The music streaming app that is currently taking the UK and Europe by storm is looking to set-up in the US in the very near future. (This may well help create music industry jobs in the USA, so keep checking the Jobs Board!)

Founded by two Swedish entrepreneurs, Spotify has over six million tracks available to stream, and gives users the ability to create, save and share playlists, offering greater interaction and discovery. They are working with US music publishers and labels to evolve a deal to enable them to offer the same service here. Having dealt with many of the key companies regarding European licenses, it’s a very real possibility that they will be operating here soon.

The relatively new start-up (October ’08) is hoping to launch it’s desktop application in the US by the end of this year. However, even greater potential could be reached if they are approved as an iPhone app. The issue there? It could be so good as to make Apple’s iTunes virtually redundant to millions of music consumers.

Spotify derives revenue from a number of audio commercials during playback (current EU advertisers include Nike, Ikea, H&M and more), or a monthly fee for a premium service with no commercials, greater audio quality and extra premium-only content. The monthly fee is currently £9.99 in the UK (approx $15), and word is that the mobile app would only be available to those who subscribe to this.

People are becoming excited about the possibility of a real contender to iTunes, and as a fan of aiding music discovery, I really hope that Spotify will push forward with the licensing deals. They provide a great service, and user word-of-mouth will ensure a global success.

Lee Jarvis.

Well, it’s always been on the cards, but the biggest news of the week is that Apple have finally been able to make iTunes tracks available without the Digital Rights Management that was essentially ‘watermarked’ into all previous tracks.

So you can now buy a tune from iTunes and play it on Microsoft’s Zune player or similar by SanDisk. It really took us until 2009 to get to that stage? The major labels and countless independents have been selling DRM-free tracks via Amazon for about a year, so why did they hold out on Apple?

Steve Jobs announced that EMI were willing to drop DRM back in 2007, but the rest of the majors (Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment) have held out for some unknown reason. Actually, the reason is know; it’s because majors have no idea how to move forward in this music evolution. They were unwilling to hand over DRM-free copies to iTunes because of the scale of it’s sales, fearing a loss of control and rampant, escalating piracy. They struggle to keep hold of things like DRM so that people don’t ‘steal their money’.

Here’s a thought. Will Apple’s news make much difference? The people who already buy millions of tracks from iTunes are doing so (mostly) happily and playing them on their millions of iPods and iPhones. As far as they know (or care), DRM has never been an issue. People who have wanted to download DRM-free music for their non-Apple devices have been able to find it fairly easily. Will these settled buyers bother to jump ship? Especially with the new price rises too (more on that later). The infamous Bob Lefsetz thinks the news is very much a non-issue, saying that “the only people who care about DRM don’t pay for music, they just steal it. Otherwise, Amazon would have eclipsed Apple and the Seattle company would own the online music market”.

Is it all too-little too-late?

Lee Jarvis.

Cross-posted at our Music Jobs website in the UK