Good God. Concert season is off to a heck of a start. When you start it off with Radiohead (here’s that playlist) then follow it up with Florence + The Machine — add in a little bit of The Black Angels, The Horrors, and Arctic Monkeys, and you got an awesome three weeks of very good shows. Well The Black Keys just melted my face off Friday night after they put on a show that I think I could equate to seeing Led Zeppelin ‘back in the day.’

The guitar was crunchy and sounded so freakin’ full, the drums were raw, heavy and just plain rock and roll. The setlist was great and offered up some tracks from the new release El Camino. Funny how the studio recordings of epic bands with big sound never quite do their live stuff justice. I’m looking forward to them releasing a live album, in the meantime the hunt for bootlet has begun.

Here’s the Playlist

Oh and Spotify is coming along nicely, they just announced a new “Play button” embed feature, something I’ve been waiting for since they first launched, great news for music lovers.

Listen below

What a night!

With drawn out songs like Infinity and VCR — the former reminds me of Chris Issak’s Wicked Game, the latter something written by U2 — they seem to capture the essence of lovesickness, youth, and teenage angst. Grab your lover and a blanket and listen to the cd all the way through. Rainy days are even better with The Xx.

I hope to hear more of The Xx in the 1 2, and it sounds like their next album, which they plan to release hopefully sometime this year, plans to have a little more of a “club” sound, so they say. Check out wikipedia for more about The Xx. Oh and here’s a link to their album on Spotify. >> The Xx on Spotify

I love discovering new music. As a web developer I spend a good amount of time with headphones on. I grew up with Napster and downloading, then YouTube became a ‘go to’ place for streaming, Pandora rocked my sock off but I disliked the eventual loop, Last.fm introduced me to so many great new artists. Finally, Spotify comes around and gels all of them together into the ultimate music machine.

If you’re not familiar, Spotify was developed by the guy that started Napster then went on to help Facebook take off. You might have seen his character portrayed in the movie The Social Network. Spotify uses Facebook by allowing friends to share playlists and tracks. Actually, there is a lot more to the platform. Here are some ways to rock it:

Share your Playlist

By now you probably know you can create custom playlists. I’ve shared a few like my Coachella playlists. You basically can search through the bazillion number of tracks and select individual or whole albums to add by clicking and dragging. Piece of cake.

By default, new playlists are made “public” which means your friends can see them and you can see theirs. You can also share these with the outside world. Just right click a track and you can get a link to the track

Listen to the Radio

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Spotify has added a radio function similar to Pandora and Last.fm. You can activate the radio by right clicking a single track or by navigating to the artists’ profile page. Selection is pretty good and I’ve been introduced to some great new artists.

Link your Last.fm Account

I still have lots of love for Last.fm. I love that I can listen to them through the Xbox 360, and I like their website and the way they lay out member profiles. Bravo. Now you can activate last.fm from within Spotify and still “Scrobble” the tracks you listen to and love.

Follow Playlists

Your friends have good taste. Follow their playlists and you’ll stay in the loop when they add new music. You can also follow public playlists. Spotify is working at making this element more prevalent in their system. To find public playlists, look for them when you use the search function. That’s a good way to find new music too.

Get the Premium Version

For $10 a month you can listen to Spotify anywhere through your mobile device. This day and age of the car stereo that talks to your phone, I highly suggest it. You can sync up your playlists so they go with you too, and you won’t have to hear ads on either your phone or your pc. If you are a Shazam user, you can also Shazam a song right to a playlist, or star it for later.

So there are a few cool ways to use Spotify. Pretty cool this thing, no? You might also consider checking out and subscribing to the Spotify Blog, they have some interesting playlists and updates going out through there. Party on Wayne.

Day 1: http://spoti.fi/wfZgMK
Day 2: http://spoti.fi/wurBoe
Day 3: http://spoti.fi/yhkhkV