For those not willing to pay for a monthly Spotify subscription, their application was essentially useless, until now. The application formally only worked for customers who had signed up for their unlimited premium services. This week, however, Spotify released a significant update allowing users access to their radio features at the compelling price of free. Here's what we have new with the latest updates:

New: Start a radio station based on your favorite playlist, genre, album, artist or song.
New: Personalize your radio stations by voting songs up or down.

Of course users have enjoyed unlimited music and radio worldwide from a large variety of labels. The added free radio service essentially works in the United States only without a subscription. Spotify boasts the ability to create playlists, utilize Last FM scrobbling, and take advantage of many social features that have helped this application stand out in comparison to others. With the addition of free radio, more users in the United States will have access to their Android applications and create radio stations based on preferences, artists, or genre.

After about 30 minutes of usage I've decided for now to keep Spotify around. With only the free service, it's essentially a Pandora alternative but the algorithms have been similar and so far even better than Pandora which I've used for years. I'm curious to know what subscription models are being used by our readers. Is everyone on board with Spotify or are people still strongly supporting alternates like Rdio, Grooveshark, Mflow, Soundcloud, or others?