New European streaming music service Spotify, which TechCrunch UK has been tracking since October, is getting increasingly good reviews. Spotify is a downloadable client for Windows and Mac users that lets you search, browse and stream a deep collection of music. Sadly, it is only available in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Spain and France and you need an invitation to join (InviteShare is actively trading them).

The user experience is beyond even the best web based streaming services like LaLa, MySpace Music and Imeem. It acts like a fully stocked iTunes, with everything hyperlinked to easily find related music. Creating playlists is a snap. There is no way to move music outside of the application, or onto music devices. But it is the best way to legally find and stream music for free that I’ve seen

I have no invitation and I live in the U.S., but I’ve been using Spotify all afternoon. There have previously been posts on getting into the service from a banned location once you have an invitation using a proxy server. Today on Digg, though, a commenter left instructions on how to use Spotify without an invitation. I tried it, and it works (for now).

Invite yourself from anywhere:
1) go to http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
2) enter the following URL: https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
3) Create your account, for UK postcode - check http://www.postcodesearch.org.uk/

It’s likely that the proxy server will be banned shortly, but there are countless others in the non-banned countries. The important thing is to visit this URL from that proxy server. And I recommend you do it now, before the hole is plugged.

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