Spotify from everywhere

Last days I tried a new European streaming music service Spotify. Spotify is a downloadable client for Windows and Mac users that lets you search, browse and stream a deep collection of music. Sadly, it is only available in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Spain and France and you need an invitation to join.

The user experience is beyond even the best web based streaming services like last.fm, Deezer… It acts like a fully stocked iTunes, with everything hyperlinked to easily find related music. Creating playlists is a snap. There is no way to move music outside of the application, or onto music devices. But it is the best way to legally find and stream music for free that I’ve seen

I have no invitation and I live in Belgium, but I’ve been using Spotify all afternoon. There have previously been posts on getting into the service from a banned location once you have an invitation using a proxy server. Today on TechCrunch, via a blog, they left instructions on how to use Spotify without an invitation. I tried it, and it works (for now).

Invite yourself from anywhere:
1) Go to http://www.lazyfoo.co.uk/
2) Enter the following URL: https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
3) Create your account with a UK postcode – check http://www.postcodesearch.org.uk/

It’s likely that the proxy server will be banned shortly, but there are countless others in the non-banned countries. The important thing is to visit this url from that proxy server. And I recommend you do it now, before the hole is plugged.

Some other proxys:

• http://www.daveproxy.co.uk
• http://wildweasels.co.uk
• http://awemazing.co.uk

Fixing some spotify issues

In an article published some months ago on FileShareFreak, they introduced how to join spotify from banned locations. If you kept up with logging in to your account at least every two weeks through UK web proxies (assuming you selected UK as your country of choice), you may still have received a notice upon logging in that says, “Your current location does not match that set in your profile. You may travel with Spotify, but only for 14 days”. Worse yet, if you failed to login for more than 14 days the message becomes more dire, whereby you won’t even be able to gain access to the Spotify application, due to mismatched countries in your profile and home IP address. Here’s a few tips to get Spotify back in action.

Login issues

If you haven’t successfully logged in to Spotify for more than 14 days, it’s likely that you’ve received the “Login Failed” message, accompanied with “Your current country does not match that set in your profile“. Updating your profile likely won’t do you any good, since your home IP (when running Spotify) will not match the country you selected via an overseas proxy, which you probably can’t change anyways. Not to worry, all is not lost. While the ability to login to the Spotify application is now a dead-deal, you can still log into your account on the website. This is important because it’s very likely that you still have unused invitations to give, even if you yourself can’t login to the program. Thus, you can then invite yourself. Then you can create another mail-account (or just use an alternative address) and create & send an invite to yourself.

Now that you’ve successfully signed up for that second account, re-install Spotify and login.

If you recently received the message, “you may travel with Spotify, but for only 14 days“, it means that Spotify has recognized that your home IP address is not the same as set in your profile. One solution would be to use a UK VPN provider. While not a free alternative, you won’t be getting any more of those 14-day messages, either.

A solution is to use a SOCKS proxy. Since you’re still able to login to the Spotify application, you can change the connection settings and set it up to run through a free SOCKS proxy.

Over at www.samair.ru/proxy/socks.htm, you’ll find working SOCKS 4 & 5 proxies, as arranged by country. UK proxies can be found on page 17 and 18. Next to each proxy, you’ll notice “server support: 4″ – which means SOCKS 4. This is important to take into consideration, since you’ll need to select either SOCKS 4 or SOCKS 5 in Spotify.

To do this, launch Spotify and select Edit > Preferences from the main menu. Under the Proxy section, select either Socks4 or Socks5 from the dropdown list. Enter in a Host and a Port number from a country you selected in your profile (when signing up), but leave the ‘username and password’ fields blank.

Next, scroll all the way to the bottom of that Spotify settings page, and click Apply. Now, exit and restart Spotify.

Not all of the proxies from Samair will work, so if you develop an error message when logging in, try a different one. There’s a vast array of non-UK proxies to choose from, as well. If you constantly run into login problems, it could be a firewall issue, or antispyware software that’s blocking the connection.

There’s even the option to use Samair’s HTTP Proxies in Spotify (such as this UK one – 212.241.180.239:81).

If you run into repeated problems, try to reinstall (update) Spotify with the latest version: http://www.spotify.com/en/download

fixing issues, music from everywhere, Spotify

(dutch spoken movie)

Documentary, West Flemish

Today, I received a mail from Adobe and they announces that I am selected for the semifinal round in the Application Development category for the Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA).
I am selected with my  ’Yahoo Weather’-entry that I created for the lesson Multimedia at school (Technical University of West-Flanders, dept. PIH).
It’s an AIR-application that uses the Yahoo!-weather API. Via this application you can view the weatherdetails from your favourite locations. Also the latest six locations you’ve viewed are automatic saved, so you can view the latest locations again by a simple click.

Here’s a screenshot of my Yahoo! Weather widget:

Download on http://labs.vyaene.be/apps/widget.air

http://me.vyaene.be/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/weatherapp1.jpg

(You need to install Adobe AIR before you can install my widget.)

ADAA, Adobe, Air, Flash, Yahoo! widget