Music Ally

After releasing the video demo of its iPhone app this morning, Spotify is getting bags of coverage – much of it focusing on a single question: will its iPhone app prove to be an iTunes-killer?

Here’s a short answer: No.

Here’s a longer answer. Judging by the video, Spotify’s iPhone app is as impressive as its desktop version, and its ability to cache playlists for offline listening sets it apart from rival streaming services on the App Store.

And yes, if Spotify has chosen not to include links to buy songs from the iTunes Store, it may well get Apple’s goat, and cause a hold-up in the approval process.

But an iTunes killer? Not any time soon, unless you’re seriously suggesting that everyone who buys music from the iTunes Store is going to switch to Spotify in the next year or two. Even suggesting that streaming music in general will kill iTunes ignores the fast-emerging consensus within the music biz that no one consumption method or format is going to be The Future for music.

A lot of people may decide they have no need for downloads once Spotify goes mobile, but eradicating the desire among millions of people to ‘own’ songs? That’s going to take a long time.

But the other problem with the ‘Spotify to kill iTunes’ line of thinking is that it presupposes that Apple cares more about selling music downloads than it does about selling iPhones and iPod touches.

Record label execs are fond of grousing that Apple is more interested in flogging devices than it is in helping them make money from music. Are apps any different?

A slick, innovative and talked-about Spotify app will sell more Apple devices, especially if Apple throws its marketing weight behind it.

Spotify will be on other mobile handsets including Android and Nokia phones? Yes, but mobile apps in general are on those phones too, and look at how Apple has seized the public awareness on that.

We’re always loath to predict Apple’s immediate strategy, and that applies to the approval of Spotify.

The company could make its upstart streaming rival sweat by sending the app back a couple of times, it could decide not to carry it altogether, or it could let it sail through and cue up one of its iconic TV commercials (“Unlimited music at the tap of a finger? There’s an app for that…”)

What it won’t be doing, however, is commissioning a gravestone for the iTunes Store. Not just yet, anyway.

Tags: apple, iphone, spotify

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Digital Music Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.