Tired of waiting for Apple to introduce a streaming music service? Frustrated at being unable to access your iTunes library when you’re away from home? A newly launched service enables you to access most of your tunes via Spotify.
Spotifitunes lets you upload your iTunes database from your PC or Mac to its website (easy instructions for where to find this XML file on PC or Mac are on the site). It then immediately presents you with a summary of your collection, broken down alphabetically by genre, artist and album.
Simply select any artist or album and, provided you have Spotify installed on you Mac or PC, it will immediately find the album or all songs by the artist from Spotify and away you go.
Of course, varying licensing arrangements mean that not all of the albums and artists listed in your iTunes library have their content available via Spotify, but it’s surprising just how well the service works across most of your music collection.
This is another great example of an innovative workaround beating the big-boys to the punch with UK-based app developer Phil Nash spotting a great opportunity. The world waits to see what Apple intends to do following its recent acquisition of streaming music service Lala, and its own move last week to enable web-based previews of tunes available within the iTunes store.
SpotifiTunes isn’t affiliated with either Spotify or iTunes and is still in beta. Also, Spotify itself is currently only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain.
Be aware that if your iTunes library is pretty hefty, you might need to be patient when uploading your XML file (mine’s 30mb). Persevere though, it’s a simple but creative little web app with some potential demand even as an interim measure whilst Apple gets its act together.
This + Spotibot = awesome! http://thenextweb.com/appetite/2010/01/04/spotibot-turbocharges-music-discovery-spotify/
Thanks for the great write up Tim. I’m glad Spotifitunes has filled a gap that many people have found useful.
Spotifitunes version 2, a much improved method of uploading and displaying your library is going into development soon, so keep an eye on it.
There seems to be a problem with this service. It loses my xml file as soon as it’s uploaded. Tried several times now but no joy. Reading the support forum confirms that this problem has been around for some time for “large” files – mine is only 7.5Mb.
@barstep: It shouldn’t have a problem with files of that size, though it may be struggling due to extra visits today thanks to this article.
Please try again later, if that doesn’t work then feel free to email me at phil [at] spotifitunes [dot] com and I will see if I can upload it for you.
Just what I need, it’s a great app. Thanks!
Sadly fails to upload files under Google Chrome and Safari on Mac OS.
Still it’s free, so can’t complain.