Spotify’s mobile app has been available on Symbian/S60 phones (including most Nokia smartphones and some Sony Ericssons and Samsungs – see a full list of supported phones here) for a few weeks now, and I’ve had a chance to try it on my N78, and also compare the Nokia app to the iPhone version.

Spotify Mobile allows users to stream a huge catalogue of music over WiFi or 3G and, crucially, to store 3,333 tracks in offline playlists. The Spotify Mobile app is free to download, but you’ll need a Spotify Premium account to use it, which costs £9.99 a month.

Downloading and installing is a breeze. Just access m.spotify.com on your mobile browser, and you’ll automatically get the appropriate version. Once installed, just enter your Spotify username and password and the playlists from your desktop version of Spotify appear.

Various Symbian phones look to have different onscreen layouts – neccessary, of course, as the various phones have different sized screens.

On the N78, the app’s main screen offers four options: Playlists, to view your playlists; Search, to search the entire Spotify catalogue; Home, to view the latest releases on Spotify; and More, with options for connection mode and syncing.

You can search the catalogue by track, album or artist, and enjoy instant playback, just as you would via the desktop version. If you find a track or album you like, you can easily add it to an existing playlist, or create a new one.

The Now Playing screen offers a big cover image, with the usual pause, skip, and rewind/fast forward options. Holding forward or back makes a large time elapsed display appear over the cover image, so you can easily find your favourite bit of a particular track.

Sound quality is fantastic, streaming at 320 kbps, which is twice the quality of many MP3 files, and higher than iTunes’ highest quality Plus downloads, which are 256 kbps. I listened with a set of Bose earbuds plugged into the phone’s jack, and also connected the phone to my HiFi, and was very impressed. There was a big improvement over MP3s played through Nokia’s music player, and a noticeable absence of any background noise. And, of course, with a Premium subscription there are absolutely no adverts.

For many, the killer feature of Spotify Mobile will be the offline mode. And I’m here to tell you it works a treat. Just select which playlists you’d like to make available offline, and syncing will begin. I set my app to sync when connected to WiFi, which is obviously the fastest option. It took between 5 and 10 minutes to download each album, so the initial sync takes a while. But it’s worth it. Once synced, those tracks are there for you to enjoy whenever you like with or without an online connection.

By my reckoning each track takes up around 6MB of storage space, so storing 3,333 tracks will require the best part of 20GB of memory cardage. This highlights a slight problem, as the biggest MicroSD card currently available for the N78 is 16GB, although Sandisk are set to release a 32GB card in the near future.

I also had a quick play with the iPhone Spotify app to compare. Features-wise, it was very similar, although I found it difficult to add new playlists on the iPhone, and overall preferred the Nokia app’s onscreen layout. Also, in a big win for the Nokia app, Spotify can be minimised and play in the background while you use the phone for other tasks. On the iPhone, because of Apple’s restrictions, Spotify can’t be minimised, and must be shut down to take a call or read a text.

Overall, Spotify Mobile is a must have for any Nokia Smartphone or Symbian phone user, genuinely putting a world of music in your pocket.

More Spotify posts

Music, Technology

Unless you’ve been living in the Tora Bora caves for the last couple of weeks, you can’t have failed to have noticed that popular beat group The Beatles have released some new wares onto the marketplace.

I say “new”, but most of it is the very definition of old rope. Alongside the admittedly very shiny and apparently very good Beatles Rock Band video game, is a glut of “remastered” albums released on a long-forgotten format known as “CD”. So we have one cutting edge 2009 release, and several very old fashioned releases that would have seemed cutting edge circa 1982.

The remastered CDs will sell of course, thanks to millions of pounds worth of marketing and blanket media coverage, although not as many as Dame Vera Lynn, who pipped the Fab Four to this week’s number one in the UK album charts. But do we really need them?

There’s no denying they’re a great pop band – maybe the best pop band of all time – and I’m a big Beatles fan (despite that rubbish pun of a name, the often tiresome psychedelic nonsense, and the inescapable fact that John Lennon was a right tit…). They recorded some of my favourite songs of all time – Blackbird, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Eleanor Rigby… Most probably if I had an XBox I’d buy The Beatles Rock Band game. But the remastered albums have precisely zero appeal.

The Beatles albums have already been released as they were meant to be heard – on vinyl (most of them in mono). The subsequent original CD releases are apparently of ropey quality. If that is the case then I’d be delighted to return my CDs to Apple/EMI to be replaced at their cost with satisfactory ones. But I don’t see why I should be expected to fork out for “remastered” CDs.

Perhaps the most annoying aspect of this whole thing is that Apple and EMI have yet to release the Beatles’ music digitally for download. This is due to a long-running disagreement (yes – over money) with the unhappy consequence of making the Beatles virtually irrelevant to an entire generation of music fans. I wrote about the online “Beatles Gap” in the Guardian.

Now that the music has been remastered, and with Rock Band pricking the interest of the internet generation, why not release the Beatles catalogue for digital download, rather than on hoary old CD? (And if CD, why not cassette or mini-disc?)

The answer, I’m certain, is greed. Digital downloads will eventually be released, probably in 12 months time when fans have had a chance to empty their wallets purchasing the CDs. They’ll then be expected to buy the downloads as well. Anything to wring more cash from the Beatles’ legacy. Money, that’s what they want.

The whole farrago reflects poorly on Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr (and of course the other players involved in the Beatles’ estate). Nether surviving Beatle can be accurately described as being short of funds, and Ringo in particular has seemed to become particularly irritating in recent years.

First there was the Liverpool 8 debacle, then his regrettable rant at those autograph-seeking fans who have so generously contributed to his fortune. Then there is the frankly dim-witted Aviva name change advert in which Ringo asks, “Would any of this have happened to me if I’d still been Richard Starkey?” No, a common name like Richard would never have worked, you’d have needed an unusual name like John, Paul or George…

So ignore the money-grabbing tactics, but continue, like me, to love the Beatles’ music. Listen to the vinyl (or the old CDs), convert it to mp3, maybe hold out for the digital download release. But you don’t need the remastered CDs, and The Beatles don’t need your money. Money can’t buy them love.

Music, Technology

Brian Wilson
The Sage, Gateshead

In a world of rock and pop where the words “genius” and “legend” are thrown around with carefree abandon, here is a man who truly deserves to be called both.

Having survived drugs, mental illness and a rock dad who made Joe Jackson look like father-of-the-year material, for 67-year-old Brian Wilson to be on any stage, anywhere in the world, is something of a triumph.

Tonight he shuffles on at the Sage in a baggy beach shirt and white running shoes, perches slightly precariously on a stool behind his electric piano, and yells, “Hello Newcastle upon Tyne! I hope you enjoy the concert!” His ten-piece band assembles behind him and, after a sweet harmonising intro, launches into California Girls. And what a glorious sound. Paul McCartney reckons the musicians behind Brian are the best touring band in the world, and on this evidence it’s hard to argue with Fab Macca. To hear intricate teenage symphonies like Good Vibrations recreated live with such detail in this fantastic venue is simply stunning.

Brian seems happy and genial, even if some of the between-songs banter and skits induce a touch of deja vu. And when he sings, his voice fragile but unmistakable, it’s thrilling. To hear Brian Wilson sing God Only Knows feels like nothing less than a privilege.

The show lasts for two and a half hours, and the only grumble for my 50 quid is that there is not enough material from the Pet Sounds and Smile LPs in the set (no I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times or, my fave, Surf’s Up). The emphasis is on the upbeat, and there is little room for Brian’s more melancholic output. Not that the wedding dancers in the aisles care a jot. By the end of the show, everyone is on their feet, including Brian, leading his band through a finale of Surfin’ USA and Fun,Fun, Fun. Hats off to the band, and thank you to Brian. Won-won-won-wonderful.

Listen to my Beach Boys / Brian Wilson Spotify Playlist.
Listen to Brian’s latest album That Lucky Old Sun on Spotify.

Music

If the ad breaks between consistently rubbish summer TV shows are anything to go by, music compilation CDs are this season’s must-have items. And, boy, are they getting the hard sell.

There’s another Bruce Springsteen compilation. Cat Stevens’ best of is, apparently, ‘one of the best compilations ever!’ The Very Best of Don Henley features Boys of Summer and, erm, you know, all his other best stuff…

I hate commercial compilation CDs (got to love homemade ones, though). In the digital age they are a redundant concept. Pre-digital, they did fill a need. Like a couple of songs by one particular artist, and keen to dip into the back catalogue without buying all the albums? Before the internet, would need to pick up a compilation CD (or, indeed, an LP or cassette). You’d accept that fact that there’d be a few tracks you didn’t like, and a few of your favourites would be missing, and the track order might be a bit annoying – because there was nothing you could do about it.

Now you make your own compilations. You go to Spotify or iTunes and you compile a playlist or download all your favourite tracks and arrange them in a sensible order (always chronological, I’m saying!). You can burn a CD if you need one, tweaking it for individual friends or parties or car journeys. You are in control, and you get exactly what you want. Your personal version of the Very Best of Don Henley ends up with a much shorter running time.

The record companies seem to have realised that time is running out to peddle their officially-compiled compilations. I quite like Cat Stevens, but can the Best of Cat Stevens really be considered one of the best compilations ever? There are five or six great songs on there, but there are at least as many that only the most devout Yusuf Islam fan could describe as anything other than bloody awful.

And pity all the Dads who get Don Henley’s CD for Father’s Day on account of whistling Boys of Summer once within earshot of an offspring, and then have to appear grateful while subjecting their ears to the album’s other 12 tracks of turgidly forgettable soft rock.

Polydor have bought text ads on Amazon: ‘Celebrate the career of a legend with The Very Best Of Don Henley.’ Who is this legend, and how can we be confident that he or she would like to celebrate their career with a 92-percent rubbish Don Henley CD?

Back catalogue sales make up a huge portion of record company turnover, but they need to accept that the way we consume music has changed forever. No longer can they trawl the archives every year for another batch of artists to revive courtesy of a best of CD. Pre-selected compilations are going to die out in the very near future.

The ad for Bruce Springsteen’s new best of CD helpfully advises that it is also available as a download. But why would anyone bother to download a pre-selected compilation, when they can download their favourite tracks individually and compile their own compilation? Bruce’s new Greatest Hits is essentially a re-ordered version of his last Greatest Hits, and it’s obviously very good, but it can still be improved by the addition of your personal faves that didn’t make the fairly obvious selection. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out or Atlantic City, anyone?

With compilations, homemade has always been the way to go, since the days of the C90, and while hand-compiled tapes and CDs still make great gifts, it’s a whole lot easier to email over a Spotify playlist.

It would seem natural to end this with some links to Spotify compilations I’ve compiled. But they’ve got my favourite songs on. Go and compile your own.

Music, Technology