Spotify on Linux (aka Die PulseAudio, Die!)

Håvard invited me to Spotify the other day. For those who don't know, Spotify is sort of like iTunes, only better, and free. You get to stream all the music you like, from most of the major and a lot of the minor labels, in return for listening to the odd advertisment.

I've been streaming for quite a few hours now, and I've still not heard a single ad. But then again, Spotify is still in beta, so I assume thecontent/ad ration will decrease as time goes by.

My taste in music may be a bit eclectic, but I've been able to find a lot of the instrumental weird stuff I prefer for coding. However, there are still a lot of stuff "missing" compared to what you can find in your local store, especially if you consider, say, Norwegian music. And no Beatles, either. However, it's free, so who's complaining?:)

Well, I have three minor complains. First, the client is for Windows. It works in Wine, and they even explain how to run it in Wine on the Spotify pages -- kudos for that! (Of course, I had to kill and terminate PulseAudio again, since that pile of crap usually fucks up everything sound-related on my system). Second, the client is closed source, so it's not possible to fix the few minor annoyances it comes with, nor is it possible to port to Linux. When you need to lock down the music behind a DRM scheme so that people won't rip it and share it outside Spotify, it certainly easier, and perhaps even safer, to go closed.Third, the audio quality is sometimes abysmal, as if they'd encoded the stuff in 64kbit/sec. However, this may very well be due to Wine and not Spotify. I'll keep digging.

Then again, Spotify is free and in no way imposed on me, so I don't have much grounds for complaint, really:)