Spotify rumoured to be coming to 3UK

So reports New Media Age and Electricpig:

The free music streaming service could also be coming to 3 Mobile’s entire range of handsets.

3 is currently in talks with Spotify with the aim of bringing a mobile app to every one of its 4.4 million customers. According to New Media Age, possibilities include pre-loading the app on all new handsets, as well as making available as a download.

via Spotify app coming to 3 Mobile? | Electricpig.

Now this is interesting. Very interesting.

What now for Omnifone’s MusicStation? It looks like Spotify is well placed to completely nail them to the wall — as, from the demonstrations I’ve had of Spotify Mobile — it’s incredibly similar, yet a heckuvalot more compelling to the standard consumer.

3UK have a history of innovation in the operator sphere — they have to, they’re the ‘challenger’ brand. It was 3UK who first ‘officially’ brought us the likes of MSN, Yahoo, Skype, eBay via ‘X-Series’. They were the first mobile operator to introduce those well known dotcom logos into their store-front literature and signage and they did benefit quite substantially from it.

As far as Spotify is concerned, the up-sale value (you’re rumoured to have to have a premium account in order to use their mobile services), will be pretty welcome — and the fact that 3’s customer base is reasonably manageable (we’re not talking a 15-20m behemoth yet), the deal could be hugely useful for them.

But what for 3UK? I think they’d benefit from a lot of consumer attention. Would you swap to 3 to get Spotify Mobile? Potentially, I’m sure. It’s such a compelling offering. It’s going to really eat into 3’s existing music offerings (they were, if memory serves, one of the UK’s largest retailers or digital music).

Spotify on 3UK? Bring it ON.

And if you haven’t checked out Spotify, if you’ve been hearing all about it and not bothering looking, now is definitely the time. Download it, type in Michael Jackson and double-click to play a song. Think iTunes without the payment bollocks (and a whole lot more — once you start getting into sharing of playlists).