I’ve been using Spotify for a while now, and it looks like they are getting ready for prime-time as they have been giving out invites all over the place (I’ve given out 5, and I have another 5 queued up waiting to be given out, so if you’ve come here looking for an invite, leave a comment!), which is classic Gmail-type behavior for testing load.

I enjoy using it, and everyone I’ve shown it to has been immediately impressed and overwhelmed by the library available to them, and end up spending time browsing through skipping through songs going ‘oh this is a good one!’ or ‘oh I haven’t heard this before!’.

And that seems to be the best use for it, letting other people show you cool music, looking up tracks you’ve been recommended, and so on. For actual listening it’s not a lot of use, because you find yourself sat in front of the search thinking ‘I have no idea what I want to listen to’ – music recommendations don’t make themselves.

It would be great if Spotify could have some integration filters, for example scanning your iTunes Library for artists and genres you like, then giving you some ‘try this’ links to help you explore, because I think Spotify has the ability to encourage great musical exploration, it just is too unwieldy and gives you no help to do it (the radio station option doesn’t seem to work that great).

If you haven’t checked out Spotify yet, find someone friendly with some invites (like me!) and give it a try. This is definitely something to have installed for those times when it’s needed, but not something you’re going to be using every day.