Music Ally

Spotify has made no secret of the fact that it’s working on mobile applications to access its streaming music service, but here’s the first video of how they’ll actually look.

Spotify has released the footage showing its official mobile app for Google’s Android platform, having publicly unveiled it last night at the Google I/O event.

What do you think? Let us know with your comments. It’s interesting that Spotify has chosen Android as the mobile debut, rather than iPhone – although it’s safe to assume the company is working on Apple’s handset too, among others.

At Music Ally we were thrilled when we heard that Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, had accepted our invitation to speak at The Great Escape festival in Brighton at the weekend. He didn’t disappoint.

Ek chatted openly on stage with Music Ally’s Paul Brindley for half an hour on a variety of subjects and revealed several fascinating facts about his company. The Telegraph covered Ek’s insights into future developments across mobile platforms and social networks, here. In fact the Telegraph has been all over Spotify recently.

However, one thing to add on the mobile front is that Paul Brown, Spotify’s new UK MD previously worked for Pandora, which developed 2008’s most popular music app on the iPhone; streaming music to the device and generating 200,000 downloads a month through affiliate links to iTunes. In terms of revenue and growth the iPhone app has been transformational and the same growth will undoubtedly happen to Spotify once they also hit the iPhone.

What else did Ek say? Well, on a slightly gossipy tangent, Brindley asked Ek where the inspiration for Spotify came from. “It came from The Pirate Bay” was the reply. Ek says that when he saw just how popular The Pirate Bay was becoming, and how easy it was to use, it formed the basis for his development model for Spotify; albeit as a legal service.

Ek also said that he had only spent GBP £5,000 in total marketing the Spotify service in the UK. With over a million users in the UK he has probably, pound per user, conducted one of the cheapest and most effective service launches since Google. (more…)

We’re all going to be rich from adverts after all! Maybe. At least, eMarketer is predicting that ad-supported mobile music will grow from $42 million last year to $116 million this year, and will reach $1.5 billion by 2013. (more…)

We wrote yesterday about Rhapsody America’s launch of a DRM-free digital music store, but simultaneously the company was striking a deal with US mobile operator Verizon Wireless, which will be offering Rhapsody to its customers as a PC and mobile subscription service. It’ll cost them $14.99 a month, which covers three PCs and three mobile phones. The Rhapsody mobile app will be preloaded on several of Verizon’s phones, starting with LG’s Chocolate 3. However, Verizon will continue to sell over-the-air downloads separately through its own store.

New research from Nielsen Mobile claims that 1.7% of all UK mobile subscribers – about 812,000 people – visited a social networking website using their phone in the first quarter of 2008. However, when you consider just mobile internet subscribers (i.e. people with data plans), the percentages rise. For example, 9% (more…)