Spotify – Outside the UK?

After talking to my friends lately, they’ve recognised my love towards Spotify, which I’ve mentioned in this blog… More than a few times.

As expected, some of them wanted to have a look at the program. However some of them live outside the UK, mostly in places in Europe that are not supported (places like Denmark and Poland) by Spotify, they don’t have access to it. This is when it came to my attention that there are a lot of blog posts about using the program outside of the UK.

Personally I wouldn’t promote it too much, as it is most likely illegal to do so, although I do believe it should be able to be used anywhere (as I’m sure the team at Spotify would agree). The process basically involves using a proxy to trick the site into thinking you’re from the UK, or asking someone from the UK to make an account for you.

Amidst all of the posts about how to do it, I haven’t noticed any talk of this though:

When I try to login it says that my current country does not match my profile?

When you login Spotify checks the Internet protocol (IP) address that you use to connect to the Internet and compares it to the country you set in your profile when you registered. If they do not match and you are away from your home country more than 14 days you will not be able to log in. If you have moved we suggest you change the country in your profile, as long as you have moved to one of our other launch countries. If you travel extensively you can purchase a premium subscription for unlimited travel. In some cases this error can occur by mistake if you use Spotify at work as many companies route their traffic through other countries therefore you appear to be abroad. If you’re at work and have this problem you can solve it by logging in to your Spotify account at home once and awhile.

What that basically means is if you do use the proxy method of tricking the website, the app itself will give you 2 weeks while it figures out that you don’t live in the UK,  or if you’re just on holiday. It then stops you from listening to anymore music. The question begs; is this rule in practice or are people managing to evade it? Getting someone from the UK to log into their account or using a proxy comes to mind again.

I’ll be watching carefully to see if there are any updates, or if anyone else has an opinion or info, feel free to post.

The iPhone and Mobile Broadband

iPhone 3G. 25,000 apps, and counting

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another post containing my useless rambling.

Yesterday I was browsing around the Internet wondering which gadget to spend my money on next, as I’m sure we all do, right? In the end I settled upon looking at some of the more popular mobile phones.

The last time I bought a phone, it was on a three year contract, however this was about… 4 years ago and it currently looks like a hi-tech brick. So maybe it’s time to finally put it to rest?

After a while of searching around and seeing a few phones which might be okay, I stumbled upon the iPhone, and many copy cats. At first glance I thought it looked really good; a phone, an iPod, and lots of other shiny applications to keep me distracted. However looking a little more carefully, I noticed it only had 16GB memory at max. My current ipod has around 80gb, quite a lot – and the better part of it is filled with music. The question begs, is it worth deleting a lot of my music (or keeping it on my old ipod) to make use of all the new applications the iPhone has to offer? My current thoughts are that it doesn’t have enough memory to house even half of the music I listen to on a regular basis, although it is a far cry better than carrying around a first-gen 80GB iPod, on top of my already brick-like phone.

Of course this lead me to look further into the apps, and since I’m not much of a tech-head I couldn’t figure out if the iPhone had broadband – it seems it has mail and Youtube, but I’m not sure if it actually has a browser. My current phone sports a WAP browser that takes about a day to load Google up, not too great. If anyone does have an iPhone (or even knows if it has a browser) feel free to comment and let me know.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been looking around a few websites for the best mobile broadband I could find, a website that did interest me was a blog I stumbled upon, here. For anyone like me who isn’t in the know when it comes to phones, it’s a good read.

My search still continues until I’m sure I’ve found the best phone to suit me, so please feel free to suggest anything.