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"Swedish-based" makes no sense and most of their work appears to be in London at present so I'm taking it out of the intro.
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|website = http://www.spotify.com/
|website = http://www.spotify.com/
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'''Spotify''' is a Swedish-based proprietary music [[streaming media|streaming]] program, which allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with almost no buffering delay.<ref name="guard">{{cite web |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jan/16/downloading-music-spotify |title=Welcome to nirvana |publisher=[[The Guardian]] |accessdate=2009-01-28 |date=2009-01-16 }}</ref><ref name="dn">{{cite web |url=http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/musik/musiktjansten-spotify-lanseras-1.631484 |title=Musiktjänsten Spotify lanseras |publisher=[[Dagens Nyheter]] |accessdate=2009-04-24 |date=2008-10-07 }}</ref> Music can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists as well as by direct searches. Although it is not possible to save the streamed music for use outside the application, a link is provided to allow the listener to directly purchase the material via partner retailers.<ref name="information1">{{cite web|url=http://www.spotify.com/en/about/press/background-info/ |title=website: background information |publisher=Spotify |date=2008-05-18 |accessdate=2009-02-03}}</ref> The program/service in its free version is only available in parts of western Europe during the ongoing beta programme although the subscription model should be available in almost all countries.
'''Spotify''' is a proprietary music [[streaming media|streaming]] program, which allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with almost no buffering delay.<ref name="guard">{{cite web |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jan/16/downloading-music-spotify |title=Welcome to nirvana |publisher=[[The Guardian]] |accessdate=2009-01-28 |date=2009-01-16 }}</ref><ref name="dn">{{cite web |url=http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/musik/musiktjansten-spotify-lanseras-1.631484 |title=Musiktjänsten Spotify lanseras |publisher=[[Dagens Nyheter]] |accessdate=2009-04-24 |date=2008-10-07 }}</ref> Music can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists as well as by direct searches. Although it is not possible to save the streamed music for use outside the application, a link is provided to allow the listener to directly purchase the material via partner retailers.<ref name="information1">{{cite web|url=http://www.spotify.com/en/about/press/background-info/ |title=website: background information |publisher=Spotify |date=2008-05-18 |accessdate=2009-02-03}}</ref> The program/service in its free version is only available in parts of western Europe during the ongoing beta programme although the subscription model should be available in almost all countries.


== History ==
== History ==

Revision as of 12:48, 10 March 2009

Spotify
Original author(s)Spotify Ltd
Stable release
0.3.11
Preview release
Android8.6.96 / December 30, 2021; 2 years ago (2021-12-30)[1]
iOS8.6.96 / December 31, 2021; 2 years ago (2021-12-31)[1]
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X (Unix possible using Wine)
TypeMusic
LicenseProprietary
Websitehttp://www.spotify.com/

Spotify is a proprietary music streaming program, which allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with almost no buffering delay.[2][3] Music can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists as well as by direct searches. Although it is not possible to save the streamed music for use outside the application, a link is provided to allow the listener to directly purchase the material via partner retailers.[4] The program/service in its free version is only available in parts of western Europe during the ongoing beta programme although the subscription model should be available in almost all countries.

History

Spotify has been developed since 2006 by a team at Spotify AB, Stockholm, Sweden. The company Spotify was founded by Daniel Ek, former CTO of Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of TradeDoubler, in Stockholm, Sweden. The headquarters is located in London, and research and development is located in Stockholm, Sweden.[4] Spotify currently has more than one million users.[5]

Spotify was launched for public access on 7th October 2008. While free accounts still remained available by invitation only in order to manage the growth rate of the service, the launch meant that paid subscriptions were opened to everyone. At the same time, Spotify also announced licencing deals with many major music labels.[6]

The first step towards opening free accounts for public, without invitation, was taken on 10th February 2009, when Spotify opened free registration within the United Kingdom.[7]

On 4th March 2009, Spotify announced that personal data including email addresses and birth dates of members of Spotify prior to 19th December 2008 were "potentially exposed" by hackers exploiting a bug in the system.[8][9] However, the bug was only present whilst Spotify was an invitation-only service, which suggests that the amount of personal data stolen is small in comparison with that which is now stored.

It has also been pointed out that any potential hackers would only be able to obtain salted encrypted passwords. Hackers would still have to have targeted specific accounts and used brute force attacks on these passwords.[10][11]

Technical function

The content of each client's cache is summarized in an index which is sent to the Spotify stream hub upon connecting to the service. This index is then used to inform other clients about additional peers they can connect to for fetching streamed data for individual tracks being played. This is accommodated by each client, upon startup, acting as a server listening for incoming connections from other Spotify users, as well as intuitively connecting to other users to exchange cached data as appropriate. There are currently no official details from the developers about how many connections and how much of a user's upstream bandwidth the Spotify client will use when streaming to other users; the Spotify client offers no way for the user to configure this.

Cost and availability

Spotify is freeware and can be downloaded from the Spotify website in three ways. It is available free to use in many countries (with some notable exceptions) and is funded by advertising played periodically by the Spotify player at intervals in between songs, adverts also occasionally appear in Spotify's graphical interface. Alternatively the user can pay a monthly fee of 9.99 € (roughly $12 USD, £10 GBP, 99 NOK or 99 SEK) and there are then no advertisements in the client window or between songs. Payment of the fee changes the user's status to "Premium user"; this allows the user to listen to previews and news before non-premium users. A user may also purchase a "day pass" for 9 SEK (approximately $1.1 USD, £0.99 GBP, 9 NOK or 0.8 EUR) for 24 hours of ad-free music playback (essentially 24 hours of the premium service).[12]

Spotify Premium is available in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and the UK. The free version is only available in Sweden, Finland, the UK, France and Spain, and in some of those countries an invitation is required.

A user must set up an account in order to use the software. This account can be used on several computers, but can only play music at one computer at a time.

As of February 10, 2009 Spotify is available to anyone in the UK without the need for an invitation.[13] The service is not currently available in the United States or Canada. Spotify's Daniel Ek has expressed a desire to change this but no time frame has been given as of yet.

System requirements

The system requirements are at least Mac OS X 10.4, Windows XP or a newer operating system. It is also possible to run the program in Linux and FreeBSD using Wine, and the company gives advice on how to get the best results with Debian GNU/Linux. [14] The cache size can be limited by the user and the memory location of cache can be chosen. At least 1GB of free space is recommended for the cache.

Features

Users can access tracks via searching for artists, albums, titles and genres. Spotify features a large and constantly growing library of music, giving users access to tracks from all major labels as well as numerous independent labels. However, some bands are missing from the library, including The Beatles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Oasis, Metallica and Pink Floyd.[2]

Users can set up playlists and share them, or edit them together with other users (see collaborative software). For this purpose the playlist link can directly be dragged into an email or an instant messaging window. If the recipient follows the link, the playlist will be downloaded into the Spotify-client of the recipient. Like normal links, the playlist links can be used everywhere. The same principle also works for single tracks, which can be used via drag and drop on applications and websites at will. [15] There is a number of websites for sharing of Spotify playlists and songs, for example Spotyshare.com and Spotylist.com where users can share, rate and download them. [16]

The application features Last.fm integration which allows the current track to be scrobbled without making use of the Last.fm software.

Future directions

An iPhone Spotify application is currently in development[17], which would allow users to access the music catalog and stream music over Wi-Fi. A version for Symbian S60 is also thought to be in development.

"Despotify"

An unofficial, free software, client is also avaliable, written in C, called Despotify[18], and released by anonymous programmers. Despotify is a text-based client that works with any operating system that in turn supports CoreAudio or PulseAudio, which means native support for Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X and Windows[19]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Announcing Alpha & Beta Programs". community.spotify.com. December 4, 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Welcome to nirvana". The Guardian. 2009-01-16. Retrieved 2009-01-28.
  3. ^ "Musiktjänsten Spotify lanseras". Dagens Nyheter. 2008-10-07. Retrieved 2009-04-24.
  4. ^ a b "website: background information". Spotify. 2008-05-18. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  5. ^ Spotify reaches one million users at Spotify blog
  6. ^ We've only just begun! at Spotify blog 2008-10-07
  7. ^ Spotify now available to everyone in the UK at Spotify blog 2009-02-10
  8. ^ Hackers break in to Spotify The Guardian, Wednesday 4 March 2009
  9. ^ Spotify user details compromised in major hack at vnunet
  10. ^ Updated security notice Spotify blog Wednesday 4 March 2009
  11. ^ Spotify security notice Spotify blog Wednesday 4 March 2009
  12. ^ "website: Products overview". Spotify. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  13. ^ "Spotify now available to everyone in the UK". Spotify. 2009-02-10. Retrieved 2009-02-13.
  14. ^ Spotify under Wine, Spotify Ltd
  15. ^ "FAQ: Share music". Spotify. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  16. ^ "Blog: Sharing is good, share your spotify playlists". Spotify. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
  17. ^ http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/02/23/the-day-itunes-died-spotify-is-working-on-a-killer-iphone-app/
  18. ^ The web site of Despotify
  19. ^ Despotify FAQ

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spotify&oldid=276259051"