Spotify’s iPhone app has just gone live on the iTunes app store. But us poor Yankees are SOL. It’s available in Europe only — for now anyway.
The app is available here for free from Apple’s App Store, but requires a premium Spotify account to work at a cost of about £9.99 (about about $16) a month.
Neither the app nor Spotify is available in the U.S., but plans are afoot to bring the highly-rated service across the pond. It is set to come to the U.S. sometime later this year, or maybe next, pending licensing agreements with the record labels, and advertising deals that support the free service.
Because Spotify’s streaming music service is such a threat to iTunes, it was possible that Apple might somehow disable the iPhone app. Apple has disapproved of apps that replicate core iPhone functions, like Google Voice. While there is no indication yet that Apple cripples threatening apps, it doesn’t approve them. Apple perhaps doesn’t see the Spotify iPhone app as a threat while it is restricted to premium customers.
But Spotify’s app doesn’t seem to have any restrictions, except one imposed on all third-party apps — it can’t run in the background.
Spotify’s streaming music service has taken the world by storm with a music 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 (with the occasional ad).
Spotify’s iPhone app adds a very important feature: it can cache full playlists to be played offline. You can store up to 3,333 songs — that’s 10 days constant listening — and they will play when the network goes dark. The offline caching service allows tracks to be played anywhere offline: on airplanes, in subways or even when traveling overseas to avoid roaming charges.
Official screenshots of the app and a video of it in action after the jump.
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.
