A couple of weeks ago, Spotify launched its iPhone app v0.4, and after a couple of teething troubles, during which it was quickly upgraded to v0.4.1, it now looks stable enough to offer a quick review.

First up, for those who are new to Spotify for iPhone, here’s a run-down of what it does – which is basically pretty much everything the desktop client does. You’ve got instant streaming of the full catalogue over Wi-Fi and 3G, the ability to store 3,333 tracks in offline playlists, and fast syncing between mobile and desktop. Essentially, Spotify for mobile puts the entire Spotify catalogue into your pocket, making it instantly available in very high quality. So what does v0.4.1 add?

New features include the much-requested Last.fm scrobbling – a long-standing feature on the desktop client, and a refreshed look. A major addition is iPod integration, which uses tracks already stored in the iPhone’s iPod in Spotify playlists, saving memory and sync time. Also new is the ability to stream at low bandwidth (98kbs) when without a Wi-Fi signal. The new Starred feature allows you to star and save favourite albums and tracks.

The are also other small tweaks, such as the fact that the volume slider has been replaced by the iPhone’s master volume control, a restore feature that means the app restarts where it left off, and the ability to share tracks and open Spotify links direct from the browser and other apps.

Unfortunately, v0.4 was buggy, in some cases causing the app to hang or crash. To Spotify’s credit, they were quick to release v0.4.1, which fixes some of the problems. Some users are apparently still having problems with the iPod integration feature causing crashes. v0.4.1 allows this feature to be turned off until the bug can be properly fixed. I’ve not experienced this bug, but I have found a couple of other annoyances.

A major gripe is that, presumably due to the iPod integration, after updating you lose all of your offline content, and need to sync it all again. Depending on how many offline playlists you have this can take many hours. It was most likely necessary to accommodate the new features, but there should probably have been a warning issued before installation.

Secondly, it is still annoyingly difficult to add albums or tracks into new playlists. (For the record, you need to go to Playlists, click Edit, click ‘+’, create a new playlist, then search for the album or track to add.) It’s much easier to do this on the Symbian Spotify app.

Thirdly, the app seems slightly slower to respond. This could be because it seems to be constantly syncing offline content, but I’ll keep an eye on it and report back.

Another much-requested feature was the ability to listen to Spotify in the background while using other iPhone functions. Unfortunately Apple still don’t allow third party apps to do this, so v0.4.1 doesn’t offer a change. However, the word is that Apple’s forthcoming 4.0 iPhone OS will allow multitasking, and hopefully Spotify will be quick to update the app as a result.

Overall, although slightly flawed, Spotify for iPhone v0.4.1 remains an essential application, effectively rendering the iPod (and iTunes) obsolete. It’s free to download from the App Store, but you’ll need a Spotify Premium account to use it, which costs £9.99 a month.

Spotify, the much talked-about music streaming service, has today launched a new feature aimed at filtering out bad music for discerning listeners. The feature, called ‘Airplay Floods’, uses a revolutionary musical genome identifier to weed out bad records from albums and playlists in the Spotify catalogue. It has already been nicknamed the ‘crap filter’.

Spotiguide was the first media outlet to see the new feature. In tests, turning on the Airplay Floods function removed tracks such as The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum) by The Cheeky Girls and Candle in the Wind 1997 by Elton John from the Spotify catalogue. Spotify programmers refused to reveal exactly how the patented method to identify the ‘DNA’ of bad music works. However, despite repeated attempts, Spotiguide was unable to play Everything I Do (I Do It For You) by Bryan Adams or Believe by Cher while the crap filter was active.

‘Airplay Floods is a game-changing feature,’ said Orla Filop, a spokeswoman for the Stockholm-based company. ‘Spotify has already revolutionised the way people listen to music. Now it will revolutionise the type of music they listen to, greatly reducing the amount of rubbish their ears are subjected to.’

Although welcomed by many Spotify users, the new feature has already been criticised by anti-censorship groups who claim that the company should not remove listeners’ rights to listen to bad music.

‘The Airplay Floods feature is an attack against freedom of choice,’ read a statement from anti-censorship group ADF. ‘Tastes vary, and one man’s Beethoven is another man’s B*Witched. If people want to listen to Black Lace or Billie Ray Cyrus, then they should be allowed to do so in peace without fear of censorship of mockery.’

Some Spotify users have also reacted angrily. An early comment on the Spotify blog from user Flair Pool read, ‘hey IDIOTS coz i LIKE sexbomb by tom jones n listen 2 it every day n u have RUINED spotify cos now I cannot listen to sex bomb by tom jone you IDIOTS (sic).’

The feature is permanently activated for Spotify Free users, meaning that they will no longer be able to listen to tracks such as Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby or Anyone Can Fall In Love by Anita Dobson. Spotify Premium users can toggle the Airplay Floods feature on and off using the F9 key.

What do you think of the new Airplay Floods feature? Post a comment and let us know.

So you’ve created a killer Spotify playlist. But how can you share the playlist with friends, or make it available to a wider audience of Spotify users? There are a number of ways to do this, and the good news is that they’re all really easy.

The most basic way to share a Spotify playlist is to share its HTTP link or Spotify URI. To do this, either drag and drop or copy the link. To drag and drop, left-click and hold on the playlist name in your playlist pane on the left-hand side of the Spotify client, and drag into an email, Twitter message etc. To copy the link, right-click on the playlist name and select “Copy HTTP link” or “Copy Spotify URI”.

Spotify also has an in-built feature for sharing playlists (or artists, tracks or albums) via social networks. Just right-click on the playlist name and select “Share to”, then select Facebook, Twitter or Delicious.

Don’t forget that it you want your friends to be able to add and remove tracks to and from your playlist you’ll need to make it collaborative by right-clicking on the playlist title and selecting “Collaborative playlist”.

So it’s easy to share your playlists with friends, but what about sharing your hard work with the entire Spotify community?

As it happens, there are more than 20 websites dedicated to sharing Spotify playlists. To see a list of all of them go to Spotify’s Resources Page.

ShareMyPlaylists.com features more than 14,000 Spotify playlists, and you can browse by genres and ratings. The website has a community feel, with groups and user blogs to participate in. You can see Spotiguide’s playlists here.

Other Spotify playlist-sharing websites include the UK-based Spotifyplaylists, Spotylist, Shared Playlists, Spotyshare, and Myspotify.com.

Spotify playlists are a great feature, but once you have more than a handful they become very difficult to organise. As of yet, there is no in-built feature to organise playlists, other than the very basic playlist panel on the left hand side of the Spotify client. However, there is a very simple workaround that can help.

The first thing to do is to make your playlist panel as big as possible. To do this, click the minimise button on the Now playing box at the bottom left of the screen, and right-click and delete any previous search terms that appear in the panel. You should be left with your Home, Radio, Play queue and Purchases links, and then your list of playlists.

Now to organise those playlists. Each playlist can be dragged and dropped into any order you choose, we’re going to suggest you use the time-honoured Artist A to Z sorting system, although of course you could sort by genre, label, hair length or anything else that floats your boat.

Make sure that each playlist is correctly named – just right click and select Rename. Here at Spotiguide we name our playlists by artist, and often include several albums by the same artist in a single playlist. If you’re really fussy, you might want to rename to put surnames first, so “Ryan Adams” becomes “Adams, Ryan”.

You can then drag and drop your playlists into A to Z order. Then, to add further organisation, you can create some blank playlists and use them as sorting labels. For example, click + New playlist, and name it “A”, “B”, “C” etc.

You can further sort your playlists into your own compilations, collaborative efforts, playlists created by friends, and more. Just create a blank playlist for each sorting category. You can use symbols such as * and – to make your labels stand out, for example “- – -My Playlists- – -” or “***Party Playlists***”.

The great news is that all of this reorganisation will automatically port across to mobile devices for Spotify Mobile users.

Until Spotify introduces an integrated playlist organiser, this is a simple and effective solution. Of course, once you begin to rack up hundreds of playlists you’re going to have to put in some effort to keep your playlist panel from becoming unwieldy. So spend a while spring-cleaning your playlist panel and you’ll soon be able to find your music faster and easier.

According to research from Government-backed watchdog Consumer Focus, only 2 percent of UK adults are aware of Spotify. The research also found that 4 out of 10 people were unable to name any legal online music service. Of those that could name a service, 85 percent had only heard of iTunes and Amazon. Only 1 percent had heard of Last.fm or 7Digital.

The research, which was carried out among a “representative” selection of 1995 UK adults aged 15-plus, concludes that more must be done to make consumers aware of legal online music services in an effort to combat illegal downloading. That’s fair enough, but can it really be true that only 2 percent of UK adults are aware of Spotify?

Spotify has well over 2 million UK users – that’s more than 3 percent of the UK population right there. And the current invitation system is restricting the number of users in this country. Every Spotify user has probably got at least a handful of friends and family who they’ve told about Spotify, but who haven’t yet signed up. So the real number of UK adults who have heard of Spotify is actually much higher than the percentage figure offered by this research.

The problem comes with the fact that the survey covered that “representative” selection of the population. Among that selection would no doubt have been many people who had no interest in either the internet or music. Those people are about as likely to illegally download music as they are to pop to the moon for a platypus sandwich.

The survey would have been much more useful if it had covered internet users, or more specifically internet users who consume music online. Among their number, it’s likely that a vast majority would have heard of Spotify, and the other online music services. Whether they are likely to use them rather than illegally downloading is another matter.

The chief executive of record industry trade body the BPI, Geoff Taylor has criticised the tax payer-funded research, and is quoted in The Telegraph as saying, “It’s just not credible to suggest that people who are downloading illegally haven’t heard of iTunes, Amazon or other legal music services.”

The BPI and Ovum launched separate research on the same day concentrating on how UK Internet Service Providers could launch bundled digital music services. The BPI report concludes that online music services could earn UK ISPs £100 million by 2013.

A key question we get asked by independent artists is, “How can I get my music onto Spotify?” It’s actually pretty easy and inexpensive to do that. And the next question is, “How much will I earn?” The amount that artists receive from Spotify is a hot topic, of interest to artists and fans alike. The short answer to the question is, “Not a lot,” but earnings aren’t everything when it comes to receiving the wide exposure that Spotify availability can generate.

Ditto Music is a service that allows artists to set up their own record label and release their music via digital stores and streaming services. Basic charges are 30p per track per store or service, and £5.00 for track storage, plus extra charges for services such as chart registration. So it’s possible to get your track available on Spotify for £5.30, or on iTunes and Spotify for £5.60. But how much will you earn?

The company is pretty upfront about potential earnings. Download stores take around a 40% commission, so a track sold for 79p via iTunes should earn the artist 49p.

For Spotify, the artist earns 0.02p per play. That means you’ll need 50 plays to earn 1p, 5,000 plays to earn £1, or half a million plays to earn £100. You’ll also get a percentage of advertising revenue, but we can safely assume that this will be even more negligible than play royalties.

Of course, that amount just represents Ditto Music’s deal. Other companies will have individual deals and receive differing amounts. Last September, Robert Fripp, the former King Crimson guitarist, revealed in his online diary that Island Records received £1.68 from Spotify for 618 streams. That’s 0.2p per play – ten times the amount Ditto Music artists receive, although obviously Island artists will need to give their label a cut of that.

It’s still not a large amount, and certainly not enough for Robert Fripp – King Crimson’s tracks have since been removed. You really need to be the likes of The Black Eyed Peas or Lady Gaga, with your tracks being streamed millions of times, to earn significant money from Spotify.

But, as we’ve said here before, the way to make money from Spotify is not by relying on royalties, but by using it as a promotional tool to encourage physical sales, including merchandise and tickets. Readers of this blog post who might have been prompted to check out King Crimson on Spotify, and perhaps go on to buy the albums, cannot do so. They can, however, check out The Black Eyed Peas or Lady Gaga.

Releasing your music on Spotify via Ditto Music won’t make you a millionaire, but it will get you music out there, maybe get it heard, and that’s a valuable starting point for any artist.

So you love listening to Spotify on your desktop, and you can put up with the adverts and lower streaming quality, and don’t need the offline mode, so haven’t upgraded to Premium? Fair enough. But by not upgrading to Premium you’re missing out on Spotify’s killer feature – Spotify Mobile. Putting Spotify in your pocket, Spotify Mobile is the essential reason to go Premium. Here are ten reasons why you need Spotify Mobile:

1. It’s free… As long as you have Spotify Premium. Get the app here.
2. It offers access to the entire Spotify catalogue, instantly, via your mobile phone. What’s not to like about that?
3. It’s available on iPhone, Android and Symbian (including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung) handsets. Get a full list of compatible handsets here.
4. The offline mode allows you to store 3,333 tracks on your mobile and listen to them at any time, even when you have no internet connection. That’s a huge catalogue of downloaded tracks stored on your phone.
5. The Spotify app is simple and easy to use. Features vary slightly by handset, but you can enjoy almost all of the features of the desktop version, including instant playback.
6. Sound quality, at 160kbps Ogg Vorbis (roughly equal to 192kbps mp3 and the same as Spotify Free on desktop), is very good. It’s not as high as the 320kbps Premium users enjoy on desktop, but it compares excellently against mp3s played on mobiles, and for example Spotify Mobile on the iPhone offers a better sound experience than the device’s iPod function.
7. Spotify Mobile streams over wi-fi or 2.5/3G brilliantly. Download of offline content is obviously much faster over wi-fi, but Spotify works great for those relying on 3G too.
8. Syncing between the Spotify desktop client and mobile app is instant, and very impressive. Basically, add or amend a playlist on your desktop, and it will update on your mobile – and vice versa.
9. Cover art – a longstanding annoyance for iTunes and iPod users – is never a problem on Spotify Mobile, with large, high quality cover images attached to every track in the catalogue.
10. The ability to force offline mode means you can listen to your offline content without worrying about data charges, for example when travelling abroad. You can listen to your offline content for 30 days without going back online.

In putting instant access to a huge music catalogue into your pocket, Spotify Mobile is changing the future of music consumption. There are still improvements to be made, for example the Spotify apps do not yet scrobble to Last.fm, but these are minor quibbles considering the benefits the service provides. Overall, if you like music, have a compatible mobile, and live in an area where Spotify is available, Spotify Mobile is completely essential.

A lot of key music industry figures have still yet to get their head around the digital revolution, and one of of those figures seems to be Warner Music Group chief executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. “Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed,” said Bronfman this week. The announcement seemed to suggest that Warner is pulling its music from streaming services such as Spotify, Last.fm and We7.

Bronfman then appeared to strike a specific blow against Spotify, stating, “The ‘get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price’ strategy is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future.”

However, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek was quick to refute suggestions that this might affect Spotify. “To be clear; WMG are not pulling out of Spotify. Media is taken things out of context. So don’t worry – be happy ,” Ek Tweeted.

Make no mistake, Warner’s huge roster of talent means that no serious music streaming service can thrive without co-operation from the label. But, by the same measure, no record label can thrive without properly embracing streaming services.

What Bronfman apparently fails to understand is that the music industry has already changed, forever. Streaming and cloud-based music is the future, and labels need to learn how to make music from streaming, either directly, or by using it as a promotional tool to encourage physical sales, including merchandise and tickets.

For the time being, Warner content is still available on Spotify (with the exception of previously-removed artists such as Oasis, and missing albums such as The Betrayed by Lostprophets), and also on Last.fm. Instead of threatening to pull its music, Warner Music should concentrate on making more of its catalogue available.

And if labels aren’t prepared to embrace streaming services, then they should go back to selling MiniDiscs and cassettes and see how far that gets them.

Despite the impressive size of Spotify’s music catalogue there are, inevitably, some annoying omissions. Famously, there is no Beatles or AC/DC due to those artists’ reluctance to join the digital revolution. The likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd are similarly absent without leave, and we’re fed only scraps of Bob Dylan and Oasis. We’ve got used to this, and we’ve learned to accept it. But the lack of availability of an increasing number of new and recent releases is more worrying, and Spotify’s official blog and support forum have been filled with queries and complaints.

The number one Spotify-related question we’ve been asked over the past few weeks has been, “When will Vampire Weekend’s new album be available?” Contra was released on 11 January, but has yet to appear on Spotify. The answer, happily for fans of preppy afro-pop, is that it is scheduled to be available for streaming from next week. It seems that the record label, XL Recordings, specifically delayed the album’s Spotify release. The obvious thinking would be that this was an effort to boost sales over the initial few weeks of release. However, XL made the album available to stream in full via the band’s official website. So it is possible to listen to the full album without buying it – just not on Spotify.

It’s likely that some Spotify users will have been unable to wait for the album’s delayed streaming release and will have instead bought the download or CD, but then fans of the band were likely to do that anyway. However, it’s also likely that other Spotify users won’t have sampled the album on Spotify, and therefore won’t have gone on to buy it. Making an album available for streaming via a band’s website is all well and good, but only existing fans visit bands’ websites. XL’s tactic may have prevented Spotify users from trying and buying Contra.

Another high-profile release that has caused consternation among Spotify users is The Betrayed by Lostprophets. The release was actually promoted in a post on the official Spotify blog on 18 January, and the album was available to listen to. For a couple of days. Then, for some reason, The Betrayed was removed from the UK catalogue. It seems that the album is released by Sony in most Spotify territories, but by Warner Music in the UK. And Warner has specifically asked Spotify to remove it from the catalogue. Again, this is preventing potential purchasers from sampling the album.

In general, Spotify is actually pretty good for recent releases. Of the ten albums currently in the iTunes top ten, only Lostprophets and Hope For Haiti are unavailable on Spotify, and it’s understandable that the charity album would not be available to stream. (Vampire Weekend are no longer in the top ten.) A comparison of the top ten tracks, however, is less impressive, with bestselling iTunes tracks from the Glee Cast, Lyaz, Sidney Samson and Example all unavailable on Spotify. On the positive side, Spotify Premium users do occasionally get access to albums ahead of their official release date, such as, this week, Ke$ha’s Animal.

The real problem for Spotify is that a lack of availability of even one key release can make the difference between a music fan signing up for the premium service or sticking to downloads and CDs. If a hotly-anticipated album doesn’t become available, there’s every chance they’ll take their £9.99 that they might have spent on a Spotify Premium subscription and use it to buy the individual album. Great news for the record company (in the short term, anyway) but bad news for a service so keen to increase its subscription base in the UK.

Another problem regarding new releases on Spotify is a lack of notification when new music is added to the catalogue. Until a couple of months ago, Spotify regularly issued Google spreadsheets containing information about all new additions. Unfortunately, due to a change in the way music is added to the service, this has been discontinued. The information contained in the spreadsheets was also used by recommendation services such as Spotify.fm and Last.fm + Spotify, plus a whole host of other websites and blogs. The result is that it’s very difficult to find out what’s new on Spotify.

Until a solution can be found, Pansentient League is hosting a New On Spotify tool, that produces a list of new additions to the Spotify catalogue from the previous week. The tool is limited by Spotify’s API, and it won’t solve the problem for recommendation services, but it’s a useful fix.

Ultimately, Spotify and the labels need to think carefully about how new releases are made available on the service. Users want new releases available on the day of release, suitably presented and easy to find – just like they are on iTunes. Until that happens, Spotify will remain flawed, and its usefulness to the labels will remain limited.

Spotiguide is a brand new website that helps you get more from Spotify with the latest music, news, technology, tips and tools.

The aim is to make Spotify even better, with a hand-picked selection of the best new and classic music to help you navigate Spotify’s huge catalogue, and regular beginners and advanced tools and tips to make Spotify even easier to use.

Spotiguide will also bring you the latest Spotify news, and reviews of Spotify-related technology, such as Spotify-compatible phones.

Check it out at www.spotiguide.com.