I confess to being a sci-fi geek. I love science fiction in any format: books, movies, comics, television. I have seen every episode of Doctor Who, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate and Battlestar Galactica to name a few. Each show had a terrific theme tune (well, except for Quantum Leap) and fortunately lots of them are on Spotify. There are many karaoke-style covers albums of theme tunes, but Spotify also has a good supply of Original Television Soundtracks from shows like Doctor Who and Star Trek. Read on for a look at some of the best.

Star Trek / Star Trek: The Next Generation / Deep Space Nine / Voyager

Spotify has quite a few original soundtrack Star Trek albums. Jerry Goldsmith’s themes are included on Star Trek: The Next Generation – Encounter at Farpoint and Star Trek: Voyager – Caretaker. These soundtrack albums feature incidental music from Jay Chattaway and Dennis McCarthy, who also wrote the majestic theme for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Emissary. And back where it started, Alexander Courage’s original theme can be heard on all three volumes of the original series soundtrack albums, including Star Trek: Volume 2 – Doomsday Machine and Amok Time.

Stargate: SG-1

Joel Goldsmith took the original David Arnold theme from Stargate: The Movie and made it his own. Spotify has two Stargate soundtrack albums: one called simply Stargate SG-1 (which has all the music from the pilot TV episode) and the other is The Best of Stargate SG-1 Season 1 – Original Television Soundtrack.

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Tangerine Dream’s Christopher Franke composed the music for all five seasons of Babylon 5. His stirring theme tune evolved from year to year, cleverly reflecting the major themes of that season’s story arc. His music for the finale episode Sleeping In Light is one of the very few soundtrack albums I enjoy listening to from start to finish. Unfortunately Spotify has none of the episodic CDs, but there is still one official release: the soundtrack album for straight-to-DVD movie Babylon 5 – The Lost Tales.

Doctor Who / Torchwood

Although BBC Worldwide releases are absent from Spotify, a rift in the space-time continuum of licensing has meant that a few Doctor Who and Torchwood releases have slipped in. First up is the Doctor Who Original Music from Series Three, featuring some of Murray Gold’s best incidental music. Murray Gold has been musical director for Doctor Who since its reboot in 2005 and his powerful score is instrumental in its success. Torchwood: Original Television Soundtrack contains incidental music composed by Gold and Ben Foster from the first and second series of Torchwood. Torchwood: Children of Earth continues with the series three score. Both feature the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Thunderbirds / Captain Scarlet / Stingray / Space: 1999

Barry Gray scored the iconic theme tunes and music for Gerry Anderson shows like Thunderbirds, Stingray, UFO, Space:1999 and Captain Scarlet. Stand By For Action! – The Music Of Barry Gray collects all these fabulous themes together, remastered and all in their original versions and all exactly as heard on TV. Spotify also has a Space: 1999 Year 1 soundtrack album as well as Barry Gray’s complete Thunderbirds Soundtrack, remastered and including the most famous countdown this side of Tracey island.

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Spotify Playlist: Sci-Fi TV Themes – Original Versions

I’ve put together a playlist of original sci-fi TV themes, featuring the best and most memorable tracks from all these soundtrack albums. It also includes some one-offs such as the original themes from Farscape and Stargate Atlantis. I gave myself two rules for this playlist: firstly, it’s TV themes from sci-fi shows, so no movie soundtracks. Secondly, each track is the original version, so no covers or karaoke versions. I remember buying a “Star Wars And Other Space Themes” record as a kid and being horribly disappointed when I discovered they were all disco-funk versions and not the originals. So enjoy this playlist, earthlings and live long and prosper!

Also, if you like science fiction check out Audio Drama on Spotify: Blake’s 7.

It’s time for the fourth in a series of posts about the nominees for The Spotties. We’ve already covered the nominees for Best URL Tool, Best Remote Control, and Best Playlist Generator or Converter. Now it’s time to look at the candidates for the hotly-contested category of  Best Other Site or App. This group has all the excellent Spotify resources that don’t fit into any other category. There are lots of great tools here, and each nominee has something special and unique to offer any Spotify user.

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BeSpotify

BeSpotify is a community site built on the Ning social network platform. It was set up in March 2009 by Spotify fan Viktor Andersson. Since then, the community has grown to 2,000 members who can share playlists and tips, help each other with questions about Spotify, and use Ning’s chat and group features.

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ListDJ

ListDJ is a Windows and Mac app that displays the lyrics of the currently playing track in Spotify. Once installed, start up Spotify and you’ll see ListDJ docked to the main Spotify window. Play a song and if available ListDJ will fetch the lyrics.

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Pitchify

Pitchify mixes review scores from Pitchfork (the popular American indie-focused music webzine) with MySpace and Spotify. Selecting from albums that score 8 or above on Pitchfork, Pitchify lets you sort by rating, date, artist or album. For any album you can click a Spotify link (if available) to start listening, or click the album art for more details. The album pages include links to the album’s review on Pitchfork as well as reviews on PopMatters, PasteMagazine, DrownedInSound and others. All available review scores are shown along with an average rating. Pitchify will also take into account the different versions of an album depending on the territory.
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Spotibot

Spotibot offers several services in one. There’s the Spotibot Playlist Generator which creates a playlist of tracks from a Last.fm ID or from bands similar to an artist you specify. Spotify Loved lets you enter your Last.fm ID to generate a Spotify playlist of your Loved tracks. Spotibot Better Links enhances a Spotify link page with album art, track listings and biographies. And finally the Twitter recommendation service is where it all began: tweet “@spotibot similar to ” and then the name of a band or artist and Spotibot will reply with a suggestion and Spotify link.
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SpotiChart

SpotiChart monitors Twitter for tweets with Spotify links, then analyzes all the links to compile global music charts and statistics. There are charts for individual songs (“Most tweeted Tracks”), albums, artists, and custom user playlists. For each type there are charts showing the totals over the last 24 hours, the last week, the last month, the last year, and since the charting began. Each chart includes links to play the music as well as little thumbnail versions of each tweeter’s avatar.

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SpotiDJ

SpotiDJ is a music-sharing site site with an emphasis on individual songs rather than whole playlists (“Songs are like apples, the best ones are hand picked“). DJs add songs with a brief description of why they like that song for others to tune in to.

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Spotify Collections

Spotify Collections is a web-based personal playlist manager that lets you create and share your playlists. Once registered, you can easily build a list of albums: the site groups these by artist to provide a web-based playlist management tool. There’s a social networking aspect to the site too: all collections are public and anyone can add a comment to your collection. You can also add any collection to a list of favourites, and  add custom playlists.

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Spotify Forum

Spotify Forum is a bulletin board community with a membership of 500 and growing. There are various sub-forums dedicated to different musical genres and different aspects of Spotify. The busiest areas include Spotify Help and Support

The two busiest areas are Spotify Help and Support and Ideas / Improvements. These both complement the official support channel, providing a place for users to help each other out with issues or questions.

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Spotify Tweaks

Spotify Tweaks is a Windows add-on that gives you custom tooltips, cover display, a cover manager, advanced search, an RSS reader and a lyric search feature.

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Toastify

Toastify is an app that displays a toast-style pop-up whenever the track changes in Spotify. It’s had several thousand downloads, and the developer zowat seems to update it frequently. Note toastify requires Microsoft .NET to work.

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Spotify has a lot to laugh at: British TV comedy classics like Monty Python, comedy music from Richard Cheese and Flight of the Conchords, and hundreds of hours of stand-up comedy. Spotify has heaps of releases from the current crop of American and Canadian stand-ups (mostly thanks to Comedy Central Records), along with the odd album or two from British comics. Read on for a selection of my favourites, including a playlist of Best Comedy Albums of 2009.

One of the best things about living in Edinburgh is the annual Fringe Festival, when the world’s funniest comedians, comics, and stand-ups all come to Auld Reekie and take up residency for the month. I usually try to see some shows each year, as there’s nothing quite like sitting in a small, hot club or hall a few feet away from a comic delivering his set. I’ve seen many big names over the years and many more lesser-known comedians. Recent favourites include Stewart Lee, Jerry Sadowitz, Frankie Boyle, and Chris Addison. My sense of humour tends towards the blacker, darker side of comedy so BE WARNED – some of the following may not be for you!

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Doug Stanhope

I first heard “controversial American stand-up” Doug Stanhope via his appearances on Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe series on BBC4. Being a fan of Bill Hicks, I love Stanhope’s style and material: it’s angry and offensive but also intelligent, reasoned, satirical and the funniest stuff I’ve heard in years. Spotify currently has three Doug Stanhope CDs, all of which are brilliant and required listening.

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Steven Wright

Steven Wright is the master of the deadpan delivery. He specializes in bone-dry and contrived one-liners, a  style emulated by newer comics like Stewart Francis (the Canadian from BBC’s Mock the Week). You’ve probably heard a Steven Wright quote before but hadn’t realized where it came from. Spotify has both of his albums: I have a Pony from 1985 and I Still Have a Pony from 2005.

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Maria Bamford

Winner of many “best of 2009″ comedy rounds-ups, Maria Bamford specializes in character-based comedy with an amazing array of voices; she reminds me a bit of Nina Conti. Spotify carries three of her albums, and she also appears on Comedy Central’s excellent Comedy Death-Ray compilation.

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Lewis Black

Grammy Award winner Lewis Black has starred in over a dozen Hollywood movies, but you might know him best from his “Back in Black” appearances on The Daily Show. Spotify has five of his seven CDs.

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Ed Byrne

Ed Byrne usually sells out within days whenever he’s up here for the festival.  He’s been performing standup for over a decade now, and is also a familiar face on panel shows like Mock the Week and 8 Out Of 10 Cats. There’s only one album on Spotify: an audio version of his Pedantic and Whimsical DVD.

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Billy Connolly

With a career spanning four decades, Glasgow’s most famous comedian has released loads of stand-up and folk music albums. Spotify has lots of The Big Yin’s records, mostly his musical releases but fortunately there are a few of his stand-up shows too. Start with Classic Connolly (aka 1974’s Solo Concert album) then work your way forward with Billy and Albert (1987) and Live at the Odeon Hammersmith London (1991).

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Afront’s Stand-Up Comedy Playlist

I’ve put together a playlist of standup comedy on Spotify, with an emphasis on recent releases and comics that feature in the many “best comedy of the year” roundups. The playlist has one short segment from each of the following comedians:

Featuring: Big Jay Oakerson, Christopher Titus, Dana Gould, Demetri Martin, Doug Benson, Doug Stanhope, Dwight York, Greg Behrendt, Greg Giraldo, Jamie Kilstein, Jim Gaffigan, John Mulaney, Jonathan Katz, Lewis Black, Marc Maron, Maria Bamford, Matt Braunger, Matt Kirshen, Michael Ian Black, Mike Birbiglia, Mitch Hedberg, Steve Hofstetter, Steve Sabo, and Todd Glass.

If any tickle your fancy, just click the album title to hear the full set.

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Other Spotify Comedy Resources

• The BrokenTV blog recently ran a 4-part feature on comedy on Spotify.
• A dedicated site comedify.com listed all the comedy on Spotify, but unfortunately the site’s server blew up after @spotify retweeted the link.
• SpotiNotes sometimes features comedy amongst all the other excellent posts.
• www.chortle.co.uk haven’t mentioned Spotify yet, but it’s the best site for news and reviews of standup comedy around Britain.

So, you think you’ve found something funny? Let us know in the comments about your favourite comedy on Spotify!

Here’s the third in a series of posts about the nominees for The Spotties. We’ve already covered the nominees for Best URL Tool and Best Remote Control. Now it’s time to look at the candidates for the Best Playlist Generator or Converter.

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Ivy

A new addition to the Spotify community, Ivy is a playlist converter that converts from an iTunes library file (.xml), text or CSV files. When creating a playlist, you can select whether to include only original artists (i.e. no cover versions) as well is filtering based on the country tracks are playable in. Once the Spotify playlist is generated, simply click the icon to copy the tracks then paste into Spotify. The Ivy website also includes a demo video.

Developer Coen is busy working on updates to enable imports from YouTube, LastFM and XSPF.

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Listify

Listify converts an Itunes library (.txt) into a Spotify playlist – purrfect!

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Playlistify.org

Another new addition, Playlistify.org converts (or “bakes” as they call it) from a variety of formats into Spotify playlists. It supports iTunes, text, and Winamp/media-playlist (.m3u) formatted files as well as converting playlists from Last.fm and YouTube. There’s also a Playlist Directory that tracks all recently uploaded playlists and a URL shortening service.

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SpotMySongs

Also new to the community, SpotMySongs converts from iTunes (.txt), text, and Winamp/media-playlist (.m3u) formatted files. You can tick the “share list” option to get a URL on spotmysongs.com to share the generated playlist.

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Spotibot Playlist Generator

Fusing recommendations from Last.fm’s Audioscrobbler with Spotify’s metadata API, the Spotibot Playlist Generator has recently had an upgrade and makeover. Use it to create a playlist of tracks from bands that are similar to an artist you specify. To generate a playlist, you enter the band’s name then select how many tracks you want (from 5 to 30). Tick the checkbox to bias towards more popular songs then click the Generate button.

You can also generate a playlist based on a Last.fm username: enter your username then select either Last.fm Recommendations or Loved tracks. Click the Generate button for your Last.fm playlist, which you can then drag and drop into Spotify.

Each generated playlist is unique (i.e. generate again for a new selection of tracks) and you can easily add and remove tracks from or to the playlist.

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SpotifiTunes

Spotifitunes maps your iTunes library to Spotify to create a personal list of artists. To setup, just upload a file from iTunes which the site then analyses and creates an alphabetical smartlist of all your artists in iTunes. Click a letter to expand the list then click an artist’s name to search for that artist in Spotify.

SpotifiTunes was offline for bit, but developer Phil Nash has worked through the night to get it up and running again!

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Spotiseek

Spotiseek helps you find new music by generating playlists based on artists you specify. You can prioritize popular tracks and easily add more artists or replace some or all tracks. The generated “mixtape” includes artist photos and a link to drag-and-drop the playlist into Spotify. Popular artist searches are listed on the homepage and the site also includes Pitchifork and Metacritic.com review links (from which you can generate Spotiseek Mixtapes) and dedicated blog and support areas.

Spotiseek has been redesigned recently to better focus on generating mixtapes and ease-of-use, and developer Kristofer promises even more new features and updates soon.

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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 about adding his music, what sort of returns he’d seen, and his general opinions on the current state of the music industry. Read on for this exclusive interview!

Some independent artists think that music piracy might not be so bad, since at least it gets their music heard more widely. However you seem fairly outspoken against piracy. Why is that?

I think it depends on how you view music, I’m appalled that some people think it should just be free. Why is that?  Do they expect to walk into a supermarket and be given free food? I guess not, so why should music be any different. Giving away a single to promote an album is fine, but giving a whole album away seems crazy.

We spend around 800 hours writing and recording each album. We don’t figure this time into the equation when calculating the cost as essentially it’s a hobby, however if you related that amount of time to the hourly rates that our 9-5 jobs are charged out at, the 800 hours would equate to around £60K. So if this was a full time job then I guess that would be a true reflection of the cost.

What we do try to cover however is the cost of mastering, replication, artwork, printing and promotion which of course we pay for ourselves up-front, so it annoys me when soon after our album is released it’s being shared on places like Rapidshare. And anything we do make over and above our costs usually goes straight back into promotion.

I suppose the cost of physically producing vinyl or CDs has something to do with how music is still priced. Digital downloads don’t have the same costs associated with distributing them so in general I feel music should be cheaper. Lets face it, how much does an artist see from the sale of a CD? I know of a fairly well known artist whose first album sold more than 2M copies yet he didn’t see a single penny.

You initially weren’t too keen on adding your music to Spotify. What changed your mind?

We have an initial busy period of sales activity around a release but after about six months the sale of physical CDs drops off. It seemed like a good opportunity to perhaps get more interest in us again and hopefully grow our exposure.

Why did you decide to go with DittoMusic as opposed to any other distributor?

If I remember, the cost was an issue and also the ability to choose which stores to distribute to. Some of the other distributors (CD Baby, Record Union) bundle their packages with releases on other stores like Rhapsody and iTunes. DittoMusic allowed us to choose just Spotify.

How easy was it to get your music added to Spotify? How much does it cost?

It took about 5 minutes to go through the online subscription plus the time to upload the files.  Currently we’re paying £2 per month, although they have introduced a £15 per year fee now. So no big deal really.

Do you have access to any listener stats? Can you track the number of plays your songs receive?
Actually DittoMusic have recently launched a new site and for some reason my existing account log-in has stopped working; they want me to re-register but at the moment WIRED isn’t attached to this account. I have a feeling that the new site has not migrated over any data.  I therefore have no stats for our current release WIRED but hopefully this will get resolved soon. In my experience the service is fairly passive so no real help with promotion or information regarding plays.

Have you received any payments or royalties yet? If so, how does this compare with returns from sales on iTunes? How often do you receive a payment?

Nothing from Spotify yet. With iTunes we get a quarterly cheque, and the amount has actually been increasing. I don’t think we get the the initial sales peak with iTunes since people who know and support us generally buy the physical CD. I believe iTunes allows us to grow our exposure organically: typically once an album is released and people start to buy it, it slowly gets blogged about and reviewed. People probably use iTunes to listen to the tracks and decide to buy there and then. Shortly after WIRED was released we ran out of the first album so there was a noticeable increase in sales for that on iTunes.

You’re busy working on the third Northern Kind album. Will you be adding this to Spotify? If so, will you add it at the same time as the CD and iTunes or at a later date?

I’m not sure yet but if we do I think it would be a staggered release, Physical and iTunes at the same time with Spotify probably several months later.

How do you think Spotify could benefit independent artists more?

Reading stories about big artists earning $167 from a million plays isn’t exactly inspiring. It essentially means Spotify will never be a viable revenue stream for artists like Northern Kind, so we have to make a decision about whether having our music on Spotify is a useful promotional tool or not. Personally I don’t think it is at the minute. I view it as a good-quality MySpace but without the social networking aspect.

It would be great to include some biography details and perhaps links to artist sites/blogs. Also if any of the tracks are used within user’s playlists I think it would be great to view these and see what other artists are within the lists (similar to iTunes iMixes).  I’m aware that you can search for a specific genre by typing Genre:Electronic for example, but the results can’t be fully explored or even sorted by release date. Maybe this is a premium feature?  (Afront: no, it’s not) I have stumbled across many artists this way by looking at all of the new Electronic releases each week on iTunes.

I’m excited about sites and services like Soundcloud, they offer the community aspect and interaction that is lacking on Spotify.

Thanks for your time, Matt.  I’m looking forward to your third album!

Links:

• http://www.northernkind.net/
• http://northernkind.bigcartel.com/
• http://northernkind.blogspot.com/
• http://www.dittomusic.com/

Photos by Northern Kind. WIRED: Sleeve by Edward Hann.

Here’s the second in a series of posts about the nominees in The Spotties. Yesterday we covered the Best URL Tool Nominees. Today we’ll look at the tools to control Spotify remotely, from iPhones, smartphones, mini-controllers, or web-browsers: here are the candidates for Best Remote Control App.

Spotify Mac Remote

Alex and Duncan’s Spotify Mac Remote is a plugin for Spotify that allows you to use your Mac’s remote control and multi-touch gestures to Play, Pause and change tracks. The next, play/pause and previous buttons work as expected, the volume buttons control the system volume and holding the menu button quits Spotify (in case you want to use Frontrow). Requires SIMBL.

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MiniSpotify

MiniSpotify is a Windows add-on that provides a mini-controller for Spotify. It lets you play, pause, and change track as well as giving you search, lyrics, and a remote control feature. The developers are hard at work creating MiniSpotify Reborn, a rewrite that contains new functions and extended GUI support.

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Music Controls

Music Controls is an iPhone app that lets you run and control Spotify for iPhone in the background, in other words you can multitask.  It also supports a host of other music apps, such as imeem, Last.fm, Rhapsody and Orb. Music Controls is available on Cydia and includes a 5-day fully-functional free trial. Note it requires a jailbroken iPhone.
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SpotifyBTind

SpotifyBTind a mobile remote for Sony Ericsson phones. To use, download the HID-file to your cellphone then connect the phone to your computer via the bluetooth remote control. Start Spotify on your computer and let your cellphone decide a song in the playlist.

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Spotify Web Remote

Spotify Web Remote provides a remote control for Spotify via the web. Once installed on a Windows PC, use any web browser on any device to start, stop, and move through tracks in a playlist. The site has a couple of demo videos showing how to use the browsers in an iPhone and BlackBerry to control Spotify and full setup instructions.

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Remoteless

The newest iPhone remote, Remoteless is a feature-rich Spotify remote for iPhone or iPod touch, controlling Spotify for Windows (they’re working on a Mac version). Features include standard transport controls (start/stop, next song, volume), search & browse, shuffle & repeat, start playlist from remote, and Tweet currently playing song from the remote. Remoteless is available in the Apple App Store and costs $3.99.

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ReSpot

ReSpot is a Spotify remote control for Android devices such as the Google Nexus One, HTC Hero, and Motorola Milestone/Droid. It supports most of the features found on the desktop Spotify, including transport controls (play, pause, stop, volume,  previous/next song) and search. You can also browse album and artists, save the play queue to a new playlist, and tweet the currently playing song to Twitter. ReSpot is a free app but note it requires Spotify Premium.

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Have you voted in The Spotties yet? Vote now for a chance to win three months of Spotify Premium!

Here’s the first in a series of posts about the nominees in The Spotties. We start with a look at the candidates for Best URL Tool.

With the introduction of Spotify’s metadata API, tools and apps arrived that could manipulate Spotify HTTP links (or URL). Some shorten it, others make it human-readable, while others provide additional information on the page that launches the link.

Cleanify

Cleanify was one of the first tools to use Spotify’s metadata API. It “cleanifies” Spotify links to create URLs that are human-readable. For example, Front 242’s album Moments has the Spotify link:

http://open.spotify.com/album/6JypWZh2hWbISoQm7NLvmR

this becomes:

http://cleanify.net/play/album/front-242/moments

Cleanified links can be created for single tracks, artists, or albums (but not for user playlists). There’s also a Cleanify API and a Clipboard Filter. The Clipboard Filter is a Windows application that runs in the background and  converts all Spotify URLs you copy into Cleanify links.

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Decode Spotify URIs

This webapp decodes a Spotify URI or HTTP Link to return a nicely-formatted webpage showing the album or single’s track details, album art, year, duration etc. All the tracks and artist names are clickable to open in Spotify. The developers also created @spotifyuri, a Twitter-bot that tweets back at you with details whenever you tweet a Spotify link.

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LNK.by

LNK.by is a URL shortener with a difference: its hook is that the shortened links contain a keyword depending on the type of media in the link. For example, a link to a YouTube video is shortened to http://WATCH.IT. Paste in a Spotify link and LNK.by returns with http://SPOTIFY.ly. For example:

http://open.spotify.com/album/6JypWZh2hWbISoQm7NLvmR

becomes:

http://SPOTIFY.ly/cQ

This reduces the number of characters from 53 to 21. Other URL shorteners may give even shorter results (http://j.mp for example), but having SPOTIFY in the URL is a handy way to show what’s behind the link.

LNK.by also includes its own API and a JavaScript you can drag to your toolbar for easy link-making. There’s also support for Spotibot URLs, so no need to disable the Spotibot Greasemonkey script.

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spo.tl

From the creator of Spotifitunes, spo.tl is a Spotify URL shortener that’s like a megamix of LNKby and Spotibot Better Links, as it provides “shorter, prettier Spotify links.“  Enter a Spotify address (or use the provided bookmarklet) to get a shortened URL and clean page that includes album art, track details and sharing links. For example:

http://open.spotify.com/album/6JypWZh2hWbISoQm7NLvmR

becomes:

http://spo.tl/info/5zDz8

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Spotibot Better Links

The Spotibot suite includes a Better Spotify Links service. You take a normal Spotify HTTP Link and replace “open.spotify.com” with “spotibot.com”. This works for albums, tracks, and artists and provides a launch page that includes track listings and duration, album art, biography (for artists), and sharing options to Twitter, FaceBook etc. The shared links are shortened too. All this can be done automatically using browser plugin. For example:

http://open.spotify.com/album/594WzsoemHrjVoBQOYqTKd

becomes:

http://spotibot.com/album/594WzsoemHrjVoBQOYqTKd

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Social Spotify

A novel way to share your playlists with friends, this site lets you add album art and genre details then provides a Facebook post or widget code. There’s no login required: all you do is go to the site and paste in your playlist URL. You can then set the genre, give it a title, and upload some album art. Once done, click one of the share buttons to either share on facebook or share on blog or website. Sharing on Facebook posts a wall comment with the playlist details and album art. The second share link displays some widget code for you to copy and paste into a blog post or webpage.

Social Spotify’s Facebook sharing is better than Spotify’s own in-built options (which doesn’t even include the playlist’s name) as it shows the playlist art, name, number of tracks and genre. The widget clicks-thru to show you the playlist’s track-listing too: very cool!

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Have you voted in The Spotties yet? Vote now for a chance to win three months of Spotify Premium!

There are now hundreds of different Spotify resources and community sites, ranging from playlist sharing sites to music recommendation services, blogs, and many other sites and services. To celebrate this diversity, The Pansentient League is proud to announce the first ever Spotify Community Site Awards: The Spotties!

Voting in The Spotties gives you the chance to win some great prizes: we have three 3-month Spotify Premium subscription vouchers up for grabs, courtesy of Spotify themselves. Simply vote for your favourite Spotify-related sites and apps below to be in with a chance of winning. You have until the end of March for your nominations. Good luck!

The Small Print

Closing date for voting is 1 April 2010. One entry per person please. Prize winners will be selected at random and notified using the supplied email address. Prizes kindly donated by Spotify Ltd.

Is That The Twelve Inch Mix? is a forthcoming book about the history of remix culture from author Rob Grillo (Anoraknophobia). With an exclusive introduction by Martyn Ware (Heaven 17), the book narrates the history of the twelve inch mix and of the remix evolution in the early and mid-80s. The book also includes a chapter on fans of 80s music. Rob had liked what I’d done for the original Pansentient League site and thought it showed someone who’d “gone a bit further in their obsession.” He got in touch and we subsequently exchanged a number of emails as he interviewed me about my mad remixes and strange website. The book also includes contributions from Peter Saville (Factory Records artist), Malcolm Garrett (Heaven 17), Richard Price, Rob Windle (Electronically Yours), Richard Evans (RememberTheEighties) , and Dave Beevers (The Human League).

Is That The Twelve Inch Mix? will be published by Bank House Books sometime this summer. Until then, here’s a short teaser video featuring my remix of Blue Monday.

I’m a gaming veteran. I’ve been a computer gamer for years now, from the early 80’s loading from cassette onto a ZX Spectrum then playing on a Commodore Amiga, then moving to consoles (Nintendo 64, Sony PlayStation), then hardcore PC gaming for years until I finally returned to consoles. I currently have a dusty X-Box 360 Elite and my gaming machine of choice: a PlayStation 3.

Game soundtracks have come a long way since the 80’s: most games now have official soundtracks, either licensed tracks or music especially commissioned and scored in the same way (and with the same budget) as blockbuster Hollywood movies. Many of these videogame soundtracks are now on Spotify, including the official soundtrack album for recently released art-deco shooter Bioshock 2.

Some early games had great theme songs: the Bomb the Bass John Carpenter-inspired theme to Xenon 2: Megablast, or Jonathan Dunn’s Robocop Title Theme (used by Ariston for their famous on-and-on commercials, for which composer Dunn received no royalties). But the first time I really noticed a full game soundtrack was in the Psygnosis game Shadow of the Beast from 1989. A weird and wonderful game, the ambient music fitted perfectly and really helped to create an atmosphere.

Here are five videogame soundtracks on Spotify: some official, some reconstructed, no joypad required.

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wipEout Soundtracks - 1995’s WipEout for PlayStation had such a cool soundtrack that I still have the game CD long after I sold my original PlayStation. With licensed electronica from many of my favourites of the day (Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, Orbital), the WipEout soundtrack was massive. Although not officially on Spotify, here’s a custom playlist that features many of the tracks from that original game, as well as a selection from the sequels right up to last year’s brilliant WipEout HD, including that awesome Kraftwerk mix from Alex Gopher and Etienne De Crecy.

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GTA IV: ElectroChoc – From my home city of Edinburgh, Rockstar North rule the gamescape with their Grand Theft Auto series. Since GTA III, in-game radio stations have provided the soundtrack to the city. Grand Theft Auto IV has a station called ElectroChoc. Mixed by DJ François Kevorkian (and later by production duo Crookers), ElectroChoc features some superb electro-house and discophonica. Here’s an ElectroChoc playlist on Spotify, featuring 20 tracks including Black Devil Disco Club, Padded Cell, Nitzer Ebb, and those boys again The Chemical Brothers. Be sure to check out Alex Gopher’s Brain Leech (Bugged Mind Remix) with its nods back to that classic Xenon 2 theme.

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Mirror’s Edge – Original Videogame Score – EA Games (Electronic Arts) have added loads of videogame soundtracks to Spotify recently: Dante’s Inferno, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Dragon Age: Origins and The Sims to name a few. My favourite though is the soundtrack to first-person action adventure Mirror’s Edge, featuring music from psybient act Solar Fields (Magnus Birgersson) and the title theme Still Alive by popular Swedish artist Lisa Miskovsky.

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BioShock 2: Official Soundtrack – With its gorgeous decaying art-deco setting, intriguing characters and intricate storyline, BioShock was surely the best game of 2007. Sometimes forgotten in all the acclaim was its soundtrack: an inspired mix of songs featuring Garry Schyman’s original score and licensed Great American Songbook jazz from the 1930s – 1950s. Music from the likes of The Ink Spots, Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters helped contribute to the immersive atmosphere of BioShock. An official soundtrack album was never released, but I’ve reconstructed the soundtrack in Spotify: BioShock Soundtrack (Licensed Tracks).

BioShock 2: The undersea city of Rapture stands in ruins. Somewhere deep within, your Little Sister awaits. Once, you protected her and now, amongst hordes of genetically-altered maniacs, she is your only hope for salvation.

The sequel BioShock 2 was just released and I can’t wait to return to Rapture. The deluxe version of Bioshock 2: The Official Soundtrack is now on Spotify and gladly it continues in the same style as the original, including songs from Noel Coward, Billie Holiday, Fred Astaire, and Benny Goodman and his Orchestra.

Anyway, I’m ready for dreamtime Mr. Bubbles. If you spot any other game soundtracks on Spotify, would you kindly mention them in the comments?