Was it worth the wait?

Being jealous of Europeans is not something we Americans typically excel at. Maybe that’s why Spotify became something of a nerd cause célèbre -- watching longingly as friends in Europe shared favorite tracks and playlists on Facebook and Twitter led to too much fantasizing about all of the awesome musical riches that we’d share once American record labels finally stopped doing their head-in-the-sand routine. And at last, Spotify has landed on U.S. shores…but while we were waiting, another impressive option popped up, leaving us to wonder if Spotify was worth the wait.

Spotify’s black-and-grey interface looks like iTunes: Darth Vader Edition. Sources and playlists are over on the left, and the main middle section is where you’ll find a list of tracks. The far-right pane presents your People list. Once you’ve signed in with Facebook credentials, you’ll see friends who also have Spotify accounts. You can add Spotify friends manually, but it’s unintuitive. To find another Spotify user, you type spotify:user:username in the Search field. Got that? Yeah, neither do we.

You’ll get lots of practice with Lion’s reverse scrolling in Spotify’s gigantic lists of tracks.

Spotify also claims a gargantuan library of 15 million songs -- but it’s something of a red herring. Searches for even the most minor pop hits usually also return multiple karaoke versions or terrible “re-recorded” versions made for those cheap compilation CDs sold in gas stations. That said, we did find most of the music we were looking for in Spotify’s catalog, whether it was ’80s pop, jazz standards, or modern electronica. But missing albums, tracks, and artists were common enough that we can confidently say that Spotify is certainly not the end-all, be-all celestial jukebox we’ve been promised for years. At least not yet.

But Spotify still has its high notes. Free accounts offer unlimited streaming (with occasional ads) for six months, then once you’re hooked, you’ll be limited to 10 hours per month. Premium accounts ($4.99/month) remove the time restrictions and ads, while the Unlimited plan ($9.99/month) adds the ability to sync tunes to a Mac or iOS device for offline listening. The sound quality is great (up to 320kbps with Premium accounts), and thanks to peer-to-peer streaming, tunes usually start up lightning-fast. We also love the one-click sharing of tracks, albums, and playlists to social networks. You can even create collaborative playlists so that your friends can help concoct the perfect set for your next road trip.

Which brings us to Spotify’s big problem. The service lends itself well to sharing, but as a browsable collection, it’s disappointing. Playlists are great, but they’re also the only real way to organize tracks. There’s no simple way to browse beyond scrolling through lists—and even with folders, your sidebar quickly overflows with lists for each of your favorite albums. Imagine iTunes if there was no browser to quickly select a specific artist or album. Ouch, right?

Also, New Releases only offers a handful of options that aren’t really that new, and there’s no central list of what’s popular among all your friends at once, though you can click on any friend to see their top songs and artists. Undoubtedly, some of these kinks will get worked out as the service matures, but there was so much hype around Spotify that we can’t help but be surprised that more recent upstarts like Rdio (3.5 stars) are nailing the music-discovery angle so much better.

The bottom line. As long as you already know what you want to hear, Spotify is great. Easy sharing and free accounts will probably make it the Facebook of music services, but if you’re looking for recommendations based on your social connections or browsable lists of new and popular releases, try Rdio.