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How (and why) to get Spotify, Canada's newest music streaming service

(Photo courtesy BuzzFeed)
(Photo courtesy BuzzFeed)

You know Songza and Grooveshark, Rdio and YouTube.

Google Play Music, SoundCloud and iTunes.

But do you recall, the most famous music streaming service of all?

After years of waiting, Canadian music listeners have access to Spotify, one of the most popular music streaming services out there. For years, they've bemoaned having to settle for other streaming sites and other alternatives, or have needed to get creative when it came to gaining access to the site. Now, they have full access to both the free and premium services on the site.

By signing up for Spotify, users have instant access to a massive catalogue of over 20 million songs. It can be searched by artist, album or song, and a deep playlist functionality similar to Songza is built into both the desktop and mobile apps. Users can also build their own playlists, which can then be shared with friends on social media.

The full, ad-free Spotify Premium experience costs $9.99 a month, but users can also opt for a free account. Users on the free service will have limited mobile access and will hear around four minutes of ads every hour.

When compared to other streaming services out there, Spotify's versatility and ease of use are what make it the preferred service of many listeners. Recall an album from your childhood you haven't heard in a long time? It's probably there. Come across a song you hadn't heard before and want to hear more like it? With a couple of clicks, Spotify will generate a radio station based around that song. Feel like listening to music from video games? Here's a playlist with 947 hours of it.

It's been a long wait for Canadians; five years, in fact, since Spotify first announced plans to expand into Canada. The result is that many users have turned to competitors, like Songza and Rdio, for their music streaming needs. If you're one of those who are already loyal to another streaing service, here's why you may want to stick with what you know, and why you may want to make the switch to Spotify:

  • Cost: Both Rdio and Spotify will run you $9.99 a month for the ad-free experience, and joining Club Songza for no adds and the ability to skip more songs is $0.99 a week. Songza costs less, but does not offer the same search functionality that Rdio and Spotify do.

  • Downloads: Rdio Unlimited (their premium service) and Spotify Premium users can download music to their mobile device and listen offline, while Songza relies on streaming.

  • Curated playlists: In both Songza and Spotify, you're presented front-and-centre with song lists curated by music editors, which is a great way to listen to the latest, cutting-edge music. Rdio has "stations" with similar collections, although there's something fun about Spotify and Songza's lists sorted by mood or environment.

  • Accessibility: All three have mobile apps for listening on the go as well as a web browser-based player. (Spotify encourages users to download its standalone desktop program.)

  • Following: On Spotify, you can follow other users, including some artists, and hear the music that has been picked by that individual, a feature not available on other services (at least not supported in such a robust way).

If you're leaning towards Spotify or just want to sign up and compare for yourself, visit spotify.ca and click "log in," which will then display the login screen and a prompt to sign up if you don't have an account. You can sign in with your email address or Facebook, and need to provide a username, password, email address and your date of birth, then can download the Spotify application to your computer, available for both OS X and Windows.

Once you're up and running, you can start searching for songs, artists or albums, listen to lists curated by specific people or sorted into themes by Spotify, and start queueing up music to create your own playlist.

Do you have a favourite music streaming service? Share your picks in the comments below.

With files from Andrew Evans.

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