https://www.bennee.com/~alex/2009-11-10T14:22:00+00:00the wanderings of a supposed digital native2009-11-10T14:22:00+00:002009-11-10T14:22:00+00:00alextag:www.bennee.com,2009-11-10:/~alex/blog/2009/11/10/spotify/

<p>I was all set to fire up the free <a class="reference external" href="https://www.spotify.com/en/">Spotify</a> client listen to one of the suggested albums from a previous post. I was ready to accept the rather grating adverts every few tracks when I noticed the people at Spotify over a 0.99p day pass which I duly …</p>

<p>I was all set to fire up the free <a class="reference external" href="https://www.spotify.com/en/">Spotify</a> client listen to one of the suggested albums from a previous post. I was ready to accept the rather grating adverts every few tracks when I noticed the people at Spotify over a 0.99p day pass which I duly signed up to.</p> <div class="line-block"> <div class="line">Getting the client to work on my office machine proved to be a little more of a challenge as running through Wine it seemed to be having issues playing sound. My work machine is on the current Ubuntu LTS so getting a little long in the tooth but I eventually found the &quot;padsp&quot; emulation function that allows programs to think they are talking to an <a class="reference external" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Sound_System">OSS</a> sound device while using the new schizzle that is <a class="reference external" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio">PulseAudio</a>. For reference the correct solution to running is:</div> </div> <pre class="literal-block"> padsp wine spotify.exe </pre> <p>The Spotify experience is different from that of <a class="reference external" href="http://www.last.fm/user/stsquad">last.fm</a> offering as it does complete control of the playlist. However if I really want the music I will most likely buy the music and add it to my various distributed digital devices. Having said that I can certainly see me paying for a day pass every now and again to listen to albums before I buy them. So any releases from the last year I should be listening to on today's pass?</p> 2009-10-27T10:57:00+00:002009-10-27T10:57:00+00:00alextag:www.bennee.com,2009-10-27:/~alex/blog/2009/10/27/albums/

<p>One of the perils of having the entire smorgasbord of a music collection available on your computer (or music playing device) is the shuffle button. I almost unconsciously end up setting the player on random and just hitting skip when a track that doesn't quite fit my mood comes on …</p>

<p>One of the perils of having the entire smorgasbord of a music collection available on your computer (or music playing device) is the shuffle button. I almost unconsciously end up setting the player on random and just hitting skip when a track that doesn't quite fit my mood comes on. Sometimes I use my last.fm account and set some tag parameters for what I'd like to listen to however the experience is still a disjointed one. During a conversation with Arwel about the relative merits of Last.Fm vs Spotify he cited the ability to listen to whole albums as a key selling point of the service. While I'm not ready to sign up to Spotify yet I have started taking more care to listen to the many many albums I already own. For the last few weeks I've made a conscious effort to set my player up to play an entire album first thing in the morning before it switches back to the usual eclectic sampling of the some 10,000 tracks I have in my collection.</p> <p>So what albums would my readers recommend as a good start to the day?</p>