Hands on with Spotify streaming music service

There should be a new gold standard for judging the success or appeal of any new music service. It's all about ease of use, intuitiveness and general user-friendliness. In short, does it just work, without you having to think too much about what you're doing and how you're doing it.We've been hearing some rave reviews about Spotify since it launched earlier this month. It offers streaming music from all four major labels, as well as indie distributor The Orchard and rights body Merlin. And it comes in a choice of free (but ad-funded) or subscription-based (but ad-free).Having spent this afternoon playing with it, we can confirm that it fits our 'does it just work?' criteria, offering a clutter-free way to discover and listen to music. Read on for more thoughts and screenshots.The first thing to say is that Spotify is a PC/Mac/Linux desktop application, not a website. That's an interesting decision given the web-based competition from MySpace Music, iLike, Imeem and all the rest. However, the download is mercifully quick, and once installed it's quick to get up and running, and doesn't seem to be a CPU-hogger.It looks quite bare-bones when you first fire Spotify up, with a Home screen [...]