Spotify leaves TiVo

Virgin Media chap Spiderplant has confirmed that the Spotify app on TiVo is no more.

“We’re sorry, the Spotify app is no longer available on Virgin TV. To carry on enjoying your Spotify subscription you can head online to Spotify.com.
If you have your Spotify subscription through Virgin Media you’re still able to enjoy your full Spotify service across any of your other devices.”

It was not a great App (if I called it ‘weak’ I’d be being generous) but it’s another lost service for VM customers that I know people used. Originally it had all kinds of problems and I stopped using it when I found that I had to type in my email and password every single time I used it.

The NowTV box Spotify App is better, and even better are the desktop and mobile applications Apps which you can connect to Bluetooth speakers with.

Why I've quit Spotify

Virgin Media's original Spotify deal was a no-brainer: free Premium access for six months (or for some of us a full year) and almost unlimited access to the world's CD collection. Once my original free year expired I signed up for the ongoing Premium service at £9.99 a month, mainly so that I could continue to access it on my phone and iPad.
But now I've cancelled. Here's why.

1. There is STILL a problem with streaming Spotify over VM broadband during the evenings and over weekends, with the service quitting after a short period. It's too unreliable at home to listen to.
2. The sound quality, even at the Extreme setting, isn't a patch on iTunes or a 256k AAC rip from a CD.
3. The TiVo App isn't the best. And I don't want to play music through a TV sound system tuned for movies rather than music.
4. The iPhone App is, after the last update, even worse. There's a problem with nested folders that means any music you've neatly filed away by artist is either deleted or tucked away in a random folder within folder within folder bug - I lost over 30 playlists when this bug was introduced.
5. The iPhone App still doesn't have any cache clearing capability, which means the more you use Spotify, the more it fills up your device. The only way to release that space is to delete the App and start again. Not the worst workaround, but annoying. 
6. £9.99 in the UK but only $9.99 in the US. Yes, I know we have to pay VAT on downloads, but that doesn't strike me as particularly fair to UK customers.
7. Albums come and go at random. Several of my playlists now have tracks that are no longer playable. Grrrrrr.
8. Modern music is shite. 
9. I've got over 80gb of my favourite music in my iMatched-iTunes. And anything new I'm interested in I can give a listen to in the free Spotify.
10. Some times more means less. I prefer small bookshops' selections to the infinite shelves of Amazon. I prefer discovering new music from 6Music to hunting through the dross on Spotify. It was great to re-aquaint myself with some albums I don't own any more, but it also made me realise why I didn't buy them when I moved to digital.

So farewell for now, Premium Spotify. Maybe you will return at some point to my Direct Debits, but somehow I doubt it. Music's too important to me to be left to poorly written software and a service that's unreliable when I use it most. If I didn't have 30+ years of back catalogue already available to me digitally I would maybe reconsider, but I do. Time for some Beatles, methinks...

Spotify - free Virgin Media year is up

If, like me, you signed up for a free year of Spotify Premium through Virgin Media you'll find that if you want to continue with the service you now need to pay. £9.99 a month to continue the Premium service, £4.99 for the Unlimited (no ads, but no mobile option either) or you can stick with the free service with those pesky ads every few tracks. Details at Spotify.
Which is fair enough - the original offer was last August so I have had a couple of weeks' extra at no cost. Somewhat surprised that neither VM nor Spotify emailed me about it, but the whole thing's been pretty half-hearted by Virgin Media from the start. And there are still occasional issues with the service streaming over the VM network, especially for Sonos users.

Spotify update, UPDATED

Back in May there were many reports of Virgin customers finding the Spotify service unusable over VM broadband, including me (see this post: Spotify problem fixed - oh no it isn't).
Well, I've been using it all day and I'm pleased to report I've had no stuttering whatsoever, so it looks like it may be fixed. Still not convinced I will pay for the service when my free year ends, but at least it's working properly again.
(Incidentally, there's a quick workaround you can use if you have stuttering service on an iPhone: make the playlist available for offline listening. Be sure to select the Extreme quality setting to get the best sound.)
UPDATE, JULY 15TH: Not fixed. VM reckon I have an issue with my signal strength again. Will leave it until after my upcoming holiday before booking any engineer. Anyone else having issues still?

Spotify issues?

If you have had issues using Spotify over your Virgin Media account, they'd like to hear from you. Check out VM's Spotify Issues thread.

Spotify problem "fixed"? UPDATE: oh no it isn't...

I'd pretty much given up with my Spotify service from Virgin Media: the service promises so much but of late has been pretty much unusable with tracks playing for a few seconds and then stalling, and playing again then stalling. Throw in a less-than-reliable iOS mobile App and it's proven to be worse than useless. Turns out I'm not alone:

"Virgin Media has been investigating a problem some customers have had with streaming music from Spotify during busier times of the day. "We have identified a recent issue with congestion between the Virgin Media network and Spotify's data centre which can occur intermittently during peak times. "Following some routing configuration changes, this congestion should now be alleviated; however further analysis is being conducted and additional routing changes or capacity upgrades will be implemented as needed to avoid re-occurrence of this issue as the popularity of the service grows. We apologise for any inconvenience."

Hmmm. Somewhat not monitoring things properly? Why was there no mention of this problem until customers started complaining? I found the service unusable during evenings and weekends and thought it was the flaky App on my iPhone, but turns out it's just maxed out and nobody at VM did much about it.
UPDATE: Not fixed. I'm getting the usual Sunday morning stuttering on Spotify every minute or so.

Spotify App updated

A new update for the Spotify mobile app brings higher quality 320kbps music streaming to Apple device users. The free update to the mobile app has an 'Extreme' quality mode, which allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to match the highest quality audio mode offered on Spotify's desktop service for the first time on a mobile device. As yet other Spotify mobile apps for Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone have not had an update. To access the new higher quality streams go in to 'Settings' and then 'Stream', where you'll find the 'Extreme' mode. While Spotify Premium users had already been able to enjoy 320kbps audio on the desktop client, mobile access was limited to 160kbps.
UPDATE: Well, it's a nice idea but unfortunately it's a little buggy. Whilst the 320k streaming seems fine the sync version keeps reverting down to the lower quality setting. And it's not just me as this thread shows - there is a workaround though (from David on page 4 of the thread).