mSpot's Streaming Music Service For Android Phones Tops 500K Downloads In Two Months

Mobile entertainment startup mSpot is sharing stats about its free music cloud service that allows you sync your entire music collection across Android phones and PCs/Macs today. Since the service’s public launch in June, mSpot has seen 500,000 downloads of the streaming music app to Android phones.

Here’s how it works. mSpot’s application operates in the background of your computer and phone managing the upload and day-to-day syncing of your music library. In addition, it can upload playlists, coverart, ratings and song information you may have entered using iTunes. The application will also make automatic updates whenever changes occur in your library,re-sync music when new songs are added, across different connected devices.

Today, mSpot is offering new features including storage options that allow users to keep up to 40 GB of music in the cloud, which includes roughly 32,000 songs for $3.99 per month. mSpot offers free storage for the first 2 gigabytes (approximately 1600 songs).

Other new features announced today include voice activated playback via song/artist/album search for Android, prioritized uploading by Artist, Album and Playlists, the option to stream music (not save on phone) to conserve SD card space and the ability to load songs quickly on the phone via USB sideloading.

The service also promises to handle transitions between spotty and solid coverage areas and reduces data charges on your mobile plan. Other features include the ability to see lyrics of songs and to make a ringtone out of any song.

As we’ve written in the past, mSpot has been developing this proprietary playback technology that allows users to play songs from the cloud instantly for four years. mSpot mobile application automatically senses network conditions and adapts playback accordingly even without network coverage.

CEO Daren Tsui says that the company didn’t expect demand for the Android app to scale so quickly. In fact, mSpot user data shows that mobile is gaining traction among users as an entertainment and cloud platform. According to internal company usage data, those customers who have the option to listen via both Web and Mobile spent the majority of the time (83% in August) listening on their mobile devices.

Clearly, mSpot’s streaming service is useful for Android users who don’t yet have a native application. But Google is expected to launch its own cloud-based music streaming service, which should be released later this year. The company even acquired streaming technology Simplify Media to boost its service.

Mspot also offers its Mobile Movies site, which will let users stream full-length movies on their mobile phones, on the web, so you can enjoy mSpot’s online streaming movie service on your computer. mSpot has struck deals with Paramount, Universal, Image Entertainment, and Screen Media Ventures to stream full-length movie rentals to users’ PCs and cell phones, allowing you to switch between both devices as you pick up and leave off throughout a movie.

The PC streaming functionality builds upon the mobile movie service mSpot launched last year. The service, which also includes an iPhone app, includes 1000 titles that can be streamed to both a computer and mobile device.