1) You don't have to sync offline tracks with the Spotify desktop software; you can mark playlists as "available offline" directly within the mobile app and it will start syncing them immediately. I've never synced my phone via the desktop app.
The mobile app is also intelligent enough to sync songs that you're listening to that happen to be part of an offline playlist, saving bandwidth (for example, in the case where your settings only permit you to sync over wifi, but you listen to a song over 2G/3G).
2) The Spotify app used to show song/artist info, but at some point it seems that all the audio apps I used stopped doing this at the same time. Are you sure this wasn't an iOS change?
3) The unavailable song issue is related to the fact that the available songs are completely different depending on the country where you live. I've found that the USA is the worst for what I like to listen to. You could probably change your region by connecting to the website via proxy.
4) Regarding your question about supporting the bands: from what I've read, artists receive almost nothing from Spotify licensing fees. If you want to support the artists, the safest bet is still attending concerts/buying merchandise directly.
Re 4) Spotify pay virtually nothing to artists. Our royalty statements show that we make an order of magnitude more money from a single CD sale or iTunes sale, than many thousands of Spotify streams. ie £1.80 vs £0.18
#1) You're absolutely right! I guess I was confused between local file sync (which does need to come from your desktop) and "Available offline" (which doesn't). Help text like this doesn't help things at all: http://www.spotify.com/us/help/faq/mobile/#sync-your-device
#2) You're right again! Pandora doesn't show artist/name either. Apple's fault, I guess.
#3) I know what you're saying, (and I know this is the fault of the music labels), but this is a big strike against Spotify for now.
1) You don't have to sync offline tracks with the Spotify desktop software; you can mark playlists as "available offline" directly within the mobile app and it will start syncing them immediately. I've never synced my phone via the desktop app.
The mobile app is also intelligent enough to sync songs that you're listening to that happen to be part of an offline playlist, saving bandwidth (for example, in the case where your settings only permit you to sync over wifi, but you listen to a song over 2G/3G).
2) The Spotify app used to show song/artist info, but at some point it seems that all the audio apps I used stopped doing this at the same time. Are you sure this wasn't an iOS change?
3) The unavailable song issue is related to the fact that the available songs are completely different depending on the country where you live. I've found that the USA is the worst for what I like to listen to. You could probably change your region by connecting to the website via proxy.
4) Regarding your question about supporting the bands: from what I've read, artists receive almost nothing from Spotify licensing fees. If you want to support the artists, the safest bet is still attending concerts/buying merchandise directly.