Spotify readies iPhone app for its streaming music service

On-demand music streaming company Spotify is readying an iPhone client for its service, and expects to release it in a matter of weeks.

The iPhone software should be available as a free download from Apple's iPhone App Store in a few weeks' time, but using it to stream music will require a Spotify Premium subscription, the company's communications manager Jim Butcher said Monday.

Users of Spotify's desktop client software for Windows or Mac OS X can choose between the Spotify Premium music-streaming service costing €9.99 (US$14) a month, or a free service supported by advertising. Paid subscribers can access higher quality music streams, download music while travelling outside their home country, and hear new albums before they are available to users of the free service.

Spotify's service streams music at around 160K bps (kilobits per second) using the Ogg Vorbis q5 codec, and is available in Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.

On the iPhone, it will compete with Apple's own iTunes Store, where users are charged to download tunes but pay no ongoing subscription fees. The iTunes Store contains around 10 million tracks encoded at 256K bps in AAC format, most unencumbered by DRM (digital rights management) restrictions, at prices ranging from $0.69 to $1.29.

For Spotify mobile users, there may be other charges on top of the Premium subscription fee: iPhone owners would be well-advised to choose a flat-rate mobile data subscription, or use the Spotify software only within range of free Wi-Fi hotspots, if they want to avoid high usage charges from their network operator.

To further limit such download charges, and to allow users to continue listening even when out of range of the wireless network, the Spotify iPhone client includes an offline mode that stores music files on the device for later playback.

Spotify published a video demonstration of its iPhone software on YouTube Friday, showcasing the offline listening mode and the instantaneous sharing of playlists between PC and mobile clients.

After the iPhone client is released, the company plans to release Spotify clients for other mobile devices, Butcher said, although he did not say for which platforms. The company demonstrated a prototype client for Android phones, also featuring the offline listening mode, at the Google I/O developer conference in May.

The Internet Survives Michael Jackson's Memorial Service

When news of Michael Jackson's death hit the wire on June 25, the Web crumbled beneath its weight. AOL went down in flames. News sites were overloaded with page views. Twitter was smothered by the Fail Whale. So when Jackson's memorial service was announced, the Internet prepared itself for a massive influx of streaming video, tweets, status updates, and more. This time it survived.

As thousands upon thousands of mourners for the King of Pop gathered at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, millions more huddled around computer screens to catch a glimpse of an extravagant ceremony fit for an influential performer. Live streaming video proved to be the a popular method of viewing, with nearly 3 million video streams broadcast online, according to Akamai Technologies, a Massachusetts-based Web content delivery company. Traditional news sites clocked in at 3.9 million visitors per minute.

Overall, global traffic spiked 19 percent during the ceremony. CNN had 9.7 million people watching live video streams and Yahoo had 5 million. The BBC's live stream was tapped 410,000 times.

Twitter users went nuts during the performance, with the top ten most popular topics yesterday all relating to Jackson and his memorial service. The term "Michael Jackson" generated 80,000 tweets per hour. Over in Facebook country, there were 6000 Jackson-related updates per minute.

There was an ebb and flow in traffic during the event as people tuned in and out as the ceremony progressed. Speakers and performers sparked fluctuations in traffic based on who they were, how long they spoke, and their overall popularity. For instance, stream count dropped 20 points when the Reverend Al Sharpton took the stage, and hopped up 40 when John Mayer came to sing. Brooke Shields started with plus 10 but as her speech went on and on, dropped 20. Martin Luther King III clocked in at negative 80.

Though the event was massive and set records, it could not compare with President Obama's inauguration, which, in some cases, doubled Jackson's numbers.