How to listen to free music

Spotify has slashed the amount of free music you can listen to. What are the alternatives?

I was an early adopter with Spotify. I’ve never been that hot at updating my iPod with the music I like - I’m pretty tight to be honest and didn’t fancy spending a fortune on songs that in all likelihood I’d only end up listening to once or twice.

And in Spotify, I had a great alternative – a selection of seemingly millions of tracks that I could stream straight to my computer, absolutely free. All I’d have to do is put up with a couple of adverts here and there. It seemed too good to be true.

And new changes to the Spotify service suggest that perhaps it was, after all.

Discouraging freeloaders

People like me, while loyal Spotify users, are not the sort of customers the firm really wants. Because we are freeloaders – we don’t pay for the subscriptions that allow us to skip the adverts, or use the service on our phones. So the firm is trying to convert more of us into a source of income.

For a while now, it certainly seems like there has been an increase in the number of adverts in between songs on Spotify. What’s more, the adverts have become somewhat more intrusive – the point of such advertising, I guess.

From 1 May, users of the Free and Open services will see their usage severely restricted. Anyone who signed up before 1 November 2010 will only be able to play each song, for free, a maximum of five times. Now, you could stretch that out and make it last an awfully long time, working your way through all sorts of new music. But most of us won’t. Users who joined after November will see these changes take place six months after they signed up.

Last.fm

One cool rival to Spotify is Last.fm, a sort of interactive online radio service. The software tracks what you are listening to, how often you listen to certain songs and bands, and makes recommendations of similar acts that you may also enjoy.

The information tracking means that you get personalised recommendations every day. The site also allows you to tag tracks, in much the same way that you can tag articles here on lovemoney.com, while there are also discussions that you can take part in. What’s more, the site stretches into live music, with its Events section highlighting all of the upcoming gigs in your area, and how many fellow Last.fm users are attending.

And on top of that, in the UK it’s absolutely free.

We7

We7 works in a similar way to Spotify, with a selection of free music – a whopping seven million tracks, according to the firm – which is all paid for via the use of targeted advertising, both audio and visual on the We7 software.

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Also, as with Spotify, there is a service to buy certain songs that you like in mp3 form so that you can listen to them on the move on your iPod or mp3 player.

The service was co-founded by Peter Gabriel, the former Genesis front-man, and has been up and running for four years. And, like Spotify, there is the option to sidestep the adverts by signing up for a Premium or Premium+ subscription. The pricing of the packages is exactly the same as Spotify at £4.99 a month for Premium and £9.99 for Premium+ (which lets you listen on your phone and offline).

However, what the firm thinks sets it apart are its We7 radio stations in the form of its Radio Plus. There are themed stations, while you can also create stations of your own, based on artists, musical genres of specific themes.

YouTube

Perhaps not an immediately obvious option, but YouTube is a good alternative. Indeed, in many respects you’ll get a more comprehensive selection of music, given you’ll have access to tracks (or rather videos) from artists like the Beatles who do not tend to appear on sites like Spotify.

However, the quality of the audio on YouTube can politely be described as inconsistent, while you’ll also have to work your way through the millions of videos of random oddballs from around the world doing their own versions of the classics. And while Justin Bieber found fame utilising this approach, let’s just say the vast majority wouldn’t make it too far on the X Factor.

What I’ll be doing

For the time being, I’ll be giving We7 and Last.fm a go, simply because the free service with Spotify won’t last me too long. Longer term though, I will most likely give a Spotify subscription a go, as it works out far cheaper to put together an offline playlist I can listen to on the Tube than try to fill my iPod with the songs I like.

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