Spotify

Each time you install the client on another machine, you need to log in the first time; after that, you can check the box and it will remember you. This way you can fire it up just by clicking on the shortcut.

The first time you log into a new Spotify install, you'll see a relatively blank screen with some instructions on how to get started.

Here's a typical library view. Notice how much this app looks like the iTunes 9 interface—complete with album art and a sidebar, although the sidebar is for social networking and not for Genius Recommendations.

Here's an example of a playlist in action. This is from my own personal library; however, if I were to log in on a different machine, many of the tracks would be grayed out. If they're in the Spotify catalog, I could just create a new one online with the same tracks.

Here's a quick and dirty playlist of live concert tracks I threw together on a PC, using only Spotify's catalog. Once I assembled the playlist this way, I could access it from any computer with the Spotify client installed.

Here's a typical band biography page. It contains detailed text pulled from All Music Guide, plus some photos. Most of the bios I checked out were pretty readable and informative.

Click the Related Artists tab for a given band, and you'll see rows of icons depicting similar musicians. Smashing Pumpkins was a softball, but I saw relatively accurate pairings even with more obscure artists.

The What's New section shows you some new music to hit the Spotify catalog; you can also hook into Facebook and get a news feed from other Spotify users that are also your Facebook friends.

If you don't want to seed a radio station with a particular artist, you can just click on some tags on this page, and generate your own set of guidelines for the music it chooses to play.

Yep, it's yet another app that needs access to your wall. In this case, it could be a pretty useful one, at least once Spotify is available in the U.S. and other friends of yours actually have the service.

Spotify offers some configuration options, though it's not nearly as in-depth as iTunes inthis regard.

You can buy music through Spotify, but I couldn't test that as it's not available in the U.S. Buying music would let you copy it to other devices and access it without using a Spotify client. But the more Spotify appears on different gadgets, the less you would need to do this.