Although Apple’s iTunes is still the dominant force in digital music – so dominant as to make all its competitors look like hilarious, insignificant specks – the competition are lining up to attempt to slay the Jobsian giant. Google are putting the finishing touches to Google Music, which (record label negotiations permitting) should launch soon, Amazon has recently bolstered their digital media service with Cloud Player, and now streaming service Spotify has upped their game to offer not just online listening but full track purchases and download, putting them in direct competition with the iTunes behemoth.
Spotify has traditionally been just a streaming service operating a freemium model – users could listen to a certain amount of free material per month, or they could pay a flat fee (£4.99 for the basic package in the UK) to listen to as much music as they wanted. The service – which is popular in Europe but has not made its way to US shores yet – recently cut the amount of free listening for non-paying users in half to just ten hours per month, following pressure from record labels to bring in more delicious royalty fees.
Obviously looking to monetise further, Spotify this morning launched their track purchasing service. As Spotify is playlist driven, instead of purchasing albums users can purchase playlists they either make themselves or those created by others. The pricing announced so far is reasonable, but won’t set the world on fire. Spotify have negotiated bulk discounts with the record labels, so although ten tracks will set you back £7.99 (again – this is GBP, feel free to be appalled at the cost, American friends), one hundred tracks will cost you £50 – knocking the per-track price down from 80p to 50p.
Once downloaded, playlists can by synced to a range of devices, including iPods (we can’t see Apple liking that). The service also includes wireless sync for Android and iOS devices, which puts it one up against Apple’s cable-bound devices. Additionally, from today the Spotify app for Android and iOS, previously only for the usage of Premium subscribers, is free to all, who can use it to play local media and make purchases.
Spotify has released a now-obligatory kitsch video to accompany the launch, which you can see here.
