Spotify, the online music streaming service is, later today, becoming more than just a streaming service, for Premium members at least.
Later today (1st October 2009), the Spotify client will be activated with a new feature – offline mode and the ability to syncronise playlists to your computer’s hard drive. The mobile Spotify applications, for Google Android phones and the iPhone, had this feature upon release and it is now being integrated into their primary product, the desktop Spotify application.
Update: Spotify have sent offline mode live and made an annoucement about offline mode on their blog.
The image above displays how Spotify will show tracks which are currently downloading to your computer’s hard drive and the playlist icon indicating whether or not a playlist is set to the ‘Available Offline’ status. To set a playlist to be available offline will be a simple matter of right-clicking the desired playlist and clicking ‘Make available offline’ from the right-click menu. The chosen playlists and all their tracks will then be downloaded to your computer’s hard drive (encrypted of course) and be available to play if your Internet connection goes down temporarily or even if you have no connection at all. I would imagine, although this has not be confirmed, that users will be required to login (online) to Spotify at least once a month so the client knows the Premium subscription is still active.
Spotify themselves announced the following regarding Offline mode.
“We’re proud to announce that later today we will be extending the popular ‘Offline mode’ that is available on Spotify Mobile and bringing it to the desktop version of Spotify.”
“Beginning later today, Spotify Premium subscribers will be able to select their playlists and set them to be ‘Available offline’. Those playlists will then be synced to the computer so you can listen to your favorite tunes even if your internet connection goes down or if you’re at summer house with no connection at all.”
It appears this idea was originally submitted by a Spotify customer on Spotify’s idea pages, as ‘Offline Spotify’.
“It would have been great if it could be turned on “Offline mode”. So the music that we listen to most, could be listen to, even in offline mode.”
More information about Spotify’s new offline mode is available from TechRadar, the Telegraph and Times Online.
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