Spotify for Electro-Heads

This is a guest post by Jer White, better known as the man behind the Spotify blog The Pansentient League.

Spotify is the Swedish music-streaming phenomenon that's swept through much of Europe and looks set to conquer America soon too. With over ten million users, it now has more paid-for subscribers than any other music streaming service in the world. Not only that, with nearly 14 million tracks to listen to, Spotify has the largest catalog of streaming music available: that's more than Napster, Rhapsody, MOG or WiMP. With the recent expansion to enable cheap MP3 downloads (ideal for when you don't want to pay a monthly subscription or you want to "own" your music), Spotify is now gunning for iTunes too.

I use Spotify every day and think it's the most important thing to happen to the music industry since the MP3. It's simple and easy to use, plays songs instantly, lets you share music with ease and is 100% legal and licensed (unlike Grooveshark). At a stroke, Spotify obsoleted the need for illegal downloading as it's faster, safer, and less hassle than fiddling about with badly-tagged and variable-quality downloads.

Despite the new download offering, I still prefer the subscription service as I think it's a much better deal for fans like Side-Line readers who listen to a lot of music. It also guarantees a small kickback of cash to the artist every single time I listen to a track on Spotify. Sure it's not much compared to the royalties from a CD sale, but it's at least something with the added bonus that it pays the artist more the more I listen to their music (unlike the one-off royalty from a CD or purchased download).

Spotify changed my musical life and I'm now a passionate advocate for the service (even though I don't work for them!).

I'm also a huge fan of synthpop and industrial music.


Electro Genres & Artists on Spotify


Think of your Top 20 favorite bands. I bet most if not all of them have something on Spotify. Pretty much all of the synthpop and industrial labels around today are adding their content (Spotify adds on average 10,000 new tracks per day). And that's as well as the archive of music that goes back to the very dawn of electronic music (and before then, well, that's on Spotify too but all that rock music was just tuning up, right?).

No matter which sub-genre you're into, I guarantee it will be well-represented on Spotify. There's synthpop old and new, electropop, futurepop, electro-industrial, industrial metal, oldschool industrial and EBM, darkwave, goth, aggrotech, noise, Neue Deutsche Härte, even some of that really weird sh*t you like that scares your neighbors.

Here's a look at what's available on Spotify from a selection of 10 bands you probably know: Kraftwerk (10 albums, 3 singles), Depeche Mode (20 albums, 47 singles), Front 242 (11 albums, 1 single), Nitzer Ebb (10 albums, 1 single), KMFDM (18 albums, including the excellent release from Skold vs. KMFDM), Combichrist (14 albums, 3 singles), Funker Vogt (10 albums, 4 singles), And One (10 albums, 9 singles).

That's pretty extensive, but what about some of the slightly more obscure electro? Well, some of my favorites you'll find on Spotify include both the superb First Aid 4 Souls albums, the brilliant EBM debut from Container 90 (man, I love that album!), retro-industrial releases from Mommy Hurt My Head,Gatekeeper and //TENSE//, and some great new synthpop from the likes of Northern Kind, Parralox,Future Perfect and the wonderful Maison Vague.


Synthpop & Industrial Labels on Spotify


As a Side-Line reader you obviously have a good taste in music and like me, you probably know that it's worth following specific record labels as well as particular bands. If you like one band on Metropolis Records for example, chances are you'll like others too. Spotify makes it easy to search for a particular label: all you need to do is open up Spotify then search for label:"" For example, to list all releases from Alfa Matrix, type the following into the search box: 'label:"Alfa Matrix"'

Spotify will return a list of all Alfa Matrix releases in its catalog. To view the latest releases from that label, just press Page down till you reach the end.

On Spotify you'll find all the latest synthpop from labels such as Electric Fantastic Sound, Wonderland Records, A Different Drum, Conzoom Records and Megahype to name a few. For the industrialists, there's deep catalogs and new releases from the likes of Out of Line, Metropolis Records, Infacted Recordings, Accession Records, Dependent, Alfa Matrix, Deathwatch Asia, and my personal indie favorite Electro Arc Records.


Spotify's Missing Music


Music licensing is arcane and country-specific, but Spotify goes to great efforts to make sure most of their vast catalog is available everywhere (in fact, Sweden has slightly more music available in Spotify than the UK). Nevertheless, you might find the occasional "not available in your country" link. Some artists and labels don't want their music on Spotify (or any other digital streaming service for that matter). These bands are a shrinking minority and chances are if they're not on there today they might be there on Spotify tomorrow, so it's worth checking back every once in a while. You probably don't care too much about the absence of Pink Floyd or AC/DC (and if you do, maybe you're reading the wrong website?) But there are a few good bands who still aren't on Spotify: Evil's Toy, Beborn Beton, Intermix, Onetwo, Wolfsheim and Rammstein for example. Actually Rammstein are on Spotify for listeners in Norway and Finland, so it depends on where you are. Besides, there's plenty more Neue Deutsche Härte on Spotify.


The Spotify Community


The support community that's grown up around Spotify is pretty vast. There are currently almost 200 websites, apps, blogs, tools and services that make use of Spotify's open nature and ease of playlist sharing.

On my own blog The Pansentient League you'll find many posts and articles with a synthpop and industrial angle, as well as Spotify hints and tips, news and reviews. I also host a "What's New on Spotify" page that automatically lists the new Spotify releases from the past seven days, all searchable by genre.

If you're on Last.fm, services like Spofm.net and SpotiMail can give you Spotify recommendations based on your listening habits. This is a great way to find out when a band you like releases something new, with the added bonus of being able to listen to it straight away on Spotify.

There's also a multitude of playlist-sharing sites where Spotify users add their specially chosen selection of tracks for all to hear. ShareMyPlaylists is the largest of these, with over 43,000 playlists to choose from (they also have apps for iPhone and Android). Some of the playlists naturally lean towards synthpop and industrial, so this is another great way to discover new bands.

I maintain a complete list of Spotify resources at The Pansentient League, so check them out for other great sites and apps. The Spotify Community Site Award Winners post might also be a good place to start.


The End (of Downloads)


For many years I'd often spend my evenings scouring sites for music to download. Sometimes I'd purchase the MP3s, but my musical appetite was so large that I sometimes downloaded music from the torrent sites. Shameful, I know. I knew it was wrong to steal from the artists, but I just couldn't afford to purchase all the music I wanted to hear. But now thanks to Spotify, I've not downloaded an MP3 for ages. I subscribe to their premium service, for which I get on-demand access to a near-limitless stream of high-quality, ad-free music (and on my mobile too). I do of course still buy the occasional CD (mostly when I want to show my support for a particular band but can't get to see them live), but my days of buying (or stealing) MP3s are now thankfully far behind me.

If you have any Spotify questions, feel free to fire them at me: I'm @afront on Twitter.

Posted by B. Van Isacker