This morning I woke up to the announcement that my beloved music streaming service, Spotify, is finally available on my Android phone! What better news to start off the week?

The application is available for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android handhelds and gives you the complete catalogue right in your hand. You can also make your playlists available offline, which means they are downloaded to your phone (or iPod Touch) and enables you to play the music wherever you are. Looking forward to testing it at the gym and the bus this week. The release was actually perfecly timed with my trip to Oslo and JavaZone this week!

I’ve tested the playback and also downloaded a couple of my playlists and it’s all working perfectly so far You should be aware that the mobile version of Spotify requires you to have an active Premium subscription, but with this solid mobile application in addition to the desktop version you now have to make an effort to not have your favourite music with you anywhere. In my opinion, 99 NOK (16.5 USD) per month is hardly a painful bill to pay for that.

I’ve fallen in love with the Lord of the Rings soundtrack when it comes to curing the Monday Blues. So this morning I figured I would share my remedy with you in the form of a Spotify playlist The list will expand and evolve, and will feature other music than just from Lord of the Rings.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by work and wishing it was Sunday still, press play, lean back and close your eyes for a few seconds. Imagine flying over beautiful landscapes, breathing in the fresh air, without the tiniest of worries. I am sure it’ll make you feel much better

• Here you go!

It’s Friday, weekend, and everyone should be entitled to get their hands on good music. I’ve got another two Spotify invites to hand out, so be quick and comment if you want one.

To those of you already running Spotify, and the two lucky ones, here’s my favourite track of the week: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Dull Life.

What’s your favourite track this week?

I’ve just gotten two more invites for Spotify. Actually I’ve got three, as one of the two I sent out last time has not yet been claimed. Be quick!

Comment here or tweet me @jarannilsen and I’ll consider sending one your way

I’ve been terrible at updating my blog lately, but I am planning on a Winter-summary post in a short while – just want to get my hands on some pictures first

On another note, I’ve got two Spotify invites, so if anyone wants to try it out give me a shout and I’ll consider giving you one.  I actually have 7 invites in total, as I managed to snatch a few codes from a site giving them away a while back. I am not sure if they work, but if you don’t make the Top 2 list, and want to try one of them, I’ll be happy to send you one

With all the sources for music we have today, one thing has struck me: The hassle of playing the music you want – when you are never able to find everything you want in one place.

As you know, I am using Spotify for most of my musical experience these days. However, there are a few songs which I miss on there. Some of them I have purchased and are available in Songbird, some others are only available on YouTube. In this Web 2.0, iEverything and whatnot-age, would it not be sweet with all these things integrated – in The Seamless Music Experience? Imagine a lightweight application, a simple playlist with a play/pause, forward and back button where you could drag & drop media from applications and websites and play them off as if they were all in the same application.

The Seamless Music Experience

If I had the time I would go ahead and develop it – the ultimate media player – but unfortunately I am bound by the space-time continuum as the rest of you (most of you).

Well – the idea is out there, if you want to implement it, go ahead. Implement some proprietary product with an “i” in front and I’ll sue the living crap out of you. Open Source it and help save the world… of music!

Following Aleksander’s example I thought I would post my music charts for 2008. These charts have been recorded by Last.fm and  does not include tracks played on my iPod and some quite heavy use of Spotify without scrobbling during December. However, the charts should give a fairly accurate picture of what was hot on my playlists during 2008

Top 10 artists

1. Coldplay (310)
2. Keane (228)
3. The Kooks (202)
4. Thirteen Senses (199)
5. Within Temptation (175)
6. Amy MacDonald (165)
7. The Killers (155)
8. Kent (144)
9. Nightwish (135)
10. The Cardigans (120)

Top 10 tracks

1. Sex On Fire – Kings of Leon (49)
2. Wire To Wire – Razorlight (47)
3. Violent and Young – Iglu & Hartly (45)
4. All the Love In Your Hands – Thirteen Senses (45)
5. Ooh La – The Kooks (44)
6. Call Someone – Thirteen Senses (43)
7. Human – The Killers (40)
8. Contact – Thirteen Senses (39)
9. Generation Ex – Kent (35)
10. Nothing In My Way – Keane (35)

Top 10 albums

1. Contact – Thirteen Senses (156)
2. Perfect Symmetry – Keane (104)
3. Inside In Inside Out – The Kooks (101)
4. Konk – The Kooks (95)
5. Best Of – The Cardigans (88)
6. X&Y – Coldplay (83)
7. The World is Outside – Ghosts (77)
8. Black Symphony – Within Temptation And The Metropole Orchestra (74)
9. Under The Iron Sea – Keane (72)
10. Slipway Fires – Razorlight (60)

That’s it! What’s your top 10?

I’ve been using Spotify for a while now and I am still loving it. I am guessing more and more of you are starting to get invites (or have bought access) as well, and thought I would let you in to my own very very sacred playlist!

• Radio Jaran (HTTP Link)

This is the playlist I usually listen to and where I add new music I like and remove the songs I am fed up of. If you have a similar playlist I would love to get a link – great way to discover new music through friends So post a comment or trackback with your list and I’ll add it!

The news of a new version of Spotify just came down the wire, and this new version is Scrobbling!

The ability to scrobble what you play to Last.fm has been one of the most requested items over the last couple of weeks and it’s great to see that the developers are listening to the community and fanbase that is starting to build around the application.

For those of you unfamiliar with Spotify; it’s a music service where you install an iTunes-, or Songbird-, like application on your computer and access music from the huge repositories of owned by several of the largest record companies. The downside is that you do not get to copy the music to your devices, but it’s one hell of a service for listening to music on your computer!

I got an invite (the service is still in closed Beta) a couple of weeks back and I have been using it constantly since that. It even runs on Linux with Wine, which is great. A few glitches here and there – the most annoying one being that the playback keeps stopping now and then and you have to restart the app. Once they fix that, and the app is out of Beta, I will be surprised if I don’t pay up those 99 NOK per month for ad-free music and the ability to share lists with friends.

I am sure Spotify will be at the top of Best Application of 2009 – it’s definitively one of the best things that has happened to music for years.