Apologies if this has been mentioned on here before but...

Although not free as such, when mflow launches it looks pretty cool (apparently iTunes meets Twitter). You can try before you buy and earn money by recommending tracks to someone who subsequently buys that track... it's accepting membership on an invite only basis at the moment, but you can request membership through the site http://www.mflow.com or there are various membership invite codes knocking about if you search.

Read about it here http://thenextweb.com/uk/2010/02/02/mfl ... ays-users/

PS: If anyone is interested I have a couple of invites - just PM me your e-mail address.

Thanks for the options. I've used Last.fm before but preferred a similar online alternative that I can't for the life of me remember now.

The other two look very slick, I'm testing them out now.

Remembered it! www.jango.com

I've been using Grooveshark for a full day now and in terms of ads it's great b/c all it seems to have is a bar on the right which doesn't matter as it's always in the background. It does seem to be a bit difficult to use for recommendations or genre selection but that might just be a case of getting used to it. we7 only seemed to have very short ads but I haven't used that as extensively.

Going back to Jango has been great so far though. I had previously set loads of favourite artists through the rating system so I was able to get straight back into it.

Just added this lot to my Jango station:
Placebo-The Breeders-Karen O and The Kids-Editors-Yeah Yeah Yeahs-
Paul Weller-Thom Yorke-R.E.M-Black Grape-Radiohead-The White Stripes-
The Jam-Pixies-Happy Mondays-The Stone Roses-Siouxsie and The Banshees-Electronic-The Cure-Joy Division-Morrissey-New Order-Echo & The Bunnymen-The Wedding Present-The Prodigy-Portishead

What's your username on there bloggie?

Liam Mannion.

Friend request sent.

Is it me or is the site really slow nowadays? It seems to take ages to change views (friends/profile/music) and times out a lot.

It Seems reasonably fast on Opera.

Any other Spotify users feeling just a bit guilty?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/musi ... plays.html

Meanwhile if I hear that British Gas advert one more time I'm going to scream

Try the Wild Swans, along with the widely known Teardrop Explodes/Julian Cope, Icicle Works, This Mortal Coil, Tim Buckley; and where are The Rolling Stones and Tom Waits?

Probably This Mortal Coil and The Rolling Stones of that lot.

Wild Swans, trust me

I'll give them a try.

How much to download a tune - 69p, say? Maybe a fiver an album ?

With this in mind I've just rejoined my local record library. 55p per album. Got the White Album digitally remastered, works out about 2p a song

You're breaking the law if you're copying them, though, aren't you? Might as well just download them illegally...

Well, ahem, it's just like borrowing off a friend, sort of and I am paying for it (plus you don't have to give your credit card details to a dodgy Russian site )

....and the artists do get something for borrowing the CDs (assume they do anyway - authors do)

I'm getting an updated End user Agreement when I try to open Spotify today, but I can't scroll through it all to read it - is this suspicious? Anyone else got this?

Funnily enough I logged in for the first time in months just this morning. I think the new terms are to do with the functionality they've added for playing your own songs but I could be wrong.

TBH, I didn't even try to scroll down, I just accepted them. ops

Edit: according to their website these are the new terms:

http://www.spotify.com/int/legal/end-user-agreement/

Yes, I got it too and just logged out. Not sure what it all means.

I've Googled it and no-one seems to be getting worked up about it out there on t'Interweb, so I'm guessing it's just standard upgrade stuff. I've agreed.

Cheers - I'll do the same then.

I got it too, and agreed without problems. As Doc says, there's new functionality. I had to log out and back in again before it worked though. One thing it has is, if you click on the appropriate link it adds any other music you've got on your PC to your Spotify playlists. I've just discovered loads of stuff I'd forgotten I had!

Spotify now £4.99 a month ads-free, computer only. That's it, I'm in

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/05/spotify_please_pay.html

Finally got this in the Netherlands and i signed up to the free version.
Nice idea but cannot ever work. The entire music industry needs to change it's business model and find new revenue streams because no-one will pay for music in a couple of years time.

isn't this an attempt to change its businss model and find new revenue streams?

The problem is that people are not going to pay for music any more. If you can get a product for free why pay? I'm not saying if it's right or wrong. It's just a fact
By new revenue streams i mean outside the normal model of selling the music. At 4.99 or 9.99 a month it is too much. A one off payment for lifetime access would work better i feel but it will have to be cheap.
Maybe the way forward for the industry is too sell the music videos on DVD but simply give away the basic music.

This is one of the arguments in 'favour' of file sharing. The music itself is simply an advert for the artist and the bulk of money could/will be made from selling to radio stations and TV, merchandise and concert tours. Sure, it'll involve a few changes and companies like EMI will continue to struggle until they amend their models but stubbornly refusing to evolve and trying to sue downloaders or petition ISPs to ban them is not a long term solution. It's like staying indoors to avoid the cold virus - it'll work for a while but once you finally get it, it'll be much worse.

I don't agree, I think most people want to pay if they feel the service is reliable, value for money, and probably most importantly, gives them access to some sort of community. I don't think the majority of people (well, at least 50%) want to download illegally, they want to support the artists. Also, from my limited experience, illegal downloading is a messy business, downloads don't always complete, they can be slow, the files you get have inconsistent naming conventions etc. Some sort of Spotify-like service, subscription-based rather than pay-per-download, is probably the way it will go, but I think they're still fumbling around for a business model. I don't think your suggestion of selling DVDs has legs because video is going the same way as music, it's all out there illegally if you don't want to pay for it.

But this can easily be acheived through alternative means. Either by the ways I described above or by the artists releasing their music in an alternative format.Conversely in my also limited (nod, nod, wink, wink) experience I've always found the process very simple and quick and that's with it being underground. That's inconsequential though as we're not talking about it being illegal so it would be no more difficult than it is now.