You can try out Spotify for yourself, but just how broad is its local catalogue? And how many of its customers does it expect to pay up? To get some answers, Lifehacker chatted with Spotify Australia’s managing director Kate Vale.
After months of promises, Spotify Australia has launched with an aggressive pricing strategy and something of a focus on Australian music. How does it compare to the existing music streaming services?
Hmm. The last time I wrote about Spotify launching “soon” in Australia, everything suddenly went really quiet. Time for launch attempt number two?
Looking like a cross between the Twitter iPad app and the iPad’s new-but-not-so-great Music app, this pic might just show Spotify’s first iPad app. Like the Panasonic GF5 camera, it was leaked on Instragram — the latest rumour-mill, evidently.
In their quest to become the dominant streaming music service, Spotify has introduced yet another new feature: the Spotify Play Button. If you interact with Spotify through Facebook, you already have an idea of what this is like. You see a box for a song on Spotify, you hit play, and it automatically loads up the song on your desktop Spotify app.
Yesterday’s big news was the imminent announcement of Spotify plans for Australia, something we’ve been waiting expectantly on for months. If you’re particularly keen, you can sign up to be “first in line” — although it’s not exactly clear what that really means.
2012 is going to be a landmark year for streaming music services in Australia. We’ve already got Rdio, JB Hi-Fi, Samsung Music Hub and Music Unlimited, and from early next week we’ll have details on the big fish in the streaming pond: Spotify.
When HTC ponied up $US300 million for a majority stake in Beats, it’s fair to say it signalled its interest in audio. Now, rumours suggest the handset manufacturer is setting its sights on music streaming.
We’re always interested in (and looking for new) music discovery tools here at Giz: from the Aussie-developed Discovr app to Discogs.com. So here’s a new website you may want to check out: Music Bloodline. It catalogues artists according to who influenced who. It’s still very basic. But neat.
Music distributor STHoldings just pulled its collection of more than 200 record labels off subscription music services. Like, all of them. Quoting one label, “Let’s keep the music special, f**k Spotify.” What do those fighting words mean for us?
