After years of tech-blog hype, months of negotiations with record labels, and weeks of it's-coming-soon promises, Europe's immensely popular music service Spotify went live in the U.S. on Thursday. For the free version of Spotify, you need an invitation to sign up — people willing to shell out $5 or $10 a month don't have to wait. The first round of invitees has now had a chance to play around with the desktop and mobile versions of the service, which lets you search for artists and albums, compile playlists, and stream almost any widely released song online. Does Spotify live up to the hype?
Spotify deserves all the buzz: Spotify promised to be "the end all, be all solution to our music listening needs in the 21st century," says Adrian Covert at Gizmodo. "And, by the beard of Zeus, they've delivered." At first, the program confused and overwhelmed me, but it got better the more I used it. Now I'm hooked. First, "15 million tracks — more than any other service — are at your disposal" immediately, for free or a pittance. And the "killer feature"? You can integrate your own tunes, too.
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