Spotify on the Google phone
Music streaming service Spotify already offers a very compelling desktop experience. The Mac and Windows client features the familiar iTunes-esque User Interface, a fast growing music catalogue and the ad-supported free-ness that is so popular with users who otherwise might source their music from P2P filesharing networks. That’s all well and good but ad revenue alone is unlikely to generate enough revenue for Spotify to stay in business. Instead, the company is hoping that over time enough users will opt for the monthly paid-for subscription version and it’s here that mobile could be key.
Currently the paid-for version offers little to differentiate itself from the free offering aside from doing away with the ads. Ads that aren’t intrusive enough to make most punters part with their money. A mobile version of Spotify running natively on a range of handsets on the other hand might actually be something users are willing to pay for. Especially if its possible to ‘cache’ playlists to enable access to the music streaming service even when there’s no WiFi or 3G connection available.
On that note an iPhone version was already known to be in development, with Nokia’s S60 thought to be next. Now it looks likely that Spotify will in fact make its mobile debut on Google’s Android OS after the company published a video previewing a native Spotify client running on Android, off-line playback included. Video embedded after the jump (via TechCrunch Europe).
