So Spotify has finally launched in Australia, which looks like it’ll be the last piece of the Australian streaming music puzzle for a long time to come. And it’s really great, as Australian’s now have more choice than ever. But for me, I can’t choose any of these services.
As a little bit of a background, I own a Windows Phone with 32GB of storage, which I use for all my music, and a Mac. I also have an old iPod touch but I’ve retired it in favour of the Windows Phone (Zune is the best part of Windows Phone, and probably the only good part).
See, I already have thousands of songs in my iTunes library, all obtained either through iTunes, through another music store, or the seedy depths of the internet. And this is the only reason why I’m not going to be able to go all-in with Spotify, Rdio, JB Hi-Fi Now, Songl, Zune Pass or any other service. Because they all want to replace local music, and they all give no way to upload music that you have and they don’t.
And in my head I’ve assumed that this was a bigger problem than it is. Spotify tries to solve it on iOS and Android, and they kinda do. But none of those services actually put your music in the cloud. Spotify simply wirelessly syncs it.
In fact, only Apple and Google have thought of uploading your music, and neither have a subscription service. Apple does it with iTunes Match and Google Music does it.
But I’m sick of paying $16.99+ for an album. I want to pay for something like Spotify. But how can I simply throw away songs? How can I say, oh well, Coldplay doesn’t stream on Spotify, so I just won’t listen to them (I don’t listen to Coldplay, but that’s an example. My main problem is with podcast recordings and live music recordings or music by small bands). It’s a major problem for me, as I need these MP3’s in the cloud if I want to replace iTunes, not just have these services dip a toe into my library. And I really do think Spotify is great at this, just because of the local file sync on iOS and Android. But it doesn’t work on my Windows Phone, which is probably a good thing because Windows Phone apps all suck, and it’s not going to let me listen to my library on more than one computer.
Maybe I am overreacting. But this is a major flaw with every one of these services. If I’m paying money to have access to your music anywhere in the world, why can’t I have access to mine? Either match it or upload it.