If you’ve managed to escape all the hype about Spotify, congratulations – you’ve found a hiding spot that Osama Bin Laden would envy. The noise about the streaming music service has been everywhere – even noted Western philosopher and parenting expert Britney Spears has recommended Spotify!

What’s the buzz about?

Currently available only in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands and (as of this week) the United States, Spotify boasts a catalog of 15 million songs. Downloading and installing the program takes a minute or two, and songs from the seemingly endless catalog are available in seconds with a mouse click. Here’s a quick (1 minute) video that’ll give you the basic rundown:

The service is available in three flavors – Free (available by invitation only), which lets you access the service but sprinkles in some ads; Unlimited ($4.99/mo.), which eliminates the ads and enables you to take your music abroad; and Premium ($9.99/mo.),  which additionally enables you to stream music to your portable device and experience upgraded sound quality.

Request an invitation

Spotify also lets you listen to music already on your computer, so your iTunes library is available from the Spotify dashboard. Searches take a second or so, and with 15 million songs, you’re guaranteed to find whatever music you enjoy – from rock, blues, classical, jazz, electronica – you name it. Even Ms. Spears’, er, body of work is available.

There’s a lot to like here.  If you’d like to request an invitation for the free service, click here:  Spotify invitation 

7.19 Update

Screenshots

Here are a few quick screenshots that capture some of Spotify’s capabilities. When you search for an artist, tracks are returned in terms of popularity; of course you can also search by album (or artist, if you’ve searched for a song title) — (click on any of the following images for a close-up)

Note also that thumbnails of this artist’s albums appear at the top; click on one, and you’ll see just the tracks from that album:

Drag the songs you like into a playlist (you can create custom playlists; in this case I dragged songs into “Misc”). After doing so, the tracks appear in my Library, along with the tracks which were already in my (local) iTunes library. Access your account from another computer, and all the tracks you’ve gotten from Spotify will be available to you. The “Local Files” folder includes those tracks which were already resident on that particular computer, by the way:

Here’s a shot of the Spotify homepage:

Finally, you can create custom playlists; log on with another computer, and they’ll be available to you. If you opt for one of the premium versions, you can listen to these tracks offline.

All in all, I’ve really been wowed by Spotify. Definitely check it out.

I recently received an invitation to Google’s Music Beta – its cloud-based music storage service that lets you store up to 20,000 songs, regardless of origin, for free. Once uploaded, you can listen to your music on any

Setting up Music Beta couldn’t be much simpler; if you wish, you can opt to receive free songs as you prepare to upload your library:

Part of the system is Google’s Music Manager:

You can select where you want to pull music files from:

Adding your music – if you have an extensive collection – can take quite a while. I uploaded about 1700 songs, and it took over 12 hours to do so. Of course, it happens in the background, and as you can see below, you can listen as your music uploads.  If you have a really large collection, it could take days.

One of the neat aspects of Music Beta is that you can listen to your music wherever you have a web browser – there’s no need for iTunes; with Apple’s iCloud system, you’ll need an iOS device or iTunes running on a computer.

The music player interface is simple, and easy to navigate. You can view music by artist, albums, songs, or genres:

You can learn more about Music Beta and request an invitation, here:  About Music Beta

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood are touring together in June – Clapton/Winwood tour dates.  I’ve seen both perform during the last few years and this promises to be a terrific series of concerts.  To whet your appetite, here’s a clip of the two from the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival:

Having not ventured onto our bathroom scale for months and months, I was subjected to quite a shock a week and a half ago when I weighed myself.  My mid sized, ought-to-weigh-about-155-to-160 frame was carrying around 176lbs.  Or so I thought.

When I weighed myself this past Monday morning I reenacted the scene I described a week ago – except now the scale said 180!  I did precisely the same thing I’d done before,  stepping on and off the scale several times in disbelief and utter futility. 180.  So I went out and bought a much better digital scale.  It said 180.  Sigh.

So:  here are the stats –

At the outset (let’s call it as of 12/8/08) -  180 lbs.,  BMI: 26.6

Courtesy of the new scale, my weight this morning, 12/14/08:  177.1 lbs., BMI 26.2; down 2.9 lbs. in one week

Goals:  drop 5 lbs. by Christmas; drop a total of 20 lbs. by April 15, 2009

As I’ve mentioned before, our diet is actually pretty good.  With me it’s a matter of not falling prey to treats/junk at work, not snacking in the evening and cutting down my fat (butter, cheese, etc.) intake.  Plus exercising more – and I’m doing a really good job of that.  I’ll post about my workout routine this week.

And now for something completely different.  I came across this this morning:  James Brown and Pavarotti in a “It’s a Man’s Man’s World” duet…..   wow!

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Enjoy your Sunday and have a great week!

I somehow managed to pick up a head cold just as we left Vegas last Thursday…  and it has merrily progressed into a full respiratory meltdown. I’m fairly certain I’ll survive, but it has sapped my energy and hence my posting.

On a positive note, I have ordered a Rick Steves Classic bag and will give it a full evaluation along with the Red Oxx Air Boss. They certainly represent two very different executions of a similar concept for “one bag” travel. Look for my review in another week or two.

With that, I’ll leave you with Mr. Knopfler and the Nottingham Hillbillies. Sheesh I wish this guy would play more straight ahead blues! (although Nottingham Hillbillies obviously has a country flavor to it; if you’re interested, search YouTube for the Knopfler/Clapton version – very tasty!)