😐

native spotify would be a great integration--  I think it will be the perfect gadget for folkdeejay 😁 he was continuously complaining about the lack of spotify in beo products..now he can open a bottle of good wine

This will help how? The following is from spotify's Wikipedia page. The service has come under fire for failing to compensate independent artists fairly. Helienne Lindvall of The Guardian reported that "indie labels... as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis."[86] Swedish musician Magnus Uggla wanted to pull his music from the service, stating that after six months he'd only earned "what a mediocre busker could earn in a day".[87] Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported in 2009 that record label Racing Junior had only earned NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times.[88] According to an infographic by David McCandless, an independent artist on Spotify would need over four million streams per month to earn US$1,160.[89] Luke Lewis of NME points to problems with the Spotify business model, saying he was "convinced the 'free' aspect of Spotify is unsustainable" and that if "Spotify is to have a future, it needs to be a viable business".[90] In September of 2011, Brooklyn-based independent label Projekt Records entered a public disagreement with Spotify, stating "In the world I want to live in, I envision artists fairly compensated for their creations, because we (the audience) believe in the value of what artists create. The artist's passion, dedication and expression is respected and rewarded. Spotify is NOT a service that does this. Projekt will not be part of this unprincipled concept." [91] A 2011 blog post alleged that the higher 320 kbps bitrate supposedly available to Premium subscribers was in reality only available on around 30% of tracks.[59] A large majority of the content was actually streamed in 160 kbps.[59] The usefulness of Spotify for listening to classical music has been criticised, because playback is not gapless (there is a slight pause between tracks), which affects much classical music, and searching is very poor.[92] This is also a problem in other types of music, including popular music, where some albums are intended to be listened to without gaps. [93] Spotify has also been criticised for bugs in the Android version, which prevents the use of offline playlist functionality on Honeycomb-based devices.[94] Spotify also faces new issues with the introduction of requiring a Facebook account. [95]

Yendys wrote:

These products are starting to become very interesting.... 

I agree here. Encore should be able to stream tracks on demand, which makes an interesting scenario.

But, don't forget you can do this right NOW using your Beosound 8 and iPhone/iPad. Just download the Spotify app to your mobile device, connect to your BS8 and you'll be able to stream audio to the BS8, on demand.

There's lots of stuff you can do with the BS8, like the above, that B&O should promote more heavily. For instance, you can use your iPhone/BS8 to stream audiobooks for your kids, rather than placing them in front of a TV.

One word of warning though....the Spotify app can be very flaky. Prone to crashing.

Tomaz wrote:

native spotify would be a great integration--  I think it will be the perfect gadget for folkdeejay 😁 he was continuously complaining about the lack of spotify in beo products..now he can open a bottle of good wine

Indeed.  😁

Although I would like to think I was pointing out a major drawback in the eyes of potential buyers, and therefore the reason for less than ground-breaking sales, rather than just 'complaining'.

Please have in mind that I spent 5/6 days a week trying to sell & install  BeoProducts in various roles for almost 20 years, and the lack of streaming was, without doubt, the #1 reason for potential owners not taking the plunge, in my experience.

I am/always was a fan of the overall design - in fact, I think I am correct in remembering  my shop was one of the first in the UK to install one, back when i was doing that.

Good news all round.

moxxey wrote:

One word of warning though....the Spotify app can be very flaky. Prone to crashing.

Perhaps - but the PC version ( which I guess the basis of the BS5 app) is solid in my experience.

Used via my Beolink system for several hours a day probably 4 or 5 days a week, and I don't recall it crashing once in recent months.

Is the apple app maybe dropping out with mobile connection issues ?

folkdeejay wrote:

Perhaps - but the PC version ( which I guess the basis of the BS5 app) is solid in my experience.

Used via my Beolink system for several hours a day probably 4 or 5 days a week, and I don't recall it crashing once in recent months.

Is the apple app maybe dropping out with mobile connection issues ?

Maybe it's simply just not too good. That can happen on Apple as well 😁 

I've been running the Windows version of Spotify on a Linux netbook under Wine (free Windows emulator), which is a totally unsupported platform for Spotify and it hasn't crashed or even malfunctioned once. Ever.

However, after Spotify introduced the five play times per track maximum on the free accounts, I haven't used it at all...

Well, in reference to an ealrier point - £5 a month is not a lot to pay for all that content, advert-free.

I had the premium for a couple of months (£10) as I was travelling and used the off-line facility a lot.  Even that, at £10 is stunning value - and of course, if more pewople subscribed, the artist payments would ( I assume) improve.

I saw a tweet from a guy who got way less than £10uk for 80,000 plays.  I think it was about £6, in fact.

Personally, I think for £4.99 its a bargain.