Spotify, the streaming music service which is gradually gathering a large fan-base in Europe, has been plotting a mobile version. It recently hired a head of mobile and the speculation was that it would come out with an iPhone app first after releasing a teaser video. But today it’s released video of an Android app it’s being demoing to people at Google I/O.
The Android app is still very much a work in progress and subject to minor changes, but it gives a pretty good overview of their thinking. The demo highlights a number of features including playback, playlists, offline synch and music search.
For those of you who haven’t seen it yet – the service has yet to launch in North America, although I’m about to send some lucky TechCrunch writers some preview codes we’ve gotten hold of – Spotify is a lightweight iTunes-like application for Windows and Mac that lets you search, browse and stream a deep collection of music. Tracks are streamed via a encrypted P2P technology. The free service is ad-financed, hence a general comparison with Last.fm, but it’s primary service is subscription based. It works like a fully-playable iTunes store, creating playlists is easy and some bill it as an alternative to file-sharing, hence why it’s managed to sign so many music labels.
Spotify has raised a large round of funding so far, €15.3m from VCs Northzone Venture Partners and Creandum. It launched in the UK in February after building a big following in Sweden, it’s country of origin.