Spotify demos mobile music streaming with offline option – for Android

If you have any interest in the future of the music industry, I recommend taking a look at the following video:

There are a couple of reasons why this demo of streaming music to a Google Android mobile is interesting. First, if Spotify delivers the kind of performance and quality it has on the desktop, this will be a great facility for music fans. Second, it is interesting to see how it handles the offline problem, such as when you are in London and descend into the London Underground train network. Simple: just mark a track for offline use, and it downloads to local storage. I’m presuming this is encrypted in some way in order to prevent you from converting it to a standard MP3; but if it is always available anyway, who cares?

Will this be free, or a premium service? I’m guessing the latter but don’t yet have any more details.

Of course everyone is asking for an iPhone version. See for example this post:

It’s interesting that Spotify has chosen Android as the mobile debut, rather than iPhone – although it’s safe to assume the company is working on Apple’s handset too, among others.

Hmmm, I wonder what chance this would have of getting past Apple’s iPhone app censorship? It seems to me that what we are seeing is the beginning of the end for the iTunes download model.

One thought on “Spotify demos mobile music streaming with offline option – for Android”

  1. Indeed.

    What people forget is that its free to code for Android, more or less free for Windows Mobile (easier to do if you buy Visual Studio) but you have to pay an annual fee to develop for iPhone/iPod.

    So its rather obvious why they chose Android first.

    I disagree its the end of iTunes though unless Spotify jump on the bandwagon and offer sale of individual tracks. I personally use Spotify to check out tracks and then will buy the CD if I like it enough. The first company to offer FLAC downloads will get my money, but regardless of how good Spotify is I will always want my own, personal, library of music I do with what I choose. Its too easy for them to suddenly cut the free service and say “if you want to continue, pay us money”.

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