To help kick off our Spotify office in Oslo, we want to offer our Premium users in Norway a chance to attend a party and help celebrate!

The party takes place at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo on the 18th of February from 6pm. Food and welcome drinks will be served, and there will be live performances by Harrys Gym, Kråkesølv and Chris Lee w/band. DJ Hercules and DJ-colleagues Hoetell will make sure the music never stops.

So how do you get on the guest list? By being one of the first 50 to send an email to spotify@concom.no. Remember to put “Premium user wants to party” in the subject field. The invitation will allow you and a guest entrance to the party, the event is 20+.

We’ve got a new monthly playlist feature for you, put together by our good friends over at Drowned in Sound. If you’re not aware of DiS, it’s a music community which has been doing an amazing job in providing opinions and recommending records since 2000. Each month, the site’s founder will compile a link-laden playlist for you featuring 20 of the previous month’s finest releases, primarily from the ‘alternative’/indie-rock/electronic sphere.

So, here’s the first playlist in this series Drowned in January 2010 playlist and the commentary from Sean Adams:

1) Owen Pallett ‘Lewis’ Dream’

Plink, plink. Kicking off this playlist is something slight. This gentle and genteel track is from the violin-wielding former Arcade Fire and Last of the Shadow Puppets collaborating man formerly known as Final Fantasy, whose new album Heartland was released via Domino Records this month, read DiS’ 8/10 review of the album here.

2) Frightened Rabbit ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’

Fans of indie-rock royalty The Shins and The National who haven’t got The Winter Of Mixed Drinks (Fat Cat) scribbled in their diary on March 1st, do so now because if this song and a few others I heard live are anything to go by, these Grey’s Anatomy-soundtracking Scots have a real treat in store. Read our interview with the band about the album.

3) Paul Simon ‘Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard’

Brooklyn’s angular indie-popsters Vampire Weekend released their second album this month but try as they might, they still haven’t bettered this classic track from the legendary Paul Simon. However, they did write a a great director’s commentary-like guide to Contra for DrownedinSound.

Continue reading… »

We’re in the process of releasing an update to Spotify, version 0.3.23. We’ve made some minor bug fixes and added password protection to download purchases which you can modify in the preferences menu.

The other main change with this release is the addition of a ‘Related artists’ tab to the artist view.

This feature is pretty exciting for us as it’s the first time we’ve used our own data to power recommendations. Previously we’ve used genre and artist tagging from AllMusic for related artists which worked well, but did not cover a large portion of our catalogue. What we’ve done now is to go through months and months of listening data and look closely at what people listen to.

This allows us to see that users who listen to a lot of The Rolling Stones, for example, are also big fans of Iggy Pop or The Byrds. The new feature pulls some of this information together to show you a range of related artists in one tab.

The ‘Related artist’ tab is the first of many uses for this data and we hope you’ll be able to find some great new bands you might not have otherwise heard of.

La conociste con ‘This Is The Life‘ y ahora te ofrecemos la posibilidad de ver a Amy Macdonald en directo el próximo lunes 8 de febrero presentando su segundo trabajo, ‘A Curious Thing’.

Sorteamos 2 entradas para el concierto exclusivo en Madrid. Si te haces una cuenta Premium ahora, o ya la tienes y te gustaría ir a ver Amy actuando por favor déjanos un comentario y entra en el sorteo. Si eres ganador, te informaremos el próximo viernes por e-mail.

A partir d’aujourd’hui, si vous habitez en France métropolitaine, vous pouvez librement vous inscrire à notre service gratuit, Spotify Free.

Pourquoi ouvrir maintenant ? Après plusieurs mois sur invitation, nous sommes sûrs de pouvoir maintenir la qualité du service pour un grand nombre d’utilisateurs.

Pour s’inscrire, c’est facile – rendez-vous simplement sur la page Démarrer et entrez votre numéro de téléphone mobile. Nous vous enverrons un code à entrer sur cette même page et vous pourrez créer immédiatement votre compte Spotify.

Cela vous permettra de faire un premier pas vers l’expérience musicale innovante que vous propose Spotify Premium : la musique sur votre mobile, même hors connexion Internet, où que vous soyez dans le monde, avec une meilleure qualité d’écoute et sans interruption, pour 9,99€ par mois. (Je veux en savoir plus sur Spotify Premium)

Votre numéro de téléphone sera uniquement utilisé pour vous envoyer le sms contenant le code d’inscription. Spotify effectue cet envoi gratuitement.

Earlier today we were alerted by a number of users that Spotify was being blocked by various versions of Symantec/Norton anti-virus products. This caused the anti-virus software to falsely identify Spotify as a Trojan. I can assure you that Spotify is not a Trojan, this is simply a misunderstanding on Symantec’s part.

Both Spotify and Symantec are aware of this problem and they have been very quick to respond and release an update for their anti-virus software.

We’re told by Symantec that if you are running SEP or SAV, then Rapid Release definitions have just been released dated 28/01/2010 rev. 2 - these also have the fix included. They will be included in the next full release for both SEP and SAV. You can also manually download and install the new Rapid Release if you’d like. More help can be found on our forums.

If you need to reinstall Spotify it is quite easy to do and you can always log in with your existing account, no need to create a new one. You can download the installer from our website if necessary. Once you’ve restarted Spotify you may need to go to the Internet Properties in Symantec/Norton and ensure that Spotify is not blocked so it can connect to the internet.

We’re really sorry that this happened but we hope everyone can get back up and running soon.

Update: Symantec have updated Norton Antivirus (using Live Update). After that you may nee to restore the spotify.exe -file from the Antivirus quarantine list and Spotify should then work.

After the successful events in London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Boston, Music Hack Day is coming to Stockholm. Music Hack Day, you might wonder… what is that?

In short, the Music Hack Day initiative is a super intensive 24 hour event that tries to gather some of the world’s most interesting technology startups in the music industry; Spotify, SoundCloud, SongKick, Playdar, Last.fm and the Echo Nest are only some of the participants that will join forces during a weekend of innovation and creativity.

The event will take place this weekend, the 30th & 31st of January, at the Doberman HQ in Stockholm. We’re really proud to be a part of the event, and are hoping that we see some really cool hacks coming out of it.

A slew of pre-release today to let you know about. First off for Spotify Premium users in France we have the latest album from Luke. Their new album, D’autre Part, is available exclusively on Spotify for the next two weeks and users can also enter a contest to meet the band in person.

For subscribers in the UK we have the debut release from Ke$ha who has been lighting up the charts with her single, TiK ToK. Her album, Animal, is being released in the UK next week but premium subscribers can listen to it here first.

In Sweden, Norway and Finland we have the latest release from Swedish pop group Freda’. Their new album, Ett mysterium, is now available for subscribers.

Also available today for premium subscribers in Sweden, this one from British electropop band Hot Chip. Their new album, One Life Stand, is the follow up to the hugely successful 2008 album, Made in the Dark.

Our final pre-release today comes from Finnish group, Husky Rescue, who will be releasing their new album, Ship Of Light, shortly and are making it available to all users before it’s release.

On February 16th the BRITs turn 30! The preeminent UK music awards show is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and the nominees for the awards have now been announced. You can check out tracks from the nominees with our BRIT Awards 2010 playlist.

As part of this year’s showcase the BRITs will also be looking back on some of the best albums and performances of the the past 30 years as part of a special retrospective. To be a part of the show you can also vote for:

The Best British Album of 30 Years
The Best British Single of 2009
The Best British Breakthrough Act of 2009
The Best International Breakthrough Act of 2009

Visit http://brits.co.uk/voting for more information

A partir du 25 janvier, les utilisateurs Spotify Premium français pourront écouter en avant première le nouvel album de Luke, D’autre part, 2 semaines avant sa sortie.

Le groupe a également créé une liste de lecture avec leurs morceaux favoris. Pour l’écouter, cliquez ici : La sélection de LUKE

Enfin, nous vous offrons 4 places (2 x 2) pour voir le groupe sur scène et les rencontrer lors d’un meet & greet au Bataclan (Paris) le 26 mai prochain.

Pour gagner, laissez-nous un commentaire ici même sur le blog en nous disant pourquoi vous devriez être choisi et nous informerons les gagnants par e-mail avant le 15 février. N’oubliez pas que vous devez être membre Premium pour gagner – abonnez-vous à Spotify Premium et participez au concours.

D’autre part est le 5ème album de Luke, plus pop mais fidèle à la tension rock à laquelle le groupe nous a habitué, le public sera surpris et les fans sûrement comblés. Il marque 9 ans de carrière et place Luke comme leader de la scène rock française aujourd’hui.