Copacetic! (Photo: Spotify)

Today, at a press conference that culminated in a Frank Ocean performance and an unexpected onstage love-in by Sean Parker and Lars Ulrich, Spotify debuted a number of new features, revolving around discovery.

CEO Daniel Ek entered to "Rock the Casbah," the Clash bouncing off the exposed brick walls. Despite it not even being noon, several attendees already had beers in their hands.

"At Spotify, we think of ourselves as punks, the type that are against the establishment," Mr. Ek informed the crowd. "We're really punks because we're restless and we really hate it when people tell us this is just the way it is."

Lest you assume that means Spotify wants to undermine the poor, beleaguered music biz any further, Mr. Ek rattled off a few stats. The company pays out 70 percent of all the money it takes in to rights holders, and they've thus far paid out half a billion dollars. The amount paid out, he added, has doubled over the last nine months.

The company now has more than 5 million paying customers, and 20 million active users. One million of those paid subscribers are in the U.S. "We're growing, but we're growing in a way that benefits the whole system," he said.

The batch of updates introduced today is meant to help users discover new tunes, rather than just listening to whatever pops into their head at the moment. Open Spotify, and you'll now land on a "Discover" screen. Suggestions aren't just based on whatever you recently listened to, either, Mr. Ek said. For example: Spotify would know that Kris Kross topped the charts in Sweden when he was a kid, and so "Jump" might pop up.

See something you like? Add it to another new feature, your "Collection." No more playlists that're just albums, in other words.

Also added: A new "follow" section, so you can subscribe to "anyone in the music graph" whose tastes interest you, whether that be your hipper-than-thou neighbor down the hall or your BFF. Mr. Eck demonstrated by following Shakira and Barack Obama. Any playlist they share, you can share with your social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr) or just with your Spotify followers.

This sounds like a pretty attractive proposition for artists and the labels who're trying to their names out there. Another new feature that's likely to have record execs perking up their ears: Artists will be able to deliver new music straight to their followers. As soon as a single drops, they get a ping. That'll make it easier to begin the long climb to the top of the pops.

Then we got another surprise: The Metallica catalog is now available on Spotify. To mark the occasion, out came Napster founder Sean Parker, followed by Lars Ulrich, of the famously Napster-hating Metallica. They hugged.

So what convinced The Man Who Killed Napster to sign onto Spotify, a company backed by Mr. Parker? Turns out now that he's got tweens, Mr. Ulrich is beginning to understand there's an entire generation raised on streaming media. And hey, the product was easy to use.

The pair made a big deal of how they're now pals, and really they had more in common the whole time than they realized. Metallica, a band that'd gone to a lot of trouble to protect its music, felt the control being ripped away, and that just turned the whole dynamic into a street fight. "If you fuck with us, we'll fuck with you," Mr. Ulrich explained his reasoning.

For a moment, Sean Parker looked a little tense, sitting there in his cardigan. Lars Ulrich might be basically a rich, middle-aged dad at this point, but he still looks like he'd hit you over the head with a beer bottle under the right circumstances.

Then Frank Ocean came out and performed "Pyramids." Guys: We know the music business is your business, but maybe cool it a little on the celebrity shock and awe. Remember how that worked out for Airtime?

That wasn't all: Given the strong demand for Pandora and LinkedIn IPOs (and even stronger anticipation for the eventual Facebook offering), Spotify CEO Daniel Ek's timing for a U.S. launch seemed spot on.

Well, things have changed: Share prices for high profile tech IPOs such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon have tanked, and as Spotify readies to close its latest round of fund-raising, the company looks likely to fall short of its goal. Instead of the $4 billion valuation that Spotify initially sought, the company will likely settle for something "slightly more than $3 billion," according to The Wall Street Journal.

But is the glass half empty, or half full? The Journal points out that for all the doom and gloom surrounding recent IPOs, tech companies are attracting high valuations:

AirBnb Inc., an online room rental site, is close to finalizing a new fundraising round expected to value the company at around $2.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Mobile payments company Square Inc. recently raised a new round of financing from investors including Starbucks Corp. that valued the company at $3.25 billion, other people familiar with the matter have said. Like Spotify, Square had been looking to raise as much as $4 billion, these people have said.

And even at $3 billion, Spotify is outpacing one model for large-scale digital subscription services, says Peter Kafka at All Things D:

That would be Netflix, which has some 27 million subscribers at around $8 a month. Today, after Carl Icahn goosed it a bit, Netflix has a market cap of $4.3 billion. Spotify says it has 4 million paying subscribers at around $10 a month.

So if Spotify missed its goal, its latest round of fundraising still looks bullish, and if you're looking for a reason why, you could do worse than to start with the conventional wisdom that investors have short memories.

Meanwhile, as the latest round of IPOs has shown, a lot can change in a year, and who knows what the market for tech stocks will look like if and when Spotify goes public. In light of that, it may be best to view Spotify's valuation in light of another bromide: Timing is everything.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

The lights are back on in Lower Manhattan, the subways are up and running again (well, most of them) and things are slowly returning to normal in the city. But in Staten Island, the Rockaways, Red Hook, Hoboken, Breezy Point, Long Beach, Seaside Heights and other coastal areas that bore the brunt of Sandy, there's a ton of recovery work still to be done. People are cold, hungry and tired and devastated communities are gravely in need of our help. If you want to donate cash or goods or volunteer your time, go check out our updated Hurricane Sandy Relief: Volunteering and Donations Guide to see how you can help.

For those of you frustrated from not hearing back from volunteering organizations, I'd recommend just getting a van and a bunch of friends together and driving out to one of the affected areas and start helping. You can take much-needed supplies like food, blankets, flashlights, batteries, diapers, jackets, etc. Volunteers are desperately needed on the ground to distribute supplies and help clean up, and this will be even more true during the coming days, as many folks go back to work. Remember, there may be another storm coming on Wednesday, so the next couple of days are critical.

It's been really heartening to see everybody come together and pitch in and help out over the last few days, so let's keep this trend going. Makes me proud to be a New Yorker!

This Tuesday is Election Day (yes, finally). Make sure you go out and vote and make your voice heard. Not sure where to vote? Here's a poll site locator, which been updated with locations changed because of Sandy.

On November 14, my friend Shaherose Charania (founder of Women 2.0) is organizing the highly anticipated Women 2.0 Pitch conference. Keynote speakers include female founders of Match.com, Cisco, Oxygen Network, Urban Decay,  and panels feature women entrepreneurs who've run super successful Kickstarter projects and grown companies from the ground up. Don't miss it.

And now let's see whats going down in the Alley this week...

Founders@Fail: Pitching Publishers
Speakers include Bryan Birsic (SimpleReach), Dennis Mortensen (Visual Revenue) and Shafqat Islam (NewsCred).
Monday (Nov. 5), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

OPEN NY / SAMMA / Time Warner Leadership Series
With Ivan Menezes (COO, Diageo) and Salman Amin (global CMO, PepsiCO).
Wednesday (Nov. 7), 6 p.m. @ Time Warner Center, Columbus Circle and 59th St.

November Prince Building Tech Talks
Matt Witheile (principal, Flybridge Capital) on why a Boston-based VC moved his wife and dog to New York. And Thrillist's Ken Peltzer and Jay Chinthrajah will present on Thrillist's recently launched unified user acquisition system.
Wednesday (Nov. 7), 6:30 p.m. @ ZocDoc, 568 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Talks on International VC and US Visa Regulations for Startups
With David Teten (Partenr, ff Venture Capital) and Michael Petrucelli (founder, Clearpath).
Wednesday (Nov. 7), 7 p.m. @ ff Venture Capital, 989 Avenue of the Americas, 3rd Fl.

Ingenuity 2012
New York City's preeminent startup event, run by the New York Venture Capital Association (NYVCA). Who's coming? Tim Armstrong (CEO, AOL), Julius Genachowski (Chairman, FCC), Mike Richter (NY Rangers), Bob Pittman (Clear Channel), Michael Barrett (Chief Revenue Officer, Yahoo) and others.
Thursday (Nov. 8), 8:30 a.m. @ New World Stages, 340 W. 50th St.

Red Innova New York
An intimate event to create a better understanding of Latin American internet market opportunities and trends. Featured speakers include Martín Varsavsky (FON), Fabrice Grinda (OLX), Andrew Mclaughlin (Betaworks) and Matías Recchia (Vostu).
Thursday (Nov. 8), 9:30 a.m. @ IESE Business School, 165 West 57th St.

PandoMonthly Presents: Daniel Ek
A fireside chat with Daniel Ek (cofounder and CEO, Spotify)
Thursday (Nov. 8), 6 p.m. @ Projective L.E.S., 72 Allen St.

Women in the World of Gaming
How do we deal with the overt sexualization of women in games? Is it weird for girls to like games like Call of Duty? These questions and more will be tackled.
Thursday (Nov. 8), 6 p.m. @ Pace University, 1 Pace Plaza

Capital On Stage
An unconventional conference about funding where, in a twist, top-tier investors will present themselves to the world’s finest Internet startups. With David Aronoff (Flybridge), David Teten (ff Venture Capital), Tom Wisniewski (NY Angels), Brad Svrluga (High Peaks), Lucas Nelson (DFJ Gotham), Jahan Ali (NYC Investment Fund) and others.
Friday (Nov. 9), 9 a.m. @ Goodwin Procter at NY Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, 26th Fl

EcoHack III
Hacking on open software, open hardware, open data, and open ideas.
Friday (Nov. 9), 6:30 p.m. @ Old Pfizer Building, 630 Flushing Ave

Hack & Jill: Hacksgiving
A hackathon for social, global, and greater good. We'll address broken issues. We'll improve inefficient systems. We'll make the future better. Together.
Friday (Nov. 9), 7 p.m. @ Etsy, 55 Washington St., Brooklyn

Assembled: Fashion
With Abe Burmeister (Outlier), Amy Choyne (Kenneth Cole), Brooke Moreland (Fashism), Cindy McLaughlin (Style for Hire), Claire Mazur (Of A Kind), Dave Whittemore (Clothes Horse), Ilan Tito (Refinery29), Jenny Wu (Stylyt), Kimberly Skelton (Have to Have), Marc Schiller (CEO, Bond), Marissa Evans (Go Try It On) and others.
Saturday (Nov. 10), 9:30 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Tech@NYU November DemoDays
Students take the stage to showcase what they've been working on.
Saturday (Nov. 10), 5 p.m. @ Pivotal Labs, 841 Broadway

More events on the horizon...
Startup Lunch on Nov. 12 @ The Cupping Room Cafe
NJ Tech Meetup 30 w/ Brian Cohen NY Angels (Hoboken) on Nov. 12 @ Howe Center - Stevens Institute of Technology
New York City Pinterest Meetup #6 on Nov. 12 @ We Work Lounge
Funding The Best In Global Innovation on Nov. 13 @ SNR Denton
November NY Enterprise Technology Meetup (& Sponsored Afterparty by eZ Systems) on Nov. 13 @ Cooley
November 2012 NY Tech Meetup on Nov. 13 @ NYU Skirball Center For The Performing Arts
Women 2.0 PITCH NYC 2012 Conference & Competition on Nov. 14 @ Manhattan Center
AngelHack Fall 2012 New York City on Nov. 17 @ The AlleyNYC
Business Insider: Ignition - Future Of Digital on Nov. 27 @ Time Warner Center, 10 on the Park
Mashable Media Summit 2012 on Nov. 30 @ The TimesCenter

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

His pitch: “It’s kind of like Pandora with unlimited skipping and unlimited stations.”

Except for the fact that Pandora has a mobile version, and Spotify's app is still confined to the web (for now), it's hard to imagine that Pandora, which caps users to 100 stations and eight song skips, isn't feeling threatened.

TechCrunch reports:

“We think people will love playing around,” Ek went on about the company’s streaming play. “What we’ve discovered is that we’re a lean back experience and a lean forward. Spotify historically hasn’t been very good at curating music … [And Radio] is a big use case that a lot of people are asking us for.”

And then, “I wouldn’t say that Pandora is a competitor, we want to be a music platform.” Yeah, music platform that just subsumed Pandora’s basic function.

Pandora, of course, is now a public company (one whose stock experts say "is still an expensive proposition, especially in the face of emerging competition"). But can startup founders expect to start viewing Spotify as the next Goliath after Google, Facebook, and Apple? Reminds us of a tweet from Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin on the day Spotify announced its app platform:

"I thought I was running a startup but turns out I am just constantly deciding whether I am really working for Facebook, Spotify or Apple."

via @Mager

"I’ll tell you who did pop by last week and wanted to spend a couple of hours there--a very famous American performer, Jimmy Buffett," Spotify investor Shakil Khan told Betabeat. Mr. Khan, known as "Shak" to his friends, was on the phone from London, but discussing Spotify's new base in New York (in a charmingly posh British accent, we might add). "Being based in the UK, I didn't know who Jimmy Buffett was, but everyone was telling me margaritas and Hawaiian shirts and stuff," added Mr. Khan, a serial entrepreneur who also works as Spotify's head of special projects  and advisor to founder Daniel Ek.

As Betabeat has previously reported, Spotify is looking to hire a technical recruiter for its New York office, which is the company's third-biggest location after Stockholm, then London. But Mr. Khan had some new tidbits to share about its New York outpost, which features requisite startup trappings like a ping-pong table, but really throws down with an old school Pac Man Arcade Party and Supercade.

"We’re in the Meatpacking district, which is very similar to the Shoreditch area off London, which is kind of the techy, hipster, trendy, no suits kind of thing," explained Mr. Khan. "We’re hiring quite aggressively in the company, full stop. I think we’re probably like 25, 30 people there [in New York]. There’s sales, there’s a dev team, there's some product people there. On the Spotify jobs page, you can see all the jobs in New York, which gives you an idea of what kind of people they're hiring."

So how did a cutting-edge company like Spotify meet the Ur-chillaxer? "Jimmy’s people reached out to me a couple of weeks ago going, 'Jimmy’s been playing around with Spotify and really likes it.' I sent an email around to the staff saying any Jimmy Buffett fans in the house? Half the people were like, 'Oh my god, do you know about Jimmy Buffett?!' I said, shall we invite him up? He met some of the devs and they showed him some of the cool stuff that we’re working on. It was a great vibe because half the staff actually wore Hawaiian shirts the day he came in, which really made his day. He was like, 'Wow you guys are really into what I’ve been preaching all these years.'"

Betabeat was still curious about how Jimmy Buffett had even heard of Spotify, all the way from Margaritaville. "I think one of his people in LA had been using it and said to him, 'Hey Jimmy, you need to check this out.' The first time you try it, you go, it can’'t be possible: How can you play music quicker on the internet than music on the hard drive? Obviously Jimmy is very savvy and business-minded and said this is where it’s headed, 'I really want to know who uses this, what the ecosystem's like.' We had a great  conversation. He embraces technology. He’s really into the future."

Mr. Buffett with Spotify's developer community manager Andrew Mager