Interviews

ICO/PRO is the world’s top resource for indoor cycling instructors. Their website (indoorcycleinstructor.com) provides a wealth of advice and help for thousands of indoor cycling enthusiasts, as well as cycling studio owners and health and fitness club managers. John Macgowan hosts the Indoor Cycle Instructor podcast, an internet radio show that’s listened to by fitness professionals around the world. Since music plays such [...]

The Electricity Club is without doubt the most important website for fans of synthpop old and new. Featuring dozens of exclusive interviews with electro legends like Thomas Dolby, John Foxx, Heaven 17, New Order and OMD, TEC nevertheless doesn’t wallow in 80s nostalgia: you’ll also find reviews and features from the cream of current synthpop and electronic bands. The Electricity Club recently celebrated its first birthday, so [...]

Blackvector Magazine is a Swedish blog specializing in electro, EBM, futurepop, synthpop, harsh electro, and “clubby industrial” music.  They’ve recently started adding Spotify links to their reviews, so I thought this would be the perfect time to find out a bit more about the blog. Björn Andersson is the man in charge; I got in touch and asked him to tell us a little about his site, how and why he blogs, and his thoughts [...]

Alexander Forselius (krakelin on Spotify) is the creator of Spobbler, an ingenious server app that lets you automatically control Spotify playlists. Using its own Spotiscript scripting language, Spobbler opens up a world of Spotify programming possibilities. Alex is also an artist in his own right, with several ambient electronic albums on Spotify under the name of Dr. Sounds. I was intrigued by Spobbler and its creator, so I got in touch [...]

I was recently interviewed by Wired Magazine (USA version), where I was asked about my thoughts on Spotify: how it had changed how I listen to music, how I saw Spotify’s impact in Europe and whether I thought a US release would be good for Spotify. Here is the complete “director’s cut” of my responses.

Adrian Flanagan and Candie Payne are Sheffield-based eccentronic pop duo The Chanteuse & The Crippled Claw – one of my favourite new bands whose debut single Are You One is coming out on the 29th November. We featured them here a few months ago, when Adrian told us about his Top 10 Favourite Tracks. Since then, and with the help of I Monster‘s Dean Honer, Adrian and Candie have been busy putting the final touches to their [...]

Northern Kind are Sarah Heeley and Matt Culpin, an English synthpop band who’ve worked with synth-stars such as Alan Wilder (Depeche Mode, Recoil), Kajagoogoo, and Simon Heyworth (Simple Minds, Mike Oldfield). Northern Kind’s 2nd album WIRED was my favourite release of 2009 and it has been available on Spotify for a few months now. I asked Matt about his experiences of Spotify from an artist’s point of view: how he went [...]

First came Spotibot: a Spotify music recommendation service on Twitter (reviewed here). This included a Better Links service to spruce up the drab Spotify link pages with album art and track listings. Then came the excellent Spotibot Playlist Generator: a mashup that creates custom playlists for you based on similar artists. Now Spotibot is ready for walkies: introducing Spotibot Mobile, a webapp for Spotify Mobile that helps you to find [...]

Mister Double-X is a 30-something married father of two with a full-time job in the IT industry. He owns a 4-bedroom house, drives a BMW, and plays football once a week. Mister Double-X is also a habitual music pirate. Until very recently, The Pirate Bay would be his first port of call whenever he felt like listening to some new (or old) music. But thanks to Spotify, he has begun the slow withdrawal and is weaning himself off the torrents [...]