First of all let me say that I love the Spotify concept. I have promoted it wildly with friends and colleagues - 'bigged it up' at parties when it's connected to the stereo. It has also turned me away from P2P to find music.
Now however the honeymoon period is over. I have cancelled my premium subscription and removed the apps from my mobile devices. Why?
1. The desktop app continually loses the links to local files stored on my NAS. I have imported my itunes library so can sync local files, but the links from Spotify are lost on a random basis meaning that the sync to the mobile app is unreliable
2. The Android app does not reliably sync local files. Partially because of (1) but also even though I select files to sync offline and the app showing me that they are sync'd, I have a nasty surprise too many times when I find that the track is not actually available.
3. There are no arrangements for family users. I had spotify on my home PC, my Android, my wife's iphone, and the kids's Android (x2) - this is beyond the premium limit of 3 concurrent users. Once you hit the limit, the offending device has it's tracks removed (without asking!). I am not paying another £10 a month for 3 more. Given that Spotify seem to have a policy of increasing the number of devices you can access their service on (Onkyo, squeeze etc) this is a huge oversight.
4. The development cycle appears dead. I dont understand what the development priorities are. They announce that Onkyo now has Spotify in it's new AV receivers yet existing premium users get no responses to key basic requirements. For example, playlist sorting, folders on mobile, landscape mobile version etc etc
5. The mobile apps are limited. See (4)
So what now?
Back to just using local files and waiting for Amazon cloud music and Google to do their thing.
It's often the pioneers and early successes that fall by the wayside once the big boys move in - will this happen to Spotify???
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