You can surely read my WIRED colleagues (we CAPITALIZE it for some reason) giving you the real story about Spotify, the cloud-based free music service that launched in the U.S. today after years of setbacks and anticipation. For pro tips, I suggest starting here. But let's say you take a less rational approach to your new technological salvation. Let's say you want to play with Spotify while, oh, reporting and finalizing a long story about something else, blogging in the meanwhile, keeping track of Twitter important current events and otherwise multitasking. You need the half-assed guide to Spotify.
Basic facts: this will cost you nothing. Except an invite while they roll out the U.S. beta. Beg for one on Twitter or use Klout. It worked for me. If you want to sync your Spotify account with your phone, that's going to cost you $10 per month. And you know what? I happily paid for that. The ability to stream any music I can find in the cloud, that I search for and choose (ahem, Pandora)? Way worth it. Doing it on wi-fi worked like a dream. I'll be heading out soon and seeing how it performs over Verizon 3G. And then how it affects my bill...
The music library started out great. Not perfect, but great. Fucking Age of Quarrel by the Cro-Mags isn't on there, and I wanted to hear that today. But I settled for making a playlist called "Street Justice" based on songs about "Street Justice." Another thing I really wanted to hear today? Big L's classic Lifestyles Ov Da Poor And Dangerous. Spotify had that ready for me. Also a 2011 Shelter LP (???), which I listened to just because it was now an option for me.
App interface is supereasy. Clearly modeled on iTunes, which is a comforting familiar thing. Creating a playlist is a matter of selecting and dragging a song into a folder all set up for you. I didn't have a single hiccup playing any streamed music.
Don't get the point of syncing your iTunes library with Spotify. You've already got that on your computer and, likely, phone and/or tablet. The joy of Spotify is to let you hear all this music you don't have, anyway. (And I'll probably move my music to iCloud when Apple rolls that out, anyway.) I started to sync out of habit, but then it took forever and I had calls to make, so I said fuck it.
Haven't used any of the social functions of Spotify yet, but I'm excited for those. Imagine the possibilities for instantly judging your friends, neighbors and strangers!