One of the most popular articles on Technocloud recently was a look into Spotify’s multi-media ambitions in a post called Spotify mobile where I noted a job advert on their site advertising for a Nokia S60 platform software engineer.
Those ambitions are slowly being realised if a video of a potential Spotify iPhone app is genuine (see below). The rumours are that it will allow premium users (£9.99/month) to stream tracks from the entire library as well as access to the all-important playlists and even caching when connected to Wi-Fi.
Streaming music is nothing new to the iPhone, with YouTube a default app and the Last.fm app allowing you to stream its artist radio stations. The key to the user experience are the playlists and the caching.
Alongside the technical challenges of streaming music to mobile, they do of course face one major hurdle. The iPhone app store has the right to refuse any app and is likely to be concerned by an app that streams music playlists to the phone given the potential effect on sales to its iTunes store.
There is also the question of battery life, with a streaming music app likely to consume considerably more power than the in-built itunes software on the phone.
They might overcome the technical challenges, it’s the business challenges that may well prove the harder.
I see last.fm are cutting back on their mobile app’s access. Will be v difficult for spotify to pull this off unless they are charging a subscription under v3 of the software…
Posted by jp | April 17, 2009, 8:33 amFor me, I wanted to dock my iPhone in my main HiFi and play some Spotify tunes and realised it isn’t possible. Even if it was just with WiFi access that would be something good.
Posted by anthony | July 9, 2009, 3:38 pm