Have been using Spotify as my main streaming service for both classical and pop/rock/indie music for a while. Just like to share with you my experience here. And you can judge whether you wanna give it a try or even pay for it. I’m not going into discussion how spotfiy is paying the musicians here.

This report is based on both PC and Android versions.

Pros:
1. One of the biggest streaming provider, legal, free (at least for basic service).
2. PC version is totally user friendly.
3. The premium account charge of $10 per month is also reasonable. I’m assuming you would agree that one month of music streaming service should be more valuable than two cups of mediocre Starbucks coffee.

Cons:
Mobile version still lacks some key feature.
1. For free account, you can only shuffle play a playlist. If the playlist contains only a few tracks (e.g. a symphony), spotfiy will insert other tracks they think you would like (so far i find their recommendation pretty poor..)

Some smart guy would suggest use the skip button for this. The spotify guys are not dumb either. They set a 6 skips per hour rule on the free mobile account.

I know you’ll be really be pissed off when you were listening to some great rock, suddenly one of the “boring” Bach’s cantatas was inserted (this is purely fictional, I have not experienced classical inserted into pop/rock listening session. Btw, isn’t that a good way to raise the awareness of classical music?)
Vice vesa, when you were listening to the St. Matthew’s Passion, you will certainly be annoyed when some crap pop popped up.

2. Another key feature lacking in mobile app is that there is no way to find out which musicians you are following. Everytime you need to search the entire spotify database.

Update: this has been rectified in the latest version.

3. Apart from that, when data connection lost, you can’t playback the cached tracks you just listened. I find this more useful feature than having to preload the offline tracks.

Miscs:

Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis as encoding format, which is a fine choice. Even though it is not as great as what I would like to have DTS Headphone:X. (Disclaimer: I work for DTS.)

Another thing I really hope Spotify could do is to launch their premium service together with Singtel. Such that the data charge can be free or at least much more than the plan package quota. I feel my 3GB monthly quota not able to keep up if I were to use Spotify as my sole mobile music service. I know that would mean Singtel have to kill their own AMPed which I have yet heard a good report.

Before all these being fixed, I’ll be still paying my naxos.com subscription, they’re even cheaper than spotify and also cover a pretty wide repertoire for classical music.