Matthew Wales

Hi everyone, this is my first post on this new technology category. I though it would do a review of the new Spotify media player system against the most popular media player to date, the great Itunes. Now i know the gadget show recently did a quite amusing review of these two systems, but i thought that i would present my view of them. Just for a different perspective i suppose.

The Media Player of the future?

Still The Big Daddy of music players?

Spotify was launched for public use in October of 2008, however did not provide free accounts too the public straight away, instead it was by invitation only until February 2009. Till then the public would only have access to a paid subscription which cost a tenner a month.

The purpose behind this media system is to stream peer to peer music for free over their system. Which means that you can listen to any song in there database via an internet stream. However the draw back to this is that you need to be connected to the internet for it to work in this way, which admittedly isn’t a problem in the home or in a public access hotspot, but if you are in a location without internet access you will be unable to get music from spotify, unless you have ofcourse bought the tracks you want to listen to from the many music vendors that spotify is associated with, because obviously they cannot allow you to download the tracks on to you computer for free because that would be illegal breach of copywrite law, which of course gave napster a bad reputation in the early days of online audio streaming.

Something i have also noticed is that because you are streaming music over the internet, depending on the quality connection at either end, you may experience interference causing the tracks to pause at random points, which does kind of ruin the experience bit unfortunately.

Spotify’s music database is not as “fully loaded” as Itunes as it has been round far longer and has managed to build up a music base of around 10,0000 songs from all over the world. Spotify’s limited database may mean that it will not be a front runner in the media player battle for some time, but it is definitely catching up, as they update their song list regularly. However there is one thing that Spotify does so much better and that is the ease of finding the tracks you want and playing them, something which takes several minutes on itunes, because though it does not take long to find you favorite tracks, you have to buy them before you can listen to the full track, because it only allows you to listen to a snippet of the the track before purchase, which in all fairness is a bit of a pain for those without an itunes account which can only be set up with a valid credit/debit card, which means that those without that, or simply do not feel comfortable with buying off the internet, cannot utilise Itunes full service, and therefore may draw those in these circumstances to head towards Spotify.

One really irritating thing about Spotify free accounts though are the adverts, every couple of songs there is an interuption by a flash vid created by the creater of Spotify, telling you about advertisments by variouse advertisers, which unfortunatly cannot be turned off unless you are a paying customer, which in my opinion should not be so, but that is i guess how the advertisers get themselves known, and get their money. This is something Itunes definatley trumps because you get no adverts what so ever with their software, unless you go to the itunes store of course but you would expect to find them there, because it is a shop, but not while you are listening to tracks and/or playlists.

One feature that Itunes has that Spotify does not is the ability to play and import music from your CD collection, so that it can be accessed whenever you use your computer, or indeed if you want them on a portable media device such as you Ipod, however the disadvantage to itunes is that you can only use an Ipod as a portable media device because the file format will not work on any other MP3 player, which i found particularly frustrating when i only had a creative MP3 player, before i got my nano last year. But portable media is not something that Spotify currently supports unless you buy the music and use either Itunes or windows media player to put the muic on an Mp3 player. which means that you need more than one media player to perform this function which kind of defeats the point of competing with other software companies a little bit, don’t you think? .

My final comment is that currently spotify does not support all media types such as movies, podcasts and photos which Itunes and windows media player do, infact the only extra feature it supports is internet radio, but it is my understanding that the others do to, which makes spotify just a mediocre media player compared to these other giants of the media player world.

In conclusion my opinion of spotify is that yes it is an awesome system and i will continue to use it, but it is still a long way from being a strong competitor with the likes of Itunes and Windows Media player. However this is ust my opinion, only you can decide what you want, and that choice i leave to you. See you later.

Hi all, sorry it has been so long since my last post, lack of inspiration i suppose. So i though i would bring you up to speed on current events. First of all I have Finally got my all important Dissertation done a dusted and handed in which is a great relief, and now i have just finished my management of change assignment which was the most irritating assignment i have ever had to do, personally i am not so keen on the business side of things being more of a computer person, so i will always try and stick to what i am good at rather than venture too much into the area of business, but i guess this stuff we need to know for the future so i will just have to put up with it for now at least.

After the next couple of weeks when i have finished my course for this year i am going to have to start thinking about what to do in the near future, like over the next year as well as the summer. I have discovered there are many options available for me to do. I can continue in my education, and or get a job, or take a year out. And i think i have unofficially decided to continue with my enduaction next year by doing a masters degree in computer forensics part time, and get i job part time in technical support (hopefully), and as well as that, i have decided to complete Cisco CCNA (Cisco Certifide Network Asscociate) certification and cisco wireless fundimentals certification over the 3 months of summer i have. i have already completed CCNA 1 & 2, i just need to get 3 & 4 out of the way and do the prometric exam. Why am i doing this you may ask? simple, i am passionate about networking and technical support and these certifications look good on a CV in this feild.

My goal for quite some time now has also been to try and find a job that will pay well enough for me to be able to afford to buy and run a car, because after passing my test in december and getting my pass plus in february i haven’t really had any time behind the wheel of a car, and i hate not being able to do it because i love it so much, it gives you so much freedom and it means that you are not constantly relying on others for a lift which unfortuantley i do…often, and i feel like i am taking advantage of those who are giving me lifts because it happens so often. So that is the ultimate goal before my pass plus runs out and i am no longer able to benifit from it.

I think that is me all brought up to speed with current events in general, watch this space for more “riviting” post, and also keep an eye out on my other catagories for some posts coming soon , by for now.