Has Spotify Achieved Non-Geek Traction?

This post has a soundtrack. If you don’t have Spotify, for the love of Duane Allman and Jerry Garcia, go sign up. If you can’t get an invite, and I know or know of you, leave a request in the Comments and I’ll try to round one up for you.

The current Jukebox DeLuxe playlist.

It’s no secret that I really dig Spotify. It has almost completely replaced all of my other music applications and services. Including my huge local music collection on my network server. If I want something Spotify doesn’t have, I add that file to my Spotify library. Not the other way around.

When Spotify was released, I was certain it was going to roll over the social web like a tidal wave. I’m not sure that happened.

My Facebook Friends list is a good mix of three kinds of folks. My high school friends, who are mostly very non-geeky. My tech writer friends, who are extremely geeky. And fellow musicians, who are all ranges of geeky, but very interested in music.

Of my 247 Facebook Friends, exactly 14 have signed up for Spotify and enabled the social sharing features.

Of those 14, four had early access to Spotify. Another one of them is my daughter, who begged for an invitation after hearing me rave about it endlessly. That leaves 9 people who signed up on their own after Spotify officially launched in the U.S. That’s not many. Heck, I’ve sent out 5-6 invitations and only my daughter has signed up.

All of this makes me wonder.

As someone who has tried countless music services, I can tell you unequivocally that Spotify is the best music service I have ever used. I love it, and am happy to pay for a premium account.

But the money is in the non-geek crowd. Because there are a lot more of them. And based on my admittedly non-scientific sample, Spotify doesn’t have the non-geek reach I thought it would.

I hope I’m wrong. Because Spotify rocks.

GoodSongs: Hillside Blues

Here’s a little gem for your holiday listening.

Mick Taylor demonstrates why he is one of the most under-appreciated guitarists on earth.

Yes, I was tripped out on a hillside. I broke down my head and I cried.

A Grateful Dead Gem, Discovered 40 Years Later

Grateful Dead Tomorrow Is Forever 9 26 72 YouTube

I’ve been listening to the Grateful Dead since I was old enough to scrape a few dollars together and find my way to the nearest record store. I named my first child after a Grateful Dead song. I listen to the Grateful Dead channel 75% of the time I’m driving. I have a recurring and wonderful dream that I am in the band, playing on stage sometime during the Europe ’72 era. In other words, I am a committed fan. I thought I’d heard every song they’ve ever recorded.

But, as it turns out, I hadn’t. Because tonight, on the way home from work, something wonderful happened.

It’s a special treat to hear a new Grateful Dead song. Even if it was recorded almost 40 years ago. Is this really a cover of the Porter Wagoner song? Apparently so.

And it’s one of the best songs I’ve heard in a long, long time.

It’s not on Spotify (the Porter Wagoner version is). No luck on Amazon.

A little research indicates that this show was in Jersey City, NJ. It was in the second set, between The Greatest Story Ever Told and Truckin’.

Here’s the entire set, via Archive.Org.

Great Old Music: Fever Tree

When I was a kid, there were these things called newspapers. Basically, someone took some wood pulp, pressed it into into thin sheets, wrote stuff on it, and sold it to you. Crazy I know, but it really happened.

Today at work, I walked by my secretary’s desk, and lo and behold, there was one of those newspapers. Just laying there. Beside some compact discs, paper checks and Burma-Shave signs. A cornucopia of dead technology.

Curious, I picked it up. Before I could reminisce about how it must have been to get day old news in flimsy print format, I noticed another relic of the past. I read that someone has uncovered a previously unreleased live record by Fever Tree, one of the best (of the 3 or 4) bands to come out of Houston, and it was going to be released next week. Immediately, I dropped the newspaper, wiped the ink off my hands and ran to my computer to read about this.

It was true!

Not only that, but it turns out Fever Tree’s keyboard player is the organist for St. Luke’s. That’s the local Methodist Church for rich people. I go to the local Methodist Church for non-rich people, but Cassidy has attended drama camp and worked as a vacation bible school counselor at St. Luke’s. So she may have met the guy who might have played on one of my favorite songs ever.

ftree

I can’t really explain why I dig that song so much, but I have, from the first time I heard it.

That record is not on Spotify, but here’s one (from 1968) that is. There’s a good Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out cover on there. Ninety-Nine and One Half rocks, as does Where Did You Go. Good stuff.

Hopefully, I’ll get my hands on the new old record. If so, I’ll do a review.

Spotify Launches Artist Radio in the U.S.!

When Spotify launched in the United States., the artist radio feature that is available in Europe was absent. Even without that feature, Spotify is a great service, and well worth the premium subscription price of $10 a month.

Still, people being people, many complained and begged Spotify to enable some sort of radio feature.

Much to my happy surprise, when I fired up Spotify tonight, the Artist Radio feature was there. No announcement, no bells and whistles. It was just there.

This makes an already excellent service even better. Hopefully over time, Spotify will add more ways to fine tune your radio.

Here’s the bottom line. If you like music, even a little bit, there is no rationale basis for not signing up for Spotify as fast as you can. It’s damn near perfect already, and it just gets better and better.

Jukebox, Spotified

Spotify Jukebox

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, music bloggers used to open up their music library, hit random, and list the first 10 or so songs that played. It was stone age music sharing, only without the ability to, you know, actually hear the music.

I did a bunch of those posts. Here’s one I did on October 22, 2005. It was like writing quarter notes on the cave walls of my blog.

It just got a whole lot better.

As anyone who reads my blog, talks to me for more than a minute or wanders into my office knows, I am deeply in love with Spotify. One of the many reasons why, is because Spotify finally gets music right- and legal- in the social arena. It’s like a better, faster, legal Napster.

So…

I went back to that old post, and made a Spotify playlist. Of the 10 songs that randomly played that day, 8 of them are available on Spotify. And remember, I have a huge and very, very diverse song library. If Spotify has – or can soon get – anywhere close to 80% of my song library, that will be pretty impressive.

Here’s that playlist, from 2005. If you have Spotify, the app will open the playlist. (NOTE: when I change the Jukebox playlist, the songs below will change to the current list)

The only songs I couldn’t find on Spotify are What You Want, by The Mertons, and Girl About a Song, by Jonathan Gregg.

I’m going to start making new Jukebox playlists, and sharing them via Spotify. So get ready for good music. Oh, and go sign up for Spotify.

Spotify Wins the Race to My Desktop (and Heart)

Everybody and their dog is talking about Spotify today, which is understandable since it, finally, finally launched in the United States this morning. I’ll keep this (sort of) short.

I have been holding a secret sweepstakes in my head about which much ballyhooed app would find its way to my desktop first. Google+, which is the talk of the internets, and still, amazingly, unavailable to Google Apps users, or Spotify, the Holy Grail of music apps. Spotify won.

I’ve been using Spotify for a few months, and can say unequivocally that it is the best music app I have ever used. By far. Now that it’s officially available and I don’t have to worry about some record-label madness derailing my joy, here’s what I know.

One, Spotify is going to completely change the music game, for the better. I simply cannot believe there is a true music fan that won’t find $5 or $10 a month a screaming bargain for what Spotify offers. Spotify has already replaced Windows Media Player and the bloated train wreck that is iTunes as my default music player.

Two, I have cancelled my Slacker Radio account, and may very well cancel my Pandora account. The 6-skip an hour limitation on Pandora (even the paid accounts) is simply a deal-stopper for me. The only thing that could ensure that I keep Pandora will be if it gets to my car quickly and cheaply. I want to dump Sirius XM (and the annoyance that is Mojo Nixon) much more than I want to dump Pandora, so the dashboard is open for Pandora to secure its place in my paid apps lineup.

Three, unlike 99% of the apps out there, Spotify does social right. The sharing features really add something to the experience. As soon as I add some alt. country, country rock, classic rock and blues loving friends to my Spotify circle, music discovery will be a significant, and fun, part of the experience.

Four, while there are tons and tons of songs in Spotify’s library, there are some holes around the edges. Particularly as it relates to less mainstream and older music. One of the first things I did was to try to add all the alt. country songs I thumbed up via Pandora to a Spotify playlist. I was a little surprised at how many weren’t available. I hope the library grows like I know the user base will.

Five, as amazing as this may sound, I have not added my huge local music library to Spotify. I have 26,000 or so (legal, non-shared) songs on my music server. The thing is, there are probably 15,000 or so of them that I never want to hear again. I’m afraid things would get too cluttered if I tossed my entire library into my Spotify window. Rather, I am going to use local files to fill in some of the gaps, and use Spotify’s library as my main one. This may change, but that’s the current plan.

I’m really stoked about Spotify. Now, if Google will stop screwing over Google Apps users, my desktop (and heart) will be full of joy.

GoodSongs: Sylvie Vartan

I stayed up way too late last night listening to Sylvie Vartan. She exudes a level of coolness that most American pop stars of the era (early to mid-60s) could only hope for.

How popular was Sylvie in the mid-60s? In 1964 at the Paris Olympia, she appeared as the main attraction on the same bill as the Beatles.

Pretty awesome. Pretty. Awesome.

Calling All Mix Masters: Turntable.fm Rocks

Back in college, I was a DJ at one of the local bars. It was a fun gig, and, at least in my selective memory, I had mad skills. Mad skills, I tell ya! I’d love to show my mix skills around the house, but my kids hate my Allman Brothers records about as much as I hated my parents’ lame Vic Damone LPs.

Now, maybe I can find a willing crowd, thanks to Turntable.fm. Turntable.fm lets you create shared listening rooms where you and your friends (or strangers, if you prefer) can take turns queuing up and playing songs. You can search for songs already on the site (I had mixed results doing this, with some songs being incomplete) or you can upload your own. The uploading process is fast and easy and, importantly, MP3 tags are recognized and processed accurately. Once you upload songs, they remain in your playlist until you remove them. There are limitations on how often artists can be played per hour, which indicates that the required licensing is in place.

I created the Rancho Room, dedicated to less known alt. country, southern rock, country rock, classic rock & whatever else sounds good. Some old-timers will recall the original Rancho Room, a chat room I developed, circa 1995, where we had some hilarious times back in the day. Anyone remember those collaborative stories we wrote?

The best way for social network fledglings to understand Turntable.fm is to imagine a shared, streaming radio station, with a rotating playlist created by the people in the room. I have no chance of getting enough friends in the room at the same time to create any kind of a real-time scene. But what I – and hopefully others- can do is upload some good songs, play them for my own ears when I want to hear them, and maybe some other folks will stop by to listen. If I can get a little traction, maybe some of my friends will create their own playlists and, who knows, if we happen to be listening at the same time, our songs will be meshed into a collaborative playlist.

There’s a rating feature for songs, but I haven’t enticed anyone else to create a playlist yet, so I ‘m not sure how it works. Once I get some of you onboard, we’ll try it out.

You can share your DJ status to Facebook or Twitter with a click of a button.

I’ve tried a lot of socially oriented music apps, and some of them are fun. But I haven’t seen any others with as much “fun” potential as Turntable.fm. In a universe of half-baked ideas tossed haphazardly into the social networking space, I think Turntable.fm is really onto something. I like this app. A lot.

At the end of the day, the Turntable.fm experience probably depends on your ability (or lack thereof) to get a core group of users to populate your room. You can probably solve this hurdle by creating a public room. I’m hoping to limit my room to people who enjoy the same sort of music I do, so the Rancho Room is unlisted for now (fear not, you are invited). I know a lot of people who love the same music I do. Can I get them to try the service? That’s a good question. At least there’s no way it will end as badly as my 2005 Flickr experiment did.

One thing I don’t like is that users have to sign up and in before they can visit a room. That seems like an unnecessary hurdle to growth. Sure, people should have to sign up to create a room, and maybe to DJ, but folks should have the ability to visit without signing up. An easy way to handle this would be to allow a limited number of “guest” listeners per room. I also don’t like the degree to which the service is tied to Facebook. If you have a Facebook Friend who uses the service, you’re in. But what if I want to invite a (lower case) friend who isn’t on Facebook? Does that work? I could make this app rock, but these limitations make it harder than it should be.

So. Do you like alt. country, southern rock, country rock and/or classic rock? If so, come on in and take a listen. If you like what I’m trying to do, drop me an email or Facebook message, and I’ll send you a DJ link (I have to have an email address to invite you to DJ, unless we are Facebook Friends).

Here’s my playlist, so far.

As a songwriter, tech blogger and music fan, Turntable.fm lies at the crossroads of my interests. I’m pretty excited about it.

Come on in, and take a listen.

GoodSongs: New Robert Bobby Record

I don’t have many rules, but one of them is that whenever Robert Bobby does a new record, I’ll review it. I can’t overstate how much I like some of his work. Most particularly Genuine Queen of Milwaukee.

10 or so years later, this is still one of my favorite songs. The line “you ought to see her Adam’s apple~~, man~~ dance” [Robert tells me I had that last word wrong] is one of the best ever put to music.

Enough about that. Just one day after Genuine Queen was among the first songs I added to my Turntable.fm listening room (look for a full review of Turntable.fm tomorrow), I got a review copy of Robert’s brand new record, with The Robert Bobby Trio. A Brief History of Time is available now at CD Baby. You can buy a CD or download MP3s immediately. And you should, because this is a really good record.

A Brief History of Time is not as country-ish as my favorite Robert Bobby songs, but it is full of good Americana and acoustic blues music. It has been described as “a perfect blend of singer-songwriter, folk, Americana & blues! Like John Prine only cheaper!” That’s not a bad description. A Brief History of Time, the title track, sounds like good Prine in his prime.

This record was recorded live in the studio, which gives it a more immediate sound, with some of the energy of a live performance. It’s all about the picking and playing. Bill Nork’s dobro and mandolin tracks are uniformly excellent. Robert’s guitar work is stellar and Robert’s wife, who plays a mean bass, demonstrates that Robert is not the only musician in the family.

Wild About My Loving would have fit right into a Townes Van Zandt & Guy Clark set list. Great guitar and mandolin. The Peace Song doesn’t tread any new ground lyrically, but again the guitar work is stellar. Ain’t No Way, a remake from an earlier record, is a fantastically wistful number.

Rocking My Baby Back Home picks up the tempo a little, with an acoustic rockabilly vibe. My favorite song on the record is Hearts Like Atoms Split, probably because it sounds the most like the older Robert Bobby songs I have listened to for years. When Strangers Start to Cry also has the country sound that I like so much.

I was prepared not to like One Meatball, based on the title, but it got me with a Stray Cats vibe, a good story and, I know I sound like a broken iPod, some excellent guitar work.

At the end of the day, I don’t like this record as much as I like some of Robert’s older stuff, such as Genuine Queen, Lucinda Williams (great tribute song to a great artist whose older work I also prefer) and The Best of All Possible Worlds, but that’s sort of like being critical of the Rolling Stones because every record isn’t Exile on Main Street.

Go buy this record. It’s highly recommended.