The Wiki Man

6 June 2009

Rory Sutherland's fortnightly column on technology and the web

A few weeks ago, however, I revisited it and found the catalogue had grown spectacularly. This morning I found several hundred pieces by Buxtehude; about 400 Bach harpsichord works; even a few hundred songs by Al Bowlly. In other words it is now so extensively stocked you can spend long and happy hours exploring its wider reaches. Nor is its scope confined to music — I have spent the past 30 minutes listening to Churchill’s speeches. The few glaring musical omissions are the same hold-outs who long resisted appearing on the iTunes store: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Beatles.

Technologically, aside from its wonderfully clean interface, Spotify is distinguished by its remarkable achievement in somehow resolving the problem of ‘buffering’ — the process which causes those seconds of finger-drumming irritation between your clicking on online media and its starting to play. Also commendable is its intelligent approach to mobility. I am writing this in a Bonn hotel room where I expected Spotify not to work, since I am accessing the internet outside my home country. In fact it continues to work overseas until you have been abroad continuously for a fortnight. If BBC iPlayer could adopt this same travel-friendly approach I might agree to increase my licence fee.

One last thing to like. Spotify has not yet adopted iTunes’s irritating habit of censoring ‘offensive’ words with prissy little PC asterisks. This practice reached an absurd height last week when it started referring to Doo Wop as Doo W*p. A song called Spic & Span now appears as S**c & Span. Just typical of the bl*ody s*ptics, isn’t it?