Various efforts have come about attempting to cash in on this phenomenon; Last.fm to Napster, they’ve all got their merits. Somewhat under the radar is Spotify, an iTunes-esque attempt at bridging the gap between the stubborn fat-cats running the music industry and the slick distribution medium that is the internet. Spotify has some great features, from playlists to quick but advanced search (which includes a command-like interface such as ‘genre:blues’). Spotify also runs very well under Wine non-natively; it’s completely free (ad-supported) and doesn’t seem to waste too much bandwidth.

Spotify is split into free and premium services. The former having audio ads every 50 or so minutes and banner ads throughout the GUI, the latter having no ads and higher-quality music.

It’s different to alternatives like Last.Fm. Spotify doesn’t run with the idea of suggesting music for you. You put in an artist and it’ll list all it has. It’s up to you to build your own playlists. Without knowing the advanced search feature like ‘genre:blues’ you might get frustrated, but I’ve found that the freedom to build my own playlists leaves me with the music I love, and not the tripe that Last.fm thinks I’ll like (nor it’s crappy ‘loved tracks’ idea).

A feature I’d love to have is the ability to purchase the playlists as CDs; that is, I click ‘burn to CD’ and Spotify mails me a burnt copy of my playlists. Bit of a nice to have, though :)

Check Spotify out. Well worth it, in my most humble opinion.

So I ended up having to purchase a new portable media player. I’d been used to my aged Samsung YP-Z MP3 player for a while with a broken screen; memorising the various menu selections to get where I needed to.

Sony have a mixed history with portable media — from MiniDisc to their Sonicstage software — so I was skeptical about choosing something from them again.

In short, the Sony NWZ-X1060 (X series) portable media player is outstanding. The OLED 3″ screen is stunning and vidid and the sound quality is unbelievable. I have Denon C751 earphones and combined with the X series I am hearing new things in tracks I’ve listened to for a while. It’s all very, very impressive.

The touch screen is great too. It’s quick, forgiving, responsive and very thumb friendly. If you’re unsure about buying it: drop your doubts and go purchase it. I got the 32 GB version and I’m really happy.

Enough of the propoganda though, there’s a point to this post. I’m an avid fan of Linux and this was my main concern when purchasing anything like this. “Will it work on Linux?!”.

In short, yes it works with Linux. It will mount just like any other mass-storage device. Good job Sony!

There are some caveats: mass copying can be a little flaky and I haven’t found anything to transcode to the WMV + Codec it requires for video (though I’ve only been look a day as of writing this).

I’ll keep looking for something that will work with regards to transcoding video.