Apple says yes to iPhone iTunes killer
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Apple on
“It’s been approved” says the Apple spokesperson. “They’ve been great” says the CEO on Twitter. It’s true, Spotify for the iPhone is going to be a reality real soon now, and that could mean the death of iTunes, eventually. Spotify has already taken music loving European desktop users by storm, bringing streaming music to their computers for free in an ad-supported version. Now it is finally coming to the iPhone and that could change everything.
Of course, it changes the whole free music thing for a start. While the iPhone Spotify application itself will be free of charge, using it will most certainly not be. It will only be available to ‘Premium@ Spotify subscribers who will have to cough up £9.99 per month for the ad-free privilege.
But more importantly it changes how you get music onto your iPhone, and that means how you get music onto your iPod as well. So instead of paying 79p per track as with iTunes, users will be able to have all they can eat, streamed from an impressive library of millions of songs and all for that single monthly subscription fee.
Daniel Ek, the CEO of Swedish outfit Spotify Twittered that “I can confirm that Apple has approved the app” going on to diffuse some of the arguments that have been raging online that Apple would not approve the app due to fears of compromising the iTunes position (or duplicating core features of the iPhone) by stating “We’re happy but have had a great dialogue with Apple all the way. They’ve been great!”
Apple and iTunes can breathe easy as far as the US market is concerned and it’s not yet available there yet although it is expected to launch later in the year. Expect an Android version to follow before long as well. With 2 million users in the UK and 6 million across Europe it may not be quite in iTunes territory yet but Spotify is growing fast, making friends in the music business who like the revenue stream potential and perhaps most telling of all it has geek street cred, something that iTunes falls somewhat flat on.
Now we just have to wait and see what will happen with the Google Voice iPhone app although I must confess I am not holding my breath…
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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Comment by AdamC - August 30, 2009 on 9:39 am
It’s true, Spotify for the iPhone is going to be a reality real soon now, and that could mean the death of iTunes, eventually. -
Hahahahaha, do you think Apple is so stupid to shoot their own feet.
Comment by abugida - August 30, 2009 on 10:27 am
Apple have given the same answer to this over and over: Should there ever emerge a successful music subscription service Apple will have no technical challenges and will not hesitate to offer one themselves. There is no threat from music subscription services that Apple could not thwart easily. The only threat to iTunes is the music industry’s will to subsidize competing companies.
Comment by - September 1, 2009 on 1:25 pm
The TomTom iPhone car kit hasn’t been released quite yet, but it’s apparently just passed FCC inspection (thanks, Engadget!). The inspection has revealed a couple of interesting facts that we didn’t know before. In addition to possessing its own GPS, the car kit also has Bluetooth capability in order to allow hands-free calling while on the road.Visit http://www.i4u.com/article26643.html for more details.
Comment by - October 9, 2009 on 7:57 am
i like
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