Music Ally

Consultant Gerd Leonhard can be a divisive figure in music industry circles – he’s been ruffling the industry’s feathers for years at MidemNet with his presentations on how media and music will develop in the future.

We know he has a number of fans as well as haters in the industry though. So, for the latter – and anyone interested in keeping up with Leonhard’s views – he’s just released his official iPhone and Android apps, which are both free.

“As promised, and in-line with my new “Mobile First” mantra, I have been busy (re)-creating and formating exclusive content that you can only get via the iPhone or Android apps, such as various new podcasts and audio-only versions of my presentations, audio/mp3 versions of select chapters of my books, previously unpublished pictures etc,” he explains.

Digital music provider Omnifone has announced today that its MusicStation digital music service is to be made available on all Android handsets including the Google Nexus One and HTC Magic. (more…)

Tomorrow should see the formal unveiling of the Nexus One, the latest Android smartphone – differentiated by the fact that it’s Google’s brand on the handset rather than a manufacturer.

The company is holding an Android-themed event at its US headquarters, with information on the Nexus One all over the blogosphere in recent weeks in what smacked of a clever and deliberate campaign of leaks.

But here’s the really interesting thing. TechCrunch is claiming that Google has been in talks with Spotify to not only preload the latter’s Android app on the handset – but to pay the licensing fees to labels for music streamed by its users.

“Google wanted Spotify badly enough that they were willing to cover the label costs for every user of $3 – $4 per month. Spotify would add advertising on top of it, as they do with the free version in Europe, to make additional revenue.”

Spotify hasn’t even launched in the US yet, but persuading Google to foot the bill for its Android licensing costs would be a huge coup. However, TechCrunch admits that its sources claim the deal “has likely gone cold”, so perhaps won’t feature in tomorrow’s launch after all. Still, it’s not such a big leap from Spotify getting operators like 3 and Telia to bundle the cost of a premium subscription into their data tariffs, so it could still happen.

Interactive radio service Pandora has revealed as part of an article in GigaOm that snowballing mobile uptake has driven the brand’s impressive growth of late. Pandora has been installed on 13 million smartphones to date including iPhone, Blackberry, Palm and Android. 9 million of those users didn’t previously have computer-based Pandora accounts, meaning that 24% of Pandora’s users came from mobile. A quarter of the music played on Pandora goes to mobile and 25% of the purchases via iTunes or Amazon happen through mobile.

Mobile operator 3 UK has announced plans to sell HTC’s Hero handset, with a Spotify premium subscription bundled in. It’s one of the first deals of this kind – customers will pay £35 a month for a bundle of voice, texts and mobile data, but also a premium subscription to the music streaming service worth £9.99 a month.

The Spotify Android app will presumably be preloaded on the handset. “Over time, our deal with Spotify will extend across a range of our products, including Mobile Broadband,” says 3 director of products and services Charles Blanchard.

Meanwhile, Spotify’s global head of business development Faisal Galaria, Global Head of Business Development at Spotify, is equally chuffed: “This is a very exciting deal for Spotify. We’re intent on offering people a high quality, simple yet powerful portable music experience at a fair price and we’re thrilled to be working with 3 to bring Spotify to UK music fans.”

It’s more proof that the next surge in Spotify signups may come from partnerships with ISPs and operators – besides 3 UK, Spotify already has a deal with Telia in Sweden that will cover both mobile and broadband.

What impact will the launch of Spotify’s iPhone and Android versions have on signups? Here’s an immediate sign: “Due to the huge demand in the UK over the last few days since we launched our mobile service, we are going to have to temporarily reinstate our invite system in the UK,” says a post on the company’s blog.

That brings the UK back into line with other European countries where you need an invite to sign up for the free version of Spotify, but is presumably an attempt to rein in licensing costs. However, it’s interesting that the launch of the mobile apps – which require a premium subscription – stimulated such a surge in signups to the free service.

It’s perhaps no surprise that the launch of Spotify in the US may not happen until 2010. If the availability of the mobile apps spurs so much demand for the free version, the company really will have to hit the ground running on ad sales as soon as it launches there, given the popularity among Americans of iPhone and Android handsets.

Spotify has announced that its mobile application is now available for iPhone and iPod touch, on Apple’s App Store. And in a surprise extra, the version of the app for Android handsets has simultaneously gone live on Google’s Android Market store.

“Launching these apps is our first step at going mobile and we’d like to thank all the people who worked hard on making this happen as well as all the partners involved in the process,” says Spotify’s blog post announcing the news.

Remember, though, that both apps require a premium (i.e. paid) Spotify membership to work. The company will be hoping for a surge in upgrades to its £9.99 option as a result. As we said in our hands-on with the app, its innovative cacheing feature that makes playlists available for offline listening makes a persuasive case.

Soon, it may well be easier to list the artists who DON’T have their own branded iPhone app than to list those that do. In the last few days alone, more than 250 artist apps have been launched on iPhone’s App Store by iLike, which is charging bands $99 apiece for developing them.

Meanwhile, Kyte has launched iPhone apps for the likes of Lady GaGa and the Pussycat Dolls, Mobile Roadie has taken Spinal Tap onto the App Store, and everyone from David Bowie to BT to Soulja Boy Tell’em have launched iPhone apps letting fans remix their songs. The days when it was just Snow Patrol and Pink ploughing a lonely iPhone furrow are long gone.

Launching an iPhone app makes sense right now. More than 45 million iPhones and iPod touches have been sold, meaning a healthy addressable base. What’s more, iPhone apps are cool – the PR benefits alone often pay for the development costs. Yet we can’t help wondering when the people commissioning these apps will start looking beyond the App Store to other mobile platforms.

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Streaming music service Imeem has revealed that it now has more than one million users of its mobile applications (on iPhone and Android), although it’s the Android version that the company seems most excited about.

Android listening sessions are more than twice as long as on iPhone, says CEO Dalton Caldwell, and the app is now on two out of every three Android handsets – with a third of Android users new to Imeem.

What about BlackBerry, which has been aggressively trumpeting its suitability for music apps this year? “It’s a total pain to install anything on the BlackBerry,” says Caldwell. Ouch.

UK streaming music service We7 is developing its own iPhone application, and hopes to have it available on the App Store by the end of this year, CEO Steve Purdham has told Music Ally. The company has also got an Android version of the app running in its labs, and is currently evaluating other mobile platforms, including BlackBerry.

This means that by the end of this year, nearly every major streaming service will have mobile apps available. Spotify recently showed off its Android app, and is known to be working on iPhone and Series 60 versions. Meanwhile, the likes of Imeem, Last.fm and Pandora all have mobile apps already available.

Has anyone asked MySpace Music what its plans are? Just a thought.