Stupified by Spotify
Anyone using Spotify? What's your experience? http://www.spotify.com/ They recently started providing service in the USA. I signed up (free account) about an hour ago and so far, I'm stupified over how bad their software is! I haven't used an app this bad in a decade! At first I thought it was written in Java, but now I'm thinking maybe it's actually crayon-on-napkin JavaScript? Searching for an artist can take up to two minutes. Yea, two minutes. Network idle. App just sitting there idle waiting for data to come back from their service. Sorting the resulting list can take up to 30 secs. You'd think I'd asked Eudora to sort a mailbox with 32,000 entries in it. Nah. This list just has 24 entries. Resizing a column ... It doesn't keep up with the mouse cursor, then when you let go, it SPODs for many seconds. Every page has a black or dark gray background, and their font sizes are so small they end up being gray instead of white text. Gray text on a gray background - Unreadable. And there seems to be no way to increase the font sizes or kill the backgrounds! Tried the Help section... quite a few pages gave me 404s. Guess I should say something nice about it... The music, once it starts to play, sounds pretty good. No drop outs or anything. And it's only using 8 to 10% of my CPU. Oh, I get it. Spotify is an ad for iTunes! - Dan. -- - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Stupified by Spotify
Anyone using Spotify? What's your experience? I just found out about Spotify from a friend in Sweden. I plan to give it a try, but thanks for the warning. Sean Carroll slcarr...@me.com Power Mac G4 AGP "Sawtooth" 1.6 GHz, 2 GB RAM, SATA 750 GB hard drive, Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 and Tiger 10.4.11, Gigabit Ethernet & M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI cards, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB AGP -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Stupified by Spotify
On 7/19/11 4:22 PM, Dan wrote: Anyone using Spotify? What's your experience? http://www.spotify.com/ They recently started providing service in the USA. I signed up (free account) about an hour ago and so far, I'm stupified over how bad their software is! I haven't used an app this bad in a decade! At first I thought it was written in Java, but now I'm thinking maybe it's actually crayon-on-napkin JavaScript? Searching for an artist can take up to two minutes. Yea, two minutes. Network idle. App just sitting there idle waiting for data to come back from their service. Sorting the resulting list can take up to 30 secs. You'd think I'd asked Eudora to sort a mailbox with 32,000 entries in it. Nah. This list just has 24 entries. Resizing a column ... It doesn't keep up with the mouse cursor, then when you let go, it SPODs for many seconds. Every page has a black or dark gray background, and their font sizes are so small they end up being gray instead of white text. Gray text on a gray background - Unreadable. And there seems to be no way to increase the font sizes or kill the backgrounds! Tried the Help section... quite a few pages gave me 404s. Guess I should say something nice about it... The music, once it starts to play, sounds pretty good. No drop outs or anything. And it's only using 8 to 10% of my CPU. Oh, I get it. Spotify is an ad for iTunes! - Dan. Just heard of it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM9kgg6YVso They seem to like it and hate iTunes. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Stupified by Spotify
On Jul 19, 2011, at 4:22 PM, Dan wrote: > Anyone using Spotify? It seems to have just opened up to everybody; that or I finally got my invite. So I'm using it as of about 5 minutes ago. > What's your experience? It seems okay, although lacking in certain genres (or releases from certain record companies, perhaps). Bigger artists like Gillain Welch are notably absent, but a local, small, independent artist has all of their releases uploaded. > Searching for an artist can take up to two minutes. Yea, two minutes. > Network idle. App just sitting there idle waiting for data to come back from > their service. Hmm... haven't seen this. > Sorting the resulting list can take up to 30 secs. You'd think I'd asked > Eudora to sort a mailbox with 32,000 entries in it. Nah. This list just has > 24 entries. Or this. So far my sort requests have been pretty instantaneous. I even tried sorting results for one artist while listening to another. > Resizing a column ... It doesn't keep up with the mouse cursor, then when you > let go, it SPODs for many seconds. My column resizes have actually been snappy, too. Not quite as good as what I'd get in a Finder window, but not anything noticeably slow. > Every page has a black or dark gray background, and their font sizes are so > small they end up being gray instead of white text. Gray text on a gray > background - Unreadable. And there seems to be no way to increase the > font sizes or kill the backgrounds! I think that the other problems you've mentioned may have been a difference between releases. I don't know if they've had an update since they released the "okay, all you Americans, I guess we'll let all of you into the party" version, but it seems like it. Otherwise it's a network/computer difference. The background/contrast issue remains in the release I have. I don't find a huge problem with it, but perhaps that's because I have youthful eyes. I can see how this is gripe-worthy, and I do think they should allow users to alter the colors so they can actually see what they are doing on the client. > Tried the Help section... quite a few pages gave me 404s. I'll admit, I didn't go look at the Help section. That could still be an issue. > Guess I should say something nice about it... The music, once it starts to > play, sounds pretty good. No drop outs or anything. And it's only using 8 > to 10% of my CPU. Perhaps my increased performance is related to the fact that mine is taking up at least 2% more of my CPU. I doubt that 2% has anything to do with anything, but that's a difference. I'm hovering around 12% CPU usage. > Oh, I get it. Spotify is an ad for iTunes! What I wonder about Spotify is how it works for artist commission, actually. Because I'm listening to a bunch of music for free, with a few in-house ads here and there, but I don't plan on actually paying for the application or the service. iTunes does seem to be better for artists, because even though Apple takes a big chunk, it just seems like the artist would be getting a bigger chunk of change. Plus, I can listen to my iTunes library if my Internet goes out or if I'm someplace without Internet, which is a too often true scenario in Southeastern Ohio. Isaac -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Stupified by Spotify
On Jul 22, 2011, at 10:32 AM, Isaac Smith wrote: On Jul 19, 2011, at 4:22 PM, Dan wrote: Anyone using Spotify? It seems to have just opened up to everybody; that or I finally got my invite. So I'm using it as of about 5 minutes ago. What's your experience? Big snip From the Harvard Business Review Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either) http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_im_not_going_near_spotify.html Comparing Spotify to Netflix: Simply put: the way we consume music is fundamentally different to the way we consume movies and TV. Think about it. It is relatively rare to own a movie or TV series that you sit through and watch multiple times. Sure, there are some classics where that's the case, but most people watch a video once and that's it. Music is not like this. The same songs get listened to time and time again. We build playlists (custom CDs or even mix tapes, if you're old enough) around them. It's the very reason most people don't just listen to the radio Len -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
