Kate Solomon

Sigh. Is there a more heinous sound than the beginning of a Spotify advert? It’s one of the many sounds throughout the day which remind me that actually yes, I do need another cup of tea even though my mug is still warm from the last one. I hate them enough to leave the room but not quite enough to fork out £9.99 a month to do away with them altogether.

But for once those six irritating syllables are a source of much joy as they signal the opening of a video demo of the Spotify iPhone app. Dream app much?

It’s all as brilliant as you would hope; with super-speed streaming and offline playlists for when you’re on the tube. Or doing something else sans internet if you don’t happen to live in London (weirdo). Delish:

The only thing that seems to be missing is the ability to use other functions whilst listening to music – so say I was listening to something on Spotify and I wanted to check my email at the same time; can I do that or will it stop the music when you exit the app? I suspect the latter.

It could all be moot anyway, since Spotify still has all the apple-flavoured hoops to jump through before this gets approved as an app, if it even gets approved at all. The totally hug-able Daniel Ek (whose non hug related achievements include being the CEO of Spotify) told paidContent:

We’ve a great relationship with Apple, think the iPhone is awesome and absolutely expect them to approve the app in the next few weeks. Apple has already approved several other music services such as Last.fm, Deezer and Pandora. We very much look forward to people being able to access their Spotify library wherever they might be and we’ve spent significant time and resources to ensure we’ve stuck to Apple’s developer guidelines point by point.

Textbook PR copywriting aside, this comment is one part sucking up to Apple, two parts making sure that they and everyone else in the world knows that Spotify are playing by the rules very carefully indeed. Apple will have to come up with some pretty good reasons to deny the app without looking like the baddie here.

When/if Apple deigns to approve it, the app will be free but only premium subscribers will be able to use it. Well played, Spotify. I guess I might bid your irritating ads so long farewell after all.