Why Spotify’s iPhone approval is a big deal
After weeks of speculation, Apple approved Spotify’s iPhone application last night – and unusually, it announced that news to journalists. Although it’s not available on the App Store at the time of writing, Apple says it’s coming “very soon”.
It’s obviously very good news for Spotify, which took a calculated risk in releasing a video demo of the app and giving journalists hands-on previews several weeks ago, when it still didn’t know if the app would be approved.
The app is its first move into mobile, and will be an important weapon in its battle to persuade more of its free users to upgrade to the premium version of the service, which costs £9.99 a month. The hooplah around the iPhone version will also benefit take-up of the Android and Series 60 versions when they come out, too.
The approval is, obviously, good news for iPhone and iPod touch-owning Spotify users – at least, the ones who are either paying already or are happy to upgrade. As we explained in our hands-on preview, the application is really impressive: slick, easy to use, and with a playlist-caching feature that sets it apart from the competition.
However, the approval is also good news for those rivals, not to mention Apple itself.
Why? The conclusion we’d draw from Apple’s decision to approve Spotify’s app is that it doesn’t see the streaming music service as a threat. Much of the speculation suggesting it wouldn’t be approved focused on possible cannibalisation of iTunes Store sales. Once you can cache playlists on your iPhone, why would you buy music to own?
Apple’s decision may have been swayed by the current controversy swirling around its non-approval of a separate app, Google Voice, but we think it also sees clearly that the Spotify app will benefit Apple by selling more iPhones and iPod touches, than it will hurt it in lost iTunes Store sales.
And that’s good news for RealNetworks’ Rhapsody app – submitted for approval this week – and for We7, Napster, and any other music service yet to hit the App Store, and is concerned about being seen as competitive by Apple. Which, in turn, will foster more musical innovation on the iPhone and iPod touch.
August 28th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Unless I’m mistaken, the iPod function on the iPhone still has the massive advantage of being able to work in the background while another app is running, while with Spotify the user can listen to music but do nothing else
But great news, and will be intriguing to see how this affects the paid-free balance of Spotify users.
August 29th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
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