streaming

Spotify, a popular music streaming service from Sweden, arrived in the United States mid-July on an invite-only basis. Today, Spotify goes live for everyone nationwide, no invitation required. Users can now sign up for an account at Spotify.com and use a mobile app for Android or iPhone to stream music over wireless and cellular networks to their phones, tag songs for offline viewing, favorite tracks, share them with friends and more. What’s best, you needn’t sign up for a paid Spotify account. Thanks to a new partnership with Facebook that Mark Zuckerberg announced at the yesterday’s developer conference (more in the clip below), anyone signing up with their Facebook account gets six months of unlimited listening. What happens when the six-month free period expires?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjAr5nGzjV8]

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrZRPgk1XtA]

Rock in Rio, a series of music festivals held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (and later in Portugal, Spain and other countries) will be live-streamed this year on YouTube in 24 different languages, Google made it known in a blog post. Headliners include Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Katy Perry, Elton John and Stevie Wonder. The rock fest is running from September 23 through October 2 so don’t forget to tune in to a live stream over at the Rock in Rio YouTube channel.

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Popular music startup from Sweden called Spotify today kicked off its long-expected US operation. “We’re massively excited to be here”, the company wrote in a blog post. Spotify has been a huge hit in the UK and several other European territories such as Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden, with a total number of subscribers in Europe topping 10 million people. The company is planning a major push to get the word out, lining up exclusive launch partners such as Coca-Cola and Sprite, Chevrolet, Motorola, Reebok and Sonos. “These brands will be launching innovative campaigns in partnership with Spotify in the coming weeks and months”, Spotify says.

Spotify lets you stream songs free of charge, with adverts, to your computer or pay a single-digit monthly fee for unlimited, ad-free streams in high fidelity (384Kbps). A Premium account is required to stream music via the Spotify app on smartphones. Music streams on demand via wireless hotspots or 3G cellular networks so you don’t have to have gigabytes of free storage to keep the files on your device.

The company celebrated launch in the United States with the release of the free Spotify for iOS app. While Spotify for Android is not yet live in the US Android Market, we expect it anytime soon so stay tuned. Why you’ll love Spotify? Because for just ten bucks a month you can play songs from their catalog of more than fifteen million tracks to your phone or computer. That’s a sizable collection even by iTunes’ standards.

And for half the price you get a Spotify Unlimited account which removes ads, but lacks other features and encodes audio in standard quality. Premium accounts can mark entire songs, playlists or albums for offline listening  when there is no network coverage.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvYX_P_c__8]

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Sony is joining the streaming music craze with today’s release of Music Unlimited, a brand new Android app that lets you stream from Sony’s catalog of 7+ million songs, with monthly fees starting at just four bucks for the Basic streaming plan (a pricier Premium plan is also available). From release notes:

With the Basic plan, you can access personalized channels that adapt to your music tastes and your mood and enjoy the songs in your personal library that have been previously synched from your PC. The Premium plan offers all the features of the Basic Plan, plus full access to our entire catalogue and premium streaming channels.

The Music Unlimited service is also available via the PlayStation3, Internet-connected Sony television sets and Blu-ray players. What’s best, they let you sign up for the Premium plan with a free of charge 30-day trial period. So ho ahead, grab the free download from Android Market now. Bear in mind that the app is currently available only in the United States, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Also – good luck with that PlayStation Network streaming!

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In addition to a whopping 160 million Chrome downloads so far, up from 70 million a year earlier, Google shared some interesting stats related to their live video feed of the keynote. Yesterday’s keynote had been viewed by 60,00 simultaneous users, topping 600,000 people at its peek. Currently, Day Two Keynote is underway. You can tune in at a dedicated Google I/O Live – it’s the next best thing to being there in person. Alternatively, check out live YouTube channel.

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