OK, so I’ve been using the free version of Spotify on my desktop since I got my invitation and have been impressed by the service…especially the playlist sharing and the overall social element of the service. However, I have not yet taken the plunge and forked over the $10/mo ($120/yr) for the upgraded/unlimited plan.
My logic has been that using a service like Pandora satisfies my music need to discover new albums, artists, and songs since I can listen to songs I’m familiar with and it also enables me to discover new music similar to what I’m familiar with. Plus, when I look at my music purchase history these days, I generally buy 8-10 MP3 albums a year which is roughly equivalent to the Spotify annual cost plus I already have several thousand songs already in my personal music library. In essence, it’s been:
MP3’s I Purchased/Owned + Pandora = Musically Happy Steve
However, my music world has now been thrown for a tizzy as I have just discovered via Buzzfeed an insanely cool plug in for the Chrome browser that may have tipped the scales towards Spotify. The plug in basically enables you to take all the songs you have “thumbed up” on your Pandora stations and import them into a Spotify playlist (click through to original post to see the details).
So for example, on Pandora, I have a Say Hi (To Your Mom) Pandora station (based on the awesome Seattle band of the same name) and, as with my other stations, regularly “Thumbs Up” several songs per session. Now, this plug in takes that curated list that has been compiled over time and puts it in your own Spotify playlist.
For those of you Spotify users, here is the link to the aforementioned playlist – Say Hi Favorites
I can now pump all the songs I’ve ever “liked” via Pandora into Spotify. I can discover new songs, albums and artists by discovering shared and public playlists. No decisions have been made yet, but Spotify is moving to the head of the class really really quickly.
Plug-in discovery via Buzzfeed
