free version of Spotify is ad-supported, and reportedly the advertising

free version of Spotify is ad-supported, and reportedly the advertising is extremely annoying. I wouldn t know, because I ve opted to pay $10 per month for the ad-free premium service. (There s also a $5/month option with no ads and fewer features.)
Spotify s interface is less robust than iTunes and other mature music players. There are fewer options for exploring new music and for sharing your playlists with friends.
You can t burn CDs from Spotify. This makes sense given the company s business model, but it s still frustrating and means that it ll never completely replace iTunes for me.
Though the Spotify library is extensive more than 15 million songs! it s by no means complete. If you want to listen to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Metallica or other prominent digital music holdouts you ll have to find another way to do it.
Perhaps the biggest drawback is that you don t own the songs you access with Spotify. If owning your music collection matters to you, Spotify isn t a good choice. It s more like a personal jukebox than a store. (Again, it s very similar to Netflix streaming.)
(MORE: Apple s iCloud Pricing vs. the Competition)
Spotify isn t the only way to access music from The Cloud, of course. Other options include:
Grooveshark, a web-based music search engine and recommendation tool.
Last.fm, which keeps a record of the music you listen to so that it can suggest new songs. It offers a radio service.
Pandora allows users to create customized radio stations based on songs they like.
Rdio is an online service that lets you discover new music through social networking.
Why am I willing to pay $120/year for Spotify? Because I ve been paying more than that for music through iTunes and other KESS OBD TURNING KIT sources. In theory (and only time will see if this is true), Spotify will save me money. Plus, I find it Ignition Coil Tester more convenient. I love having access to all of my music at any time from nearly any device. It s like I m living in the future!
Roth's latest book is Your Money: The Missing Manual.
there