Spotify’s app for the iPhone has been approved by Apple and should be available to premium customers shortly. But alas, not in the U.S. — at least, not yet.
“The current status as of right now is it’s been approved and we hope to add the app to the more than 65,000 apps on the app store very soon,” an Apple spokesperson told PaidContent. “We’ve been in constant communication working with the developer and have already notified Spotify that the app will be in the app store very soon.”
This is fantastic news for music lovers, and a big surprise from Apple. If there’s a real threat to iTunes, it’s Spotify.
Spotify’s streaming music service has taken the world by storm with a library that rivals iTunes — about 6 million tracks — and an interface to match. It’s dead easy to search, build playlists, and find new artists. It’s basically iTunes in the cloud — but free.
The $20-a-month premium service dispenses with the occasional ads, which aren’t intrusive. A premium account will be required to use the iPhone app.
So magnificent is the service, it already has 2 million subscribers in Europe and is adding 50,000 new users every day. It is set to come to the U.S. some time later this year, or maybe next, pending licensing agreements with the record labels.
The only downside is that it’s tied to the computer. But Spotify’s iPhone app promises to change that. The app can cache full playlists to be played offline — thousand of songs can be stored on the iPhone and played at any time. You can store up to 3,333 songs — that’s 10 days constant listening — and the songs will sync over WiFi, no USB cable needed, according to Wired.com. Bye, bye iTunes. This is the future of music. Why would you buy songs any longer?
There was speculation that the app wouldn’t be approved by Apple because it is such a threat to the iTunes business model. Some feared Apple would argue that the Spotify App replicates core functions of the iPhone: IE. playing music. This was the reasoning Apple used for not approving the Google Voice app, which is still under review because it replicates the iPhone’s telephony functions — or so Apple argued to the FCC.
So big surprise that Apple’s giving the go-ahead. Of course, the app might be crippled in key ways. But perhaps the company is softening its stance in the face of ongoing controversy about the App Store? Or perhaps Apple is afraid it might become the target of an antitrust case, a la Microsoft?
Fingers crossed Spotify comes Stateside sooner than later. Here’s a cool video of the Spotify app in action. Watch the offline song caching feature at about 28 seconds in. .
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
