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Topic: Mobility

Dear Spotify: I love you, but...

Summary: I'm giving Spotify one more ding of my credit card to release a universal/native iPad app before I cancel and move to another service.

Jason D. O'Grady

By for The Apple Core |

Spotify for iPad is a miserable failure - Jason O'Grady

Spotify Premium is one of my favorite subscription music services, it's like having every song in the iTunes Music Store in your library. And instead of song previews, you can stream any song. All of it. Spotify Premium ($10/month) has over 15 million tracks, an offline mode, no ads and 320 kbps streams.

So what's not to like?

Although Spotify Premium advertises "mobile support" (which includes the iPhone and iPod touch) it doesn't support the iPad. That's right, the single best thing to happen to music since iTunes doesn't support the best selling tablet computer on the market. Amazing.

Spotify's UK MD Chris Maples told Pocket-lint in December 2011 that the launch of an iPad app was "a priority" and was "absolutely in the pipeline." But here we are, three and half months later and nothing.

Sure, pixel-doubled iPhone apps might look better on the iPad 3's Retina display -- but not $10 per month better. As much as it would pain me to do, I'm giving Spotify one more ding of my credit card to release a universal/native iPad app before I cancel my subscription and move to another service.

Apple should have acquired Spotify (instead of LaLa?) to augment its anemic $25/year iTunes Match service which only downloads songs to iOS devices despite claiming that it streams them.

(Aside: I put the Live Phish app in the same boat. Swim up to the big screen boys or I'm cutting bait.)

What's your music subscription app of choice?

Update: Spotify's Head of Communications replied to my email about the lack of an iPad app with this:

An iPad app is in the works - no date on release yet, but we're very excited by what we're seeing.

Topics: Mobility, Hardware

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10 comments
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  • A little frustrating indeed

    Also frustrating is Apple.

    Why in the world does one need to Jailbreak their iPad and use Cydia Apps like Full Force to make non-iPad native apps actually look good? No doubt it is not the same as an app designed for the resolution, but it looks a Hell of a lot better than without it. Can't Cupertino figure that out what the hackers did?

    And at the end of the day, it's a music app. I spend 98% of my time with my music apps listening and 2% flicking through library, setting queue, or searching for new tunes. Same reason Foobar's minimal design (without customizing) doesn't bother me either: great functionality and performance. I'd never give it up. Nor would I give up Spotify despite this seemingly easy to fix transgression.
    parkerjh@...
    Reply Vote

    • Full Force Not As Crucial Anymore

      One pleasant surprise I found upgrading to the new iPad, was that iPhone apps are now automatically scaled to higher def and look as good as they did using Full Force. There are obviously other reasons to want a jail broken iPad, but this particular issue isn't one of them anymore.
      latedate@...
      Reply Vote

  • Zune

    Same thing and until recently you could keep 10 songs a month. I still have that service, but it will probably go the way of Zune player. As long as Spotify requires a facebook account, I'll never use it
    mike2k
    Reply Vote

  • Re: iPad app Spotify are a joke

    I started https://www.facebook.com/SpotifyiPad over 18 months ago.

    The policy to not talk about future plans is sensible when they are developing something new, but regarding an iPad app it would be in their benefit to actually released some information and maybe some kind of timeline.

    It is not like an iPad app is something completely new that nobody else has thought about.

    In my opinion they are showing complete contempt to their loyal subscribers.

    The longer they leave it the more it is going to be expected from the app, big mistake.
    stevember
    Reply Vote

  • Must try harder

    You'd have thought this would be a reasonable priority. It really just needs a skin as the functionality is clearly there in the background. To mention it 3 months ago and still have nothing .. it's not great.

    However, I do use it regularly on my Sonos, iPhone and linux desktop. It's not the greatest issue I have ever had.
    elyobelyob
    Reply Vote

  • Disappointing

    Although the selection of music is good and it's a lovely service when it works, I think Spotify are seriously lagging in terms of software development. Their iPad app is long time coming, the iPhone version is unstable and has limited functionality. The Blackberry version is a disgrace in terms of stability and features (incompatible with half Blackberry handsets anyway) and the desktop version has problems connecting with Facebook behind a proxy server...

    This is not a cheap service at 10/month, I can EASILY see myself switching to another service provider the same way I ditched Lovefilm for Netflix.
    dudexk
    Reply Vote

  • Disappointed?

    I personally do not see the rationale behind being disappointed that there isn't a native iPad app. The iPad in all it's greatness is really not the best portable music player. If you were Spotify, would the iPad be the device you were really focusing on for apps? No, because music is probably the least used functionality for the device. iPod touches, iPhones, Android phones, vehicle mobile tech, etc. are the mobile devices people want music on. So if you are looking to maximizing subscriptions, the iPad ranks really low on the priority list in my opinion. Just use the regular iPhone app. It's smaller, but who cares.

    I also don't get the "switching to another service". What other service?
    bwest2
    Reply Vote

  • Try Rdio

    I dumped Spotify for this very reason a few months ago.

    I agree that the iPad is not the best portable player, but nonetheless I have mine with me at work and at home and on travel. When I'm on wifi I prefer to use a tablet to a phone. I would also use it on a phone for those times when I only have the phone, but usually I'm not listening to music then either. But what they hey, how hard can it be to get an iPad app? Pay some kid to write one and move on.
    tonyqmartin
    Reply Vote

  • Yeah

    This Apple fragmentation issue is a real bitch.
    radleym
    Reply Vote

  • I just canceled last week.

    Got tired of their empty promises, so I canceled my subscription last week. Seems they are still on the empty promise bandwagon, at least give us some estimated delivery date so we don't feel utterly contemptuous.
    jackthegiantkiller
    Reply Vote
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