I’m not a fanatical music lover I have to say, I listen to it and I do like it but I’m not an addict like some, however I do use iTunes, have a couple of ipods and buy probably 20/30 albums per year.

That was up until Wednesday when Shak fired me a link over for a beta test of Spotify, He had mentioned it a while back when were skiving in some far flung place so was aware it was being developed but didn’t realise it was as big as deal as it is, it’s a start up involving some known guys such as the ever smiling ex CJ UK front man Jonathan Forster and a whole host of Swedish ex Tradedoubler and inter web knowledgeable guys with way too many vowels in their names.

I installed it and fired it up, looked a bit like iTunes, but much less cluttered, I clicked the first album listed there and it just started playing instantly.. so I skipped it ahead by dragging the timeline bar and it let go, it just instantly (again) started playing from there.. all good so far.

I then searched for the first artist that came to mind .. Queen.. don’t ask why.. I am not big fan, and there were loads of tracks listed, I clicked the first one and it started to play (yes instantly.. noticing a pattern yet !?)

Just looking at the HMV top ten, seven of the brand new albums are in Spotify, the main exception was Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul but other Oasis albums are on Spotify so I’d guess this one will be shortly too.

Basically Spotify is like having a share folder on your computer to EMI, UMG, Sony BMG, WMG, etc. record companies, it’s got all the music you could ever want to listen to, even foreign music, there are millions of tracks that you can stream all day long as much as you want however many times you want to all for free.

The free version is advertising supported so every 30/60 minutes I think there’s a brief audio advert but it’s not intrusive and only lasts maybe 20/30 seconds, the paid ad free version is a jaw dropping £9.99 per month.. for potentially 720 hours of listening to almost any tracks you want to.

So for just over the price of one iTunes album per month you can listen to what you want, You can drag and drop tracks to create play-lists of anything you wish to so it’s like radio but specifically what albums and tracks you want to listen to in the order you want to.

I really can not see how iTunes, as good as it is, can compete with a one off subscription service like this unless it too modifies it’s income model, the only plus factor is that with iTunes you can burn the music where as Spotify is streamed.

The Spotify team have pulled together an amazing product, it’s going to explode across the web like an ebola outbreak but in a fun way, the management team have strong affiliate roots so I trust we’ll see it marketed down the channel at some point so hopefully we can all get involved, help it grow and share in the billions these guys are going to bank.

Sign up now here www.Spotify.com you can only buy it at present but for £9.99 it’s a bargain