Spotify Free

A little more than two years after I applied for my first beta invite, the Swedish streaming music darling is set to land on our shores TODAY (Thursday, July 14)! As a lucky recipient of a pre-launch invitation, I’ve been playing around with Spotify for a few days now and I’m pretty impressed. The streaming is seamless, the interface is intuitive (well, it looks like iTunes), and well, it appears to be ad-free, at least for now. On the con side, the library isn’t quite as deep as I would have liked, though it does have some UK and European obscurities that were pleasantly surprising. In Spotify’s defense, the music catalog may change/expand when they make their full blown US launch. It’s a pretty nifty desktop app, and it seems like it would make a great iTunes replacement, but for the fact that I can’t get it to sync with my iPod Touch (though it looks like it is supposed to). I also haven’t tried it on my mobile device yet, because so far as I can tell, Android and iPhone apps aren’t available in the US yet (hopefully that will be available today).

UPDATE: Now that Spotify has officially launched, I’m seeing (and hearing) ads in the free service.

More Articles
It’s Here! Spotify Is Coming to the U.S. Thursday – Mashable.com
Spotify launching in the US tomorrow – Engadget.com