Spotify: spotty at best

As an unlimited music-streaming service Rhapsody has had the market cornered for a while, and for good reason. Almost any artist you can think of is easily available with few licensing conflicts or missing albums. Catalogs are very complete for the most part and the mobile application makes them all accessible on the go, even if you're offline.

It's an important step in fighting music piracy while keeping insatiable audiophiles, like myself, supplied with a near unlimited supply of music for a low monthly fee. However, there is a new competitor in town called Spotify. The Swedish service mimics the Rhapsody but with. a significantly lower quality for a few reasons.

Firstly, there are inconsistencies in the streaming quality. Some songs are only available at a lower quality of 160 kbps. It also has a bevy of licensing issues and there are even murmurs that it doesn't always pay artists. That's sketchy, my friends. So is the fact that you can be "invited" and stream whatever you want for free. It would be awesome and tempting to be in on this secret if only there were less bugs, more music, and better sound quality.

Maybe the service is better overseas. In fact, I'll bet it's way better overseas but here it's no killer app yet. Far, far, from it. And that excuse does me no good when I'm sitting here dealing with a shitty, glitch-laden program.