I sort of suspect that's where things will have to go anyway. Spotify is operating at a loss and "we'll make it up on volume" is one of the oldest lines in the book.
They either will have to drop the free tier entirely or restrict it to the point most people don't really want it unless they want to become another brand for the .com bust books.

Why can't you? You don't even need Prime.
They have a web based player for songs in your library of purchased MP3 -- so if you bought the White Album in that format you could.

Built in 2009, hardware cost: about $900 originally.

Currently:
Gigabyte X58/1366 socket (can't remember the exact model now)
Processor: Core i7 920 (Bloomfield) -- runs stock speed but is undervolted to 1.005v
6 GB DDR3/1600 running in tri-channel configuration
Geforce GTX 670 graphics card (this is actually an upgrade for me from January)

WD Caviar Black - 1 TB -- Boot Drive

Storage drives

WD Caviar Black - 640 GB (this was the original boot drive when I built it)
Samsung - 1 TB
Seagate - 2 TB

Optical drives:

Lite-On DVD burner w. Lightscribe support
Pioneer BD burner

OS: Currently Windows 8.1, originally Windows XP x64

Case: Antec Nine-Hundred
Power Supply: Antec TPQ-850

Monitor: Samsung T240HD (this is a 1920x1200 monitor with TV tuner functionality and component vid inputs) (separate purchase)

I'm not much of a gamer, and the system was built for my hobby of video processing/encoding, so I focused on putting money in the CPU and graphics were less important. I only had the one smaller Caviar and the DVD burner. But as HD video becomes more popular, storage needs grew. I do play games occasionally and have an account on Steam, I originally had a Radeon HD4830/512 for the graphics card and it worked fine. I had to upgrade recently because of the high video processing requirements of MadVR and a friend gifted me a copy of Transistor last Christmas (the system requirements needed a card with at least 1 GB of VRAM). I actually bought the GeForce second-hand from the same friend for a good price (it's an RMA replacement he'd only used for a few months himself before upgrading to a GTX 970).

I might build a new rig this year. I don't really have a processing emergency or anything, but I want to see what Skylake offers. I'd like a system that isn't so large and runs cooler. I have an NCASE M1 in a box here for the next system when I do it, and I already have a small FreeNAS server running I want to transition all the video storage to in the future so I don't need all the spinning drives in the PC. Will likely go to an SSD and 16 GB RAM for the next build.

More appropriate headline: "TSA Fails"

Post it on Facebook.

What? Everyone's always talking about how once your give your information to Facebook they'll keep it a million years.

What's racist about a story about changing driving rules in an African country? Did the poster say what country it was, or what the ethnicity of the Minister of Transportation was. Or are you making the assumption everyone in Africa is black?

Who's racist now?

Thi$ i$ a good po$t.

Obviou$ly the rea$on for the cap$ on mobile data is a lack of capacity to $ervice moden $mart phone u$age. I'm $ure, once infa$tructure i$ built out, we will $ee a return of unlimited data plan$, and at $peed$ of at lea$t 3G for all u$er$.

Sounds like you've never worked a helpdesk job. The ones where you deal with people who run "Internet-based businesses" but don't really how how to use their computer or understand how things like their Internet access, email, web hosting, or search engine results work.

Uh, are you sure you were in full screen mode in MPC? (alt-enter)
Playback controls only appear when your mouse is at the bottom of the screen. Move your mouse up from the bottom, and they disappear instantly. They're easier to hide than VLC, actually. VLC shows them whenever you move your mouse, whereas with MPC you can move you mouse on screen during playback without the controls appearing until you take it to the bottom.

Hey, that is pretty easy...
Except I just checked the settings. Doing it that way changes the icon to "Only Show Notifications" mode -- not "always hide icon and notification", so it could still pop-up (if it was a well-behaved icon I mean, ignoring that Microsoft is overriding the setting anyway).

I was fine with just going into the advanced settings for the System Tray and setting the icon to be one of the always hidden ones, so I wouldn't have to see it all the time, but even that doesn't work. Windows changes the setting back on it's own.

Apple has a replacement product: The Beats Suppository XS.

Whoa there, bud. That sounds like proper use of Powerpoint you're implying there!

For me, "cord cutter" still means people who drop all PSTN phone service and just use cell phones as their only number.

I read that headline as "Scientists Discover Swedish Escape Extinction Through 'Virgin Births'" and thought I was about to read something truly interesting about pre-historic Nordic humans surviving during the Ice Age.