Quickly finding music with Spotify

I don't make many predictions but I really think that Spotify will change music. Developed by a group of folks from Sweden, it is a P2P streaming music application with a library of some 6 million songs that you can listen to whenever you have the app running (desktop or mobile). With minimal advertising in the free version, think of it as Hulu for music. Later this year, it will be availble to users in the US (licensing issues) including an iPhone app which could really affect the whole notion of paying for music downloads.

Why is it so good? Well, you can listen to whatever you want, create playlists and even cache songs to listen to while you're not connected, but most importantly, the UI is clean and easy to use making the user experience great. Spotify has a good visual layout; screen density is low and navigation is inituitive and flexible helping users find music quickly. On the left side, for example, the Search box, recently saved searches and the album cover link each represent important navigation elements.

Also, the Search box and 'New Playlist' link are very visible and prominent functionalities for users with those specific goals in mind. Although using the Radio filter is cumbersome (later post), overall, Spotify is nice and I'm really looking forward to seeing it on mobile devices soon.

Comments

Unknown said…

Can't wait for Spotify! Thanks for getting the word out Tom!

August 12, 2009 at 9:01 PM

Jacob said…

Spotify will be great, but we'll see if it is the money-maker that people are anticipating. After all, how many people will purchase premium subscriptions for access to 320kb/s Ogg streams? How many people even know what Ogg Vorbis is? I don't think higher bitrates will be enough of an incentive to make people pay.

August 18, 2009 at 11:40 AM

Tom Green said…

I don't know what Ogg Vorbis is but it sounds slow. Although free is free. Since Pandora implemented their 'not so free, free' model charging 99 cents after 40 hours, watch for the lemmings to follow.

August 21, 2009 at 2:10 PM

Redesigning the MySpace music player

Originally a major competitor to Facebook, MySpace has evolved from a being a place for 'friendships' to an important site in digital music. Like Facebook, artists can create profile pages for fans to follow but artists can also embed songs into a music player for fans to listen to. This functionality has really opened the door for discovering new music (especially for new artists who don't have a label or a means of distribution and marketing). However, MySpace's music player (above) suffers from some usability issues including small controls and an inefficient screen layout . When advancing through a song, users have to move a very small slider control that requires unnecessary precision . An improved, larger control would be much easier to click and drag than the current small rectangle shape. Also, the two-row layout of songs in the artist's queue is inefficiently designed . A maximum of only five songs can be listed in the queue at one time and then user...

Setting a price alert on Stubhub

A few weeks ago, my wife and I really wanted to see Alvvays and Frankie Rose at Metro in Chicago. But the show sold out and I was left to look for tickets second-hand. I've used Stubhub before to purchase concert tickets but up until now, hadn't tried their Price Alert feature which lets you set a ticket price max and be notified when the price goes below it. The user experience from beginning to end was really good. The feature is easy to find and provides very mobile-friendly controls to create the alert. The Price Alert tab was prominent on the event details screen - very easy to find. Note: today (1/5/18), Stubhub has removed those tabs and you have to tap an Info button top right of the viewport to look for the same feature. It's a still a good UX once you get there but it's an additional step. The Price Alert feature is intuitive and uses tappable numbers to let me pick the quantity of tickets (not a clunky dropdown menu or less efficient plus/minus p...

KEXP's new Apple TV experience

I love KEXP . It’s a listener-supported radio station in Seattle. It streams all around the world on its website and mobile app. And they’ve had a really good app for the Apple TV for some time - great to stream in the house at a high volume! And I’ve reviewed them before here . Oh, and also here . They recently released an excellent new version of the app for Apple TV. And although it doesn’t introduce a lot of new features, it’s way more visually engaging and maximizes the screen real estate much better than before. Here are some of the major changes... Additional, prominent functionality- Archive (stream any show from the past) and streaming Settings The old version had a lot of wasted, unused screen real estate while the new version makes more efficient use of the screen New, large, colorful tiles along the bottom represent each song played in chronological order You can scroll left and right to see history of songs played (much further back in history than before) Larg...

music UX