricted free streaming music again. The way to get online with it is to sign up for the premium service for at least two months, at £9.99. You may decide that £9.99 per month going forward is an excellent price to pay anyway for keeping the kids off Limewire etc and all the issues that it brings along. Once signed up for a month and then you renew for a second month, you get two invites and two more invites for each subsequent renewal. These can be used to get the family on the free service, and away you go. Legal music for a small payment. You can also try the service for 24 hours on a day pass, at 99p.

Take a look at the Spotify website here- http://www.spotify.com/en/

And watch the BBC video about it here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7913959.stm