Author Archives: OZ

For the ones that think $9.99 a month is too much for Spotify

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This is an extract of one of the replies I wrote on a Techcrunch post.

I do not think $9.99 a month is ridiculous for unlimited streaming and caching of content @ 320 kbps OGG Vorbis compression. It is a heck of a deal for the quality offered and the quantity of music, including some rarities and remixes that are sold at over $1.29 per track on Amazon.

I undestand some people like to own and Spotify will not satisfy that requirement. However, it allows you to listen to all types of music, including new content that is published almost on a daily basis in high quality (that last is very important for me), and then you can decide if purchasing it for life is a good option (Amazon, GMusic, iTunes, whatever).

This is my take about purchasing music. First. Very limited content is available in loss-less format. If I am going to pay, might as well be for the best quality available. Second. You cannot resell digital content legally. You take the music with you until your next life.

I have playlists totaling over 5,000 songs in Spotify. I listen to them randomly anytime, anywhere. And continuously add new content. I would be out of my mind if I were to spend $5K in music. $9.99 a month sounds good enough. Good for 41 years worth of music service, and that is if I do not add more songs to Spotify. Unbeatable.

Convenience wins. iCloud you might say? Wrong. You can’t stream with iCloud. You need to have a local copy of the track on the device you will play back.

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Having Spotify playing through two devices simultaneously with one premium account [mobile]

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I was a little disappointed at first when I learned that I could not have more than 1 mobile device playing songs via Spotify, just the way I can do with Netflix. There are instances where my son wants to listen at home while I want to do the same at work. He is too young to have his own account and it is not worth paying another $10/month for just having him play whenever he wants to, in my opinion.

Luckily, there is a way to work it around. Offline playlists. But you need to follow additional steps:

  1. Enable the playlists of your choice for offline sync. Wait until they are all synched up (I recommend it as an overnight task).
  2. Once all synced up, fire up Spotify.
  3. Go to preferences, select “Offline mode”
  4. Play your favorite music.
  5. The other device can now stream from the cloud without disrupting your session.

I have not tried it with 3 or 4 devices, but the process should be similar. Spotify Premium supports up to 3 devices in offline mode (and the PC or laptop being the fourth in “Online” mode).

 

How to Recover a Spotify Playlist

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I love Spotify. in fact I use it on a daily basis. My wife and son use it every now an then, mostly through an Android Smartphone.

Lately, I’ve been hit with a flaw that Spotify needs to address: deleted playlists. Granted, they happened maybe because my son inadvertently deleted them. The fact is, once you delete a playlist, all songs are gone.

There is a way to get it back if you use Spotify on more than 1 PC or laptop:

  1. Locate the desktop or laptop that is currently offline that has been synchronized with Spotify previously.
  2. If it’s in sleep mode or hibernating force shut/down and restart by deleting restoration data. If you do not perform so, Spotify might fire up right after the device resumes and resync all playlists, removing the deleted one.
  3. After restarting disable all network connectivity. Wireless and/or wired.
  4. Open Spotify. It will do so in offline mode.
  5. Create a brand new playlist.
  6. Locate the playlist that was deleted.
  7. Copy all the contents to the new playlist you just created.
  8. Enable network connectivity.
  9. You will see that the deleted Playlist will disappear.
  10. Rename the newly created playlist with the name the deleted one had.

There are other ways to restore playlists but unfortunately didn’t apply to me as I have around 50 of them. Not easy to spot the file name of the missing playlist.

Lesson learned: I will always keep more than 1 device synchronized to Spotify.

Spotify service is not working – Onkyo TX-NR609 [Fixed]

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Wanted to share a quick post. Since Thursday of this week, Spotify service has been acting up and is not able to stream on Onkyo receivers that support it.

I got a TX-NR609 which was working beautifully. I have been contacting @Spotify and @Onkyo_USA via twitter with no avail yet.

Let’s see how long they take before fixing it.

 

Update 09.21.2011:

Onkyo gave signs of being aware of the situation yesterday on their Facebook Page. Today I got a reply back from Spotify and they informed that they are looking at the issue currently. Spotify referred me to open a support ticket with Onkyo as they are the ones that developed the app.

Support ticket links:

Update 09.22.2011:

Onkyo posted on their Facebook Page. They are working with Spotify to resolve the issue.

 

Update 09.23.2011:

Service seems to be fixed. It is working correctly on my receiver.

Update 09.27.2011:

Got this email confirmation today:

 Hi!

We have completed the investigation: due to a configuration error, ONKYO users were unable to stream music from the Spotify servers.

The problem has been fixed and everything is now back and running!