“If Spotify has its way, iPhone owners will no longer be slaves to iTunes, song-by-song payments or finite disk capacity,” Adam Taylor reports for TIME Magazine.
“Last week the Swedish company behind Spotify’s streaming music provider announced plans to release a free iPhone application that will let users listen to songs played directly off of its online service, with no need to download,” Taylor reports. “That would give iPhone users instant access to any of Spotify’s 6 million songs, without taking up precious memory space — way more than the maximum 7,000 tracks that a 32GB iPhone can hold.”
Taylor reports, “Songs can also be temporarily stored, or cached, ready to play during those moments when web connection drops, like when you’re going through a tunnel or underground. Spotify’s new application could change the way iPhone users listen to music. But first, it has to get the okay from Apple.”
“Spotify’s new application won’t be available to everyone, only those who opt for the premium service, which costs $15 a month for unlimited streams… access to pre-releases and better audio quality than the free service, which forces users to listen to ads after every few songs,” Taylor reports. “Spotify hopes to have its new application available on the iPhone within the next few weeks. The trick is getting Apple to approve an application that some observers see as a potential challenger to Apple’s own iTunes.”
“‘We honestly don’t think there is a direct competitor to Spotify, as no one’s doing exactly what we’re doing at the moment,’ Spotify spokesman Jim Butcher says over email. ‘We’re confident that Apple will allow the Spotify app, as we think it will improve the iPhone users’ experience even further.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
No one except Apple of course!
Isn’t this just like zune pass only worse?at least with the zune pass you get higher quality songs that you actually DL
No one except Zune, no one except Nokia, no one except anyone you know who is already doing it.
The fact that you have to cough up $30.00 or something close to that every month for music you will not own once you stop coughing up will not deter any iPod, iTouch or iPhone user from subscribing to spotify because… hey! it is six million songs!! I mean, what’s $30.00 totted up to your final iPhone bill at the end of the month? nothing? nothing?? How many of the six million songs on that catalogue do you already own? aiee? All your favourite tracks? SO WHY THE HELL DO YOU WANT to cough up good money after bad for? Why the hell did the Zune fail on a similar model for???
I wonder? and I thought the Swedes were brilliant! I guess not all them are….
I have a iPod and songs in iTunes that I have bought or converted from my CDs. I do not want to spend $15 a month for the same music. On another site I read the ads were every 20 seconds. But, Apple should allow the app.
I use spotify on my Mac and I think it’s great. I don’t have a premium account, but I might think about one if this get’s the go ahead.
This would be a good response to the zune pass. Especially if Apple doesn’t believe in subscriptions. They can let Spotify take the risk. It all helps Apple’s real, goal selling hardware.
This is a total “damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t” situation for Apple. On one hand, it’s a competitor with iTunes. On the other hand, if they deny it, it will be one more in a series of bad PR moves for Apple and the App Store, because the tech blogs will be all over it, condemning Apple.
It will be very interesting to see what happens here. I, for one, don’t feel like I will use this app. I stream from Pandora only once in a blue moon. There is still nothing like owning my music.
And for the record, I have tried spotify, it did not have quite alot of classic pop songs from yesteryear. Nor any of the notable collectibles, I guess because they are in it for the money and for the love of music.
Time for another couple weeks of bad publicity with bloggers abandoning their iPhones and proclaiming Apple as the new Microsoft once this app is rejected.
And this is better than Pandora because….?
Pay $15 a month or listen to commercials and not get the latest music available.
Decisions, decisions. Think I’ll turn on the FM radio and save money, battery life, bandwidth, data allowance and the cost of an iPhone.
Let’s get real here. FM duplicates this service in most cities. It won’t catch on, but if it did, streaming to millions of iPhones simultaneously would bring down the network. Apple will say no.
“How many of the six million songs on that catalogue do you already own? All your favourite tracks? SO WHY THE HELL DO YOU WANT to cough up good money after bad for?”
Well, I would agree and disagree with this.
You’re right. I certainly don’t want to “rent” my favorite music. However, I don’t have anything against the idea that I might want to rent music in order to determine whether or not it will become my favorite music.
The problem with rental systems, to me, is that there is too much choice. 6 million songs…wow.
Part of the problem with these types of services is that they provide no service. You’re paying $x per month for access. You still have to do the work to figure out what you might or might not want to listen to. Why should I bother–I already have a batch of my favorite music right here?
I’ve said it before: Apple has a lot of the tools necessary for a good subscription service with their store and iTunes software. What I want to be able to do is create a “smart playlist” for my morning commute. I want it to contain these 23 favorite songs that I own, the top 10 from Billboard’s Top 100 List whose Genre is not “Hip Hop/Rap”, and the latest ABC News and Weather Channel podcasts. I dock my iPod, go to bed, get up the next morning and there’s my playlist, ready to go.
Subscription music is a waste of time, agreed. I do not want to rent my favorite music. But a subscription music service which will automatically fill my iPod with music that I would like to hear isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Again, mix in some short podcasts with news and information and what do I need a radio station for, anyway?
“And this is better than Pandora because….?”
Because you can actually choose which songs you want to listen to, whenever you want to listen to them, and even cache playlists for listening to music without an internet connection.
Simplify media streams all the music from any computer you set it up with straight to your iPhone. This sounds retarded.
Apple may see this as a competitor … or not. I don’t. They are not offering to SELL the content, or even to GIVE you the content. They are offering to let you RENT the content. Now, it is my personal opinion, the opinion of a geek who lived and loved through the sixties and seventies, that much of today’s “music” is good for …. MAYBE one listen. Maybe. So, maybe that’s the market they are aiming for? I can’t believe that the majority of the market does not want to spend their kroner on a couple dozen songs they can listen to at will – even after quitting the service – rather than having a couple of million songs available as long as you pay the “rent”. I have tens of thousands of songs in my collection, but only select from maybe a thousand of them “intentionally”. The rest I hear “on occasion”. The iPhone (if I had one) would suit me fine.
Some it’s gonna cost me 180 a year to rent music…Hmmm, I’m still not really sold on that concept yet.
Oops…So
I hope someone like Microsoft or Dell buys them and bury them with the rest of their crappy stuff.
So, yet another subscription based service… It completely boggles the mind that anyone with a modicum of sanity would think it a good idea to ‘rent’ music for $15/month.
I guess what David Hannum said is true “There is a sucker born every minute.”
So they want to offer the app for free so that Apple distributes the software, but receives no revenue. Then they want to charge a subscription fee, of which Apple receives nothing. To top it off, the app has the potential to draw revenue away from the iTunes Store.
I don’t see a bright future for this app on the iPhone, particularly since Apple could easily provide subscription access to the iTunes library (if the necessary licensing agreements were established with the content owners).
There goes the bandwidth
Someone needs to read Apple’s rules a bit more closely as a Free App must contain only Free content. You can’t give away an app and then charge for content. They will need to have either 1) a paid App that they can then do the in app purchase of the monthly subscription with free ad supported content if they did not or 2) a paid App and a Free App.
If I were Spotify I’d go with a .99 app with in App Monthly subscriptions. But in doing this they do have a break in their model which is the automatic monthly renewal. With in App Purchase the Customer would need to purchase the premium upgrade each month or Spotify would need to sell the Premium upgrades in 1,2,3,6,9,and 12 month blocks.
If Spotify is looking to get around the in app purchase and give away an App sticking Apple with distribution costs while they rake in the Premium fees I think they are in for a bit of a shocker.
If I were Apple I’d reject it just on the grounds that the rules for APPs reads you can’t collect fees of upgrades and expansions and premium content on a Free App. If Spotify wants to make money from premium upgrades from iPhone users they can’t and should not expect Apple to eat their App’s Distribution costs.
@Demon,
With the Slack Radio application you can buy a $47 yearly subscription for ad-free service.
They offer the free version of the app with ads, then you access the site through Safari on your phone (or a computer) and you sign up for Slacker Radio Plus.
I’m not sure whether or not Spotify will have the same approach but there are other free applications with subscriptions that bypass the App Store.
Apple should buy Spotify and integrate it into iTunes. I don’t file share and I didn’t stream, for all the obvious reasons. But I loaded Spotify yesterday and haven’t come off it since. It’s very slick and does exactly what it says on the tin. I just have the free account and turn down the ads (not mute, or they pause . . . as I said: ‘slick’).
I’ve listened to over 20 albums already, many of which I didn’t even realise existed previously, and am now going to buy several of them. That *should* be a click-thru for me to iTunes. But isn’t currently. It’s a no-brainer for Apple: pocket change with their current war-chest. And if they don’t, Spotify could end up being a real threat. Because, as I said, I didn’t use any of the previous streaming monstrosities . . . but as a way of legally checking out music Spotify is unmatched and outstanding. And that could end up being a problem for Apple someday.
Don’t forget that Apple makes a lot of money from selling iPhones, but only a comparatively small sum from selling music via iTunes. iTunes is essentially a vehicle for making the purchase of an iPod more attractive.
Therefore I don’t see Spotify as posing any real threat to Apple. People will still buy iPhones and Apple will make money from those sales.
It could be quite a tempting proposition for Apple if part of Spotify’s monthly revenue were paid to Apple, maybe by handling the subscription through iTunes, with Apple passing the bulk of that money to Spotify.
Seems to me that developers are using Apple’s BS App Store approval process to their marketing advantage. Sh!t I’ve never heard of is in the forefront of tech media, all because of this.
I mean, would anyone have downloaded Ninjawords? Not me. But now I know all about them…
MDN MW: “Recently” as in “Recently, Apple has gotten a lot of bad press because of their App Store shenanigans.”