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Spotify is bringing free music to phones and tablets, according to new reports. The streaming music service is expected to announce ad-supported free listening on mobile devices next week.
The Wall Street Journal reports the streaming Swedes have inked deals with all three global licensing companies to bring free music to mobile devices as well as laptops and PCs.
You won’t get unlimited access to Spotify’s catalogue — perhaps similar to Spotify’s experiments with capping the number of times non-paying users can listen to individual songs — but you will be able to listen to your playlists.
Music Ally points out that Spotify introduced just such a service for the iPhone and iPad in the US way back in June 2012, so next week’s announcement is expected to see free mobile listening spread to other countries.
Spotify is free with adverts, £4.99 without adverts, and £9.99 for the full premium experience across all types of devices.
Tunes in tunnels
Currently, you can only listen to Spotify on your phone or tablet if you pony up a tenner for a premium account. That buys the ability to cache songs and playlists on your phone to listen without ads and without an Internet connection, so as not to eat up your data allowance and making sure the tunes don’t stop when your train goes in a tunnel.
With 20 million active users world-wide, Spotify is one of the leading lights in the music streaming space, but has its share of problems. More and more rivals are joining the streaming service: headphone company Beats is launching its own service Beats Music in January, to take on existing rivals like Bloom.fm, Rdio, Nokia Music and others. Meanwhile Spotify draws flak for its business model, prompting the company to finally reveal its payments to artists.
Is Spotify worth a tenner a month, or do you get your music elsewhere? Does Spotify deserve your money based on its payments to artists? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or sing us a song on our Facebook page.
