I’ve been extremely fortunate to have access to Spotify for a couple years now and for the past several months have been paying for the premium service. Now… I can FINALLY stop biting my tongue (or making friends jealous): Spotify opened for business in the U.S. last week! Hit me up with an email if you’d like an invite for the free, ad-supported version. Or go ahead and sign up here if you’re ready to dive in (can’t go wrong trying it out for a month) at $4.99 or $9.99/month for the fully featured desktop streaming or fully-featured mobile syncing respectively.

Read more below — a republishing of the article I wrote for LAist on July 13, the eve of Spotify’s U.S. launch — or read any of my previous posts on the service.

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Good luck sleeping tonight. Because tomorrow morning you’ll wake up with a brand new set of ears. Spotify, the online music service that has taken Europe by storm and is set on turning iTunes into merely the bloatware you sync your iPhone with is finally cleared for landing in the U.S. Doors open at 5 a.m. Thursday, reports Pop & Hiss.

Take a deep breath before visiting Spotify’s updated U.S. splash page as you may be overwhelmed by multiple quotes squealing orgasmic praise for the product (“It blows the door off of anything on the market” – L.A. Times).

We’ve tried it too and even if it took forever to finally become available in the States, it is still verifiably awesome. Now if you think you’re going to get all this goodness for free, that will have to wait — sign up for an invite here.

Tomorrow morning Spotify opens to users in the U.S. wiliing to pay a monthly subscription fee for access to nearly anything you’d want to listen to (Spotify claims 13,000,000 tracks) on demand. For $4.99/month, stream via the web and for $9.99 stream via Android or iPhone. The premium $9.99 plan also features over-the-air syncing, enabling users to listen to songs encrypted locally on their mobile device instead of having to rely on a mobile connection to stream from the cloud.

At these rates, Spotify’s service is similar to those of Rdio, MOG, and to a lesser extent Slacker and Rhapsody. Spotify’s social integration is unique in that it makes it super-easy to listen to and share playlists with your Facebook friends (who use the service) in the desktop interface.

The desktop application will sync with iTunes so it’s super-easy to become a convert (if desired). It’s also easy to sync music over-the-air to your devices and to purchase MP3 downloads at prices somewhere between Amazon’s and Apple’s.

Spotify has more than ten million users in the six countries in which it’s currently available, including one million paid subscribers.

Visit spotify.com to get yours Thursday morning.

50 cents is a great deal for the savvy investor, however, many users are sure to get got by simply clicking “Get Album” on, say, the new Beastie Boys’ “Hot Sauce Committee Party Two” and pay $14.28 straight up for the 16 tracks.

The downloads come via 7digital in 320 kbps format.

Alternatively, the digital album goes for $7.99 at Amazon (320 kbps mp3), $10.99 on BeastieBoys.com (in multiple formats including lossless plus a bonus remix), and $14.99 at the iTunes store at 256 kbps AAC (incl. 30 minute Fight For Your Right Revisited video download).

When it comes to this particular release — the choices are so varied it could be a toss up. How would you go about purchasing the MP3 download?

Last Friday Spotify rolled out an ambitious software upgrade, making its biggest charge yet in both monetizing its platform and putting the heat on Apple’s iTunes.

Spotify announced the software update on its blog, Twitter, and elsewhere.

The big news: Sweden-based streaming music application Spotify is now selling downloads: $1.29 for one; or purchase 15 downloads for $0.87 each, 40 at $0.63 per, or 100 downloads at $0.50/track. The mp3s are delivered via a partnership with UK-based 7digital.

(Interestingly, it appears that the European and UK pricing for is identical in number — for both premium subscription and downloads — but not in value. In today’s market, $50 dollars has less value than €50 which is worth less than £50. )

Additionally, Spotify’s update enables better syncing across mobile platforms, including the ability to sync with local folders and the iTunes library.

This software update was the culmination of a series of announcements — a mid-April update to the Android app, an update to the Apple iPhone Spotify app and the introduction of iPod syncing capabilities. All of these improvements allowed any of the above devices to sync a user’s chosen playlists (or entire Spotify library) over the internet. Streaming via Spotify mobile is only available to premium subscribers who pay $9.99/month or between £5 and £9.99 in the UK (as it always has been). Spotify also introduced a limit of 10 listening hours of music monthly for its free users last month, in addition to allowing five listens per track.

Over the weekend the response was mixed, however, at some point on Sunday, Spotify’s servers apparently went on the fritz. And the varied tone of user comments on Spotify’s Friday Facebook post shifted to concern. Music could be streamed, but nothing could be downloaded — and syncing was working intermittently.

This screenshot was taken before offline syncing with mobile devices stopped functioning, apparently due to issues with the aforementioned “license server.”

UPDATE: As of Monday 5/9, syncing is now working and the error message above is on longer appearing. However, the desktop interface is not recognizing the device as it did on Saturday (see image below).

The latest Spotify software update introduced this handy syncing interface (PC36100 is the codename for my HTC EVO Android smartphone).

Spotify has yet to comment on any issues in spite of the appearance of disconcerting server warnings including the ominous “We are having problems with the license server. Please try again later. (Error 21)” message that occurred repeatedly on Android devices.*

It does appear that something remains on the fritz as I was unable to download any tracks earlier, instead receiving the message Having purchased 15 downloads for $12.99 (which breaks down to $10.82 plus 20% tax [VAT]) I was anxious to download at least one track. After unsuccessfully clicking the download icon next to several tracks in the Spotify interface only to receive the message “The track you were trying to get is unavailable,” I finally succeeded with “Little Pink Plastic Bags” from Gorillaz 2011 “The Fall” album. As promised, I received a 320 kbps mp3 file in my local directory.

As Monday breaks across the pond I hope to hear something from Spotify. We’re coming to expect only bad news when Internet-based applications and services suffer server setbacks and outages and users are left hanging out to dry (see Sony Playstation).

*UPDATE: I’ve been notified via Twitter that it’s “looking into it right now and will update once we have some more info. Thanks for the notification.”

Assuming everything is resolved there may no longer be any need whatsoever for a Spotify user to open iTunes. Ever. Again.

With over 10 million users in seven countries — Finland, France, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom (1 million paying subscribers) Spotify is still not available in the U.S.in spite of its arrival seeming imminent since soon after its launch two years ago.

Intellectual Property Developers

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Caution! The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files. The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we’re just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of “24” in 24 seconds. Many will expect to get it free.

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper packages? But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content. Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product. Note to self: Don’t get over-rewarded rock stars on this bully pulpit, or famous actors; find the next Cole Porter, if he/she hasn’t already left to write jingles.

Bono’s insinuation that content must be tagged, tracked, and protected in the interest of the creator is an uneven (if not borderline fascist) suggestion.

The biggest problem with this is that bandwidth regulation affects not just entertainment (whether downloaded, streamed, for pay or for free) but everything else that operates in the digital space.

Which includes education, charity, government, and most ironically, the development, production, and broadcast of creative content itself.

Read up on Net Neutrality Bono. The movie industry is booming (in spite of a relative abundance of poor content). But the service providers aren’t just stuffing their pockets with profit, they’re limiting both consumers and creators by throttling bandwidth.

Don’t wage war on the Internet, Bono. Talk about putting your back up against the wall… please don’t go singing that song.

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Radiohead — In Rainbows.