If dominating the music streaming business in UK isn’t enough, it looks like Spotify has its eyes set on the music download market as well. No longer is Spotify going to be a companion to iTunes – it’s going to be a competitor. Today, Spotify is launching a new music downloads store which puts the company head to head against Apple’s own iTunes music download store. Seeing how Apple is rumored to launch its own cloud music storage/streaming service – it makes sense that Spotify has to step up its game in this industry.
The music download store is aimed at users of the free version of Spotify – ever since Spotify placed restrictions on their free services, free users haven’t been able to listen to the same song more than 5 times, and only get 10 hours of streaming a month. By being able to purchase tracks, users won’t have to face such restrictions on their favorite tunes.
In addition to enabling music downloads, users will also be able to sync their tracks with iPods, making sure that one of the most popular music players in the world can be used to listen to Spotify-downloaded music. Spotify also wants its desktop client to be the default music player for its 9 million+ users. iOS and Android devices will also be sync-able with the updated Spotify desktop client – previously the feature was limited to premium subscribers. Some features like streaming directly from Spotify’s catalogue will remain a premium feature.
Songs will be sold in bundles – 10 tracks cost £7.99, 15 tracks cost £9.99, 40 tracks cost £25 and 100 tracks cost £50. All songs that are available for streaming will be available for purchase at launch. It’s too early to tell how well Spotify can hold its own against the behemoth that is iTunes, but it’ll be interesting to see how it develops. How many of you Spotify Free users will be purchasing music from their download store?
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