Times are a changing for Spotify

One of the (many) news releases waiting for me when I got back from my holiday last month included the changes to the Spotify Free and Spotify Open services. I wasn't disappointed to start paying for this service but instead by the reaction to the story by some Spotify users...

For those who haven't heard of Spotify, it's a brilliant online music player with a huge range of music. The best bit has been finding new artists and albums that I would otherwise have never heard of.

It has good searches for artist, album, track and year and the Related Artists tab is a good way of finding new artists similar to your favourites.

And until recently it offered a free account that was supported by adverts. There were some limitations such as not being able to use the Spotify smartphone apps but it was a great deal.

Now Spotify has put limitations on the free account: users are only allowed a total listening time of 10 hours per month and each track can only be played back five times.

This still leaves Spotify as an unrivalled way of finding new music and interpretations of tunes but stops it from being a media player for listening to music all day.

However, the cheapest paid-for account is only £5 a month, which seems a small price to pay, certainly compared to the cost of building up a similar collection whether on CD or MP3.

So what disappointed me wasn't having to pay for the service but the comments underneath the announcement. One of the earliest says it all:

"Ah well, it was nice while it lasted. That's me over to Grooveshark/YouTube/piracy. Which is a shame, because Spotify had by far the best features and interface. I'll miss the sharing and the ease of making playlists, I had things nicely organised. Thanks for destroying a community of music lovers. Goodbye."

What utter nonsense.

There is no way that anyone can claim that they have no choice but to resort to piracy.

I'm incredibly grateful to Spotify for the music discoveries that I've made and to be honest I never thought that the free service would last this long. So I gladly paid up for the Unlimited account without any complaint.

And I recommend it if you want access to a huge range of tracks online.

Disclaimer: I admit to unashamedly enjoying Purcell, Ukulele Bach covers, and Disney Tunes in the Style of Great Classical Composers.