Spotify

If you don't have your favorite music on your hard drive, you can still find it and play it on the Internet, but a slow connection and long buffering times can make it hard to play any track. The advantages that Spotify has to offer are numerous. It lets you find your favorite music almost instantly and play it immediately, without downloading any tracks, but it is also capable of much more. The application makes it possible to share music with your friends or listen to their tracks, compile your own playlist and, most importantly, play it from anywhere.

Before using Spotify, you will have to create an online account. It will not take long and you can also use your Facebook account to log in. Installing the application is not a challenging task. When you run the 85 KB setup file, the software's components will be downloaded and installed on your computer automatically.

You may need a few minutes to look around the interface, but understanding its functions is not difficult. You can access various sections by clicking various options, located on the left side of the window. Obviously, you can find music tracks by typing their names, artists or albums in a search box. The results are listed instantly in the central area of the interface. Playlists, artists and albums are displayed separately, in the same area and you may click one of these items to filter the results.

Once you find your music, you will see that Spotify places many possibilities at your disposal. You can play a track right away, just by double clicking its entry in the results list or you can add multiple tracks to a queue. The playback controls are located on the lower edge of the interface, where you will also find options to shuffle or repeat tracks. The interesting part is that you may jump to any location, in a track's timeline and the software will not keep you waiting until it loads a buffer.

Spotify lets you create your own playlists and populate them with the music you find, without downloading a single file. Additionally, you can share one or more tracks via Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. Alternatively, you may send a selection of tracks to a specific friend. Sharing music via Spotify is done much easier, by simply clicking a star icon, next to each track. The music you share and the tracks received from other Spotify users are listed on separate pages, so you can find a specific item fast. When sharing music, it is also possible to see what other persons are listening to, on their Facebook pages.

Mobility is another advantage of Spotify application. If you connect an iPod to your computer with a USB cable, the software will synchronize your MP3s, if you want to. The application is available for Android and iPhone as well. An interesting and useful feature is the possibility of synchronizing music with these devices, over a wireless network.