Hi Howard,

I must say that I'm a bit of a novice at all this, and I've not used
Pandora.  Spotify was recommended by a blind friend, who just couldn't face
putting his extensive music collection onto his Apple device.  When I
investigated this, it appears you have to rip all of your CDs, and then
either transfer them directly onto your device using Itunes and taking up
precious memory, or upload your ripped music to Apple, to use their
streaming Music Match service.  Neither scenario sounded appealing as my CD
collection had not been updated for about 10 years, and I wanted some new
stuff.  I also wanted to listen to lots of bands, just to see if I liked
them.

Spotify is a repository of millions of tracks.  At least, I think I read
somewhere it's millions <smile>.  It's worth reading the Wiki to appreciate
how it's grown.  I used the premium service and pay a monthly subscription.
Basically I have access to almost every artist, album or track you can think
of.  I've even searched for and found stuff that folk can remember from 40
years ago.  There are some omissions, but the library is growing by about 20
thousand tracks per day.

There is a middle subscription rate that gives the same access, but only
from a PC, excluding mobile devices.  The free option is now available on
the mobile, as well as the PC, but is more of a radio experience.  I
understand you can still search for artists, but you are given their back 
catelog in a shuffled format.  You are also given a limited number of skips
per hour.  It sounds like a good deal, but of course the Premium service
means you can listen to just the latest album if you wish.

I've had limited success with the PC software and their web player.  There
is an accessible interface available, playing music is not a problem, but
there is much more to it.

The smart phone interface seems to be fully accessible.  You can Search,
Browse, Discover, maintain Playlists and favourites etc.  You can look at
other peoples Playlists, and there are many genres and categories to dabble
in.  

I've been using Spotify for about 3 months.  I started by listening to the
music in my own collection, then started grabbing albums from artists I
liked, and now I'm really enjoying browsing through Playlists others have
put together, getting recommendations, and checking the new releases.  It's
truly mind blowing, and akin to being in the worlds biggest record shop and
having access to it all.

With the Premium service, the music can be streamed at the quality of your
choice, I use 320kbps, and you can download anything for off line listening.
I've not tried the free service, but imagine there must be similarities.

Best wishes, Kelvin Marsh - M0AID

Working to improve accessibility for radio amateurs with disabilities

www.active-elements.org

For accessibility evaluations of amateur equipment and MP3 manuals


-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Howard Kaufman
Sent: 31 December 2013 10:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT, I O S question

Ihave heard of spodify, is it easier to use than pandora?
How does it work?


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