All day yesterday I waited for my invite to Spotify so I could see if the platform would live up to the hype, and at 7:30, it finally came. I quickly jumped on, and after browsing and playing a few tracks, my initial thought was “This is AWESOME! All the music I can listen to for free!”

Then that little voice in the back of my head kicked in, and I start thinking, “What’s the catch? There has to be something to this. I mean, all this music at my finger tips for free just can’t be right. I can play my iTunes library, I can listen to music I don’t own, and all I have to do is let a commercial play every now and again? Sorry iTunes, but you lose.”

Even though I get a lot of music for free (for review on the blog, not by illegal download), I still buy a lot of music, at least 2 or 3 albums a month. With Spotify around, I don’t know if I will be able to justify buying another digital album. This won’t change the fact that I will still buy vinyl, new and old, and help support the music I love, but digital music for free will always win out over the paid version.

Since downloading Spotify, I don’t think I have listened to one full album through their system, but what I have done is tested if the music I would listen to can be found on their system. I have probably searched for 50 different bands just to see if they were listed, and every single band has been except for The Beatles.

This was actually expected, but every other band I searched for–from No Knife to The Anniversary, Deftones to Foo Fighters–was there. Obviously there are a few albums and tracks missing from different artists’ catalogues, or Spotify has all the tracks but doesn’t allow me access because I have a free account, but not enough is missing to justify a rant

Either way, Spotify is well worth the wait and time it took to get it going. The next question I ask myself is, “How long until I upgrade to a premium account?” There seem to be so many perks that it will be hard not to pay the $9.99 for no commercials, higher-quality audio, offline listening, music on my mobile devices, exclusive content, and much more.

If you have had a chance to use Spotify, let us know your thoughts and how you feel it will change the way you listen to music. If you don’t have an account yet, make sure you go signup now!

http://www.spotify.com