….and then we came to the end: Spotify announce mobile app

So today Spotify released a demo of the mobile app that they’ve been working on in private: ever since the programme came into existence it’s only been a matter of time before they did this.

So what does this mean for music listeners? Most frequently, it’s been argued that it’s the end of the iPhone (the demo, very tellingly, uses a Google Android).  However, it’s not quite that cut-and-dried: at the moment, Spotify offers a far from comprehensive selection of music (case in point, they offer all of Pavement’s albums bar Slanted and Enchanted), which needs to change before world domination can ensue.

Secondly, this misses out one of the key loves of music aficionados everywhere, being the first to get onto a new band/record.  Even if Spotify has got the record labels onside with advertising revenues replacing royalties, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever stream records before they’re released, which means that people will still want MP3 format players to listen to ripped  and leaked records on.

Thirdly, I don’t envisage that this will change the way that I listen to music: most of the records I own are still on CD, and I think that although many music fans have made the jump from hard formats to MP3, they might baulk at never owning a record ever again: it sounds stupid, but every music obssessive knows that part of the fun of having a collection lies in people being able to see how good your taste is, something that a Spotify world would remove.

Let’s throw open the floor: what does Spotify mobile mean for Coldcut readers?

One Response to “….and then we came to the end: Spotify announce mobile app”

1. Paresh Patel says:

   May 30, 2009 at 12:06 pm

   Means nothing to me really, I have Google G1 but it is the most awful media player to have, there is no headphone port and listening over 3G is probably not the best what with constant buffering.

   No no, my trusty Zune does the job very well, and I like to encode at much higher bitrates anyway.

   I think this would work better on an iPhone/touch.

   Spotify is absolutely great on the computer however.

   What if The Hype Machine make a mobile app?