Spotify launches Apple iTunes ‘rival’

New application will synch tracks from computers to iPods, iPhones and Androids and allow users to buy MP3 bundles If you hate using Apple’s iTunes to synchronise songs on your iPod or iPhone, the music streaming service Spotify would like your attention. It is rolling out a new version of its desktop and mobile application for all of its users, including the ad-supported “free” users, which will synchronise tracks from their computer to iPods, iPhones and Android phones. It is also introducing its own music store, which will allow users to buy “bundles” to pay for MP3-encoded songs from the catalogue, in which buying a bigger bundle effectively gives a discount on the songs. Thus a “bundle” of 10 tracks costs £7.99, effectively costing 80p each, while a bundle of 100 costs £50. The company says the synchronisation – which also works over Wi-Fi, something iTunes doesn’t do – has been the top most requested feature from its users for a considerable time. It has taken more than a year of programming to implement it, and led to other projects being put on hold while the engineers figured out the plumbing of the iPod to ensure seamless functioning. While the new version will not completely replace iTunes for people with iPhone or iPod Touches – which will still need them for synchronising apps and doing software updates – and will also not change calendars, photos, videos or other content on lower-end iPods, chief product officer Gustav Soderstrom told the Guardian that Spotify saw it as important to reach more users of its free service. Premium users can already synchronise content from Spotify playlists on iPod Touches, iPhones and Android phones, but free users were limited to the desktop version. “There are studies which say that the iPod is the biggest music device in terms of hours listened,” Soderstrom said. “Perhaps after the car, because people listen to a lot of radio in cars. But the iPod is certainly second, and the desktop comes a long way behind.” Spotify reckons that if it extends its functionality to the iPod, more people will eventually upgrade to its service. The company said at the beginning of March it has a million subscribers and 10m registered users ; no further update was provided this week. There was also no announcement on when Spotify might reach the US: “We’re still working hard on that. We’re getting closer,” said a spokesman. Asked how he thought Apple would react to the news, Soderstrom said he thought it would be happy: “They have encouraged third-party services through the App Store for the iPhone, iPod Touch and more recently the Mac platform. They believe that having a third-party ecosystem really drives hardware sales.” In the past, Apple has blocked companies it thought were trying to unravel the digital protections around music on the iPod. But Soderstrom said Spotify is not doing that: it will not try to remove songs put on the device by iTunes, and will not try to synchronise DRM-protected songs, although he said that only a “small percentage” of people have such music. Apple stopped selling DRM-protected songs through its iTunes Music Store in January 2009, though some songs have not been updated. The Spotify sync puts the music on the device a second time, though Soderstrom said that most Premium users remove the iTunes music and synchronise their playlists from Spotify directly. At present Spotify can only synchronise “static” playlists from iTunes, and not “smart” playlists which are updated in iTunes when new songs are added to the library. Soderstrom said that functionality was being worked on both for synchronisation and for Spotify playlists generally. • Amazon has cut the prices of MP3 downloads in the US, reducing them to 69 cents, compared to the $1.29 that some songs in Apple’s iTunes Store sell at. Amazon has about 10% of the music download market in the US but is now looking to expand. Spotify Internet Digital music and audio iTunes Apple Software iPhone Mobile phones Telecoms iPod Android Google Wi-Fi Media business Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 4, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.