If you wanna help Dev, then give this a try!

There is an entirely free program or application or whatever called Spotify. It can be found here: http://www.spotify.com/

Spotify is a porgram in which you can listen to any music you want, by who ever you want, for free. It's like Last.Fm with more control. For us, it is free. You can listen to ten songs, and then there will be a ten second advert, and then more songs again. It is a beautiful system. The best bit? Every time you listen one of the songs, the respective artist gets paid something like 32 pence. (I could be wrong here, I'm going by information an artist in England has told me.)

ANYWAY! What I'm saying is, LISTEN TO HIS STUFF ON THERE! Dev will get money, money means Dev can tour, touring means more CDs can be sold, a beautiful upwards spiral. Sorry to anyone who already knew about Spotify, but damn this could be helpful! So, give it a try, yeah? =D

Awesome! I'll give a try and spread the word.

I just installed it and it seems really cool. Got Vampira on now.
Love to know how much Dev actually makes out of this sort of thing.

It even scrobbles to Last.FM which is a nice touch!

It's not available in Ireland due to licensing restrictions. It doesn't sound legit to me though. How can they afford that? Maybe they pay some money from the premium account users money, but it's hardly 32p! I dunno, does anybody have articles about it or anything?

I have the free invitation-version of Spotify. I think it's a fantastic idea and I could even be willing to pay the 9.99€ montly fee when I get a proper job.

Here's a wiki article that explains it well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify

Cost and availability

Spotify is funded by advertisements and can be downloaded from the Spotify website in three ways. It is available free to use in some countries (with some notable exceptions) and is funded by advertising played periodically by the Spotify player at intervals in between songs. Adverts also occasionally appear in Spotify's graphical interface. Alternatively the user can pay a monthly fee of 9.99 € (roughly $12 USD, £10 GBP, 99 NOK or 99 SEK) and there are then no advertisements in the client window or between songs. Payment of the fee changes the user's status to "Premium user"; this allows the user to listen to previews and some songs before non-premium users. A user may also purchase a "day pass" for 9 SEK (approximately $1.1 USD, £0.99 GBP, 9 NOK or 0.8 EUR) for 24 hours of ad-free music playback (basically 24 hours of the premium service).[14] Paid services are available only to those able and willing to use a credit card.[15]

Spotify Premium is available in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the UK. The free version is only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain, and in some of those countries an invitation is required.[16]

A user must set up an account in order to use the software. This account can be used on several computers, but music playback is limited to one computer at a time.

Since February 10, 2009 Spotify has been available to anyone in the UK without receiving an invitation.[17] The service is not currently available in the United States or Canada. Spotify Founder, Daniel Ek, has expressed a desire to change this, however he has announced no time frame as yet.

However, it doesn't explain how much the artists actually get from it, but yes, they do have clear contracts with the labels.

I'd heard about Spotify before and it sounded really neat...so checked it out...and it wasn't available in the US yet. So, checked it again just now...still unavailable. That sucks. I feel left out...pphhhtttthh. I've got Pandora, though. I wonder if that works similarly with regard to artists making any money when their stuff is played.

Spotify is cool, but the problem is you need an invitation in order to use it for free. It's possible to get an invitation from certain other sites, but I don't think it's appropriate to post links here...

And it's definitely not 32 pence per listen. 0.32 p is more likely.

The cover of Wrathchild by Stuck Mojo and Dev on Spotify is quite amazing.

You need an invitation? I just went straight to the site and downloaded it no problem. o-O (Remembering I'm in England, though, so this may have effect.)

They can afford it because they make ALOT of money from advertisements. And like I said, I'm going by information from a friend. The band as a whole would make 32 pence per listen of a track. I mean, break that down between four or five people, then yes, much less, but still.

/ramble.

Ah cool I've been using Spotify for a couple of weeks now, didn't realise the artists get money! That's cool

You need an invitation? I just went straight to the site and downloaded it no problem. o-O (Remembering I'm in England, though, so this may have effect.)

Ok, maybe it's different in some countries. I just know I needed an invitation code (here in Finland).

They can afford it because they make ALOT of money from advertisements. And like I said, I'm going by information from a friend. The band as a whole would make 32 pence per listen of a track. I mean, break that down between four or five people, then yes, much less, but still.

No, 32 p per track is a lot when it adds up. Say you listen to an album with ten tracks ten times. That's 100 listens, which would be 32 pounds! No way they could afford to pay that from only advertisements! I mean you could get three copies of the cd for that!

And in the end, it's better than getting nothing at all for the artist of course.
Many seem to think that this service might be an alternative to filesharing. Which might be cool for the artists and for the listener it doesn't make a big difference as long as they can hear the music of course.

I haven't tested it yet but I know a few in Sweden who started using it around launch. Isn't there some Swedish guy or team behind it by the way? I suspect so since I saw people use it quite early on in Sweden.

One thing I think they could improve about Spotify is tailoring the ads to the music you're listening to. Surely they could work out from my listening preferences that I'm not likely to be particularly interested in the "amazing" new album from Take That?

Take That's new stuff is brilliant.

Take That's new stuff is brilliant.

eh, I've got nothing against it exactly, I just find it pretty bland, not to mention annoyingly overplayed. actually, I think their new stuff sounds much like coldplay (even though coldplay is a guitar band and take that is a vocal group).