Name: Creative Airwave HD

Type: Wireless Bluetooth speaker with NFC

Specifications: Click here for full specs

Price as reviewed: £129.99

Can NFC functionality and stellar battery life elevate the Creative Airwave HD above the masses of Bluetooth speakers available? Read our full review to find out!

Rather than the opting for the standard boxy shape of most Bluetooth speakers, the Creative Airwave HD instead has a triangular, prism shape. It's not unlike a Toblerone, with two curvy recesses at either end. On the front is a plastic non-removable grille that continues the triangular aesthetic. While the design looks a little bland on the black version we tested, a red version we've also seen is actually very bold and attractive, where the shadowing on the grille results in a more distinct and pleasing pattern.Along the top of the device you'll find the Airwave HD's controls, including a power slider, a volume rocker (which has an annoyingly large number of minuscule volume steps, taking an age before jumping to the top decibel levels) and a Bluetooth pairing button. You'll also find a battery/Bluetooth indicator light here, as well as an opening for an integrated microphone. Around the rear in a recess you'll find the microUSB charging port (which will work with basically any microUSB charger and can be used for adding juice from the speaker to a mobile device too) and an Aux-in port, next to a cavity for improving bass response.

The Creative Airwave HD measures 3.8 x 10.3 x 3.8 inches and weighs 980g. It's not the tiniest portable speaker out there then, but its extra heft does allow it room for components to push its volume levels strikingly loud, and for a capacious battery; two things we'd happily accept in a trade off against size.Pairing is incredibly simple with the Creative Airwave HD thanks to built-in NFC connectivity - simply switch the feature on on your smartphone, place the mobile against the rear of the speaker and the two become music-sharing buddies. It's great, and far more reliable than sometimes-finicky standard Bluetooth pairing, and we wish it was available in every wireless speaker. If you don't have an NFC-enabled device, you can pair the speaker in the standard Bluetooth fashion by holding down a button on the top of the Airwave HD and selecting the speaker from the Bluetooth menu on your music player. And, of course, there's always the option of a wired connection through the Aux-in port on the rear.The wireless systems employed here also have a few other neat features. An integrated microphone will allow you to wirelessly take calls with the speaker (so long as you don't mind your call being broadcast to anyone within earshot), while multipoint Bluetooth connectivity will allow two devices to connect to the speaker wirelessly at once. It's a useful feature for when playing tune-tennis with a pal - as soon as one user pauses their music and the other's starts, the speaker knows exactly which device's sound it should be pumping out.In terms of sound, the Creative Airwave HD is a mixed bag. Though cranking up incredibly loudly thanks to an integrated Creative Super Charged amplifier (loud enough to wind up every other person in the park that we tested it in), it's not the most elegant sounding system out there. Trying every genre from classic 70s rock through to the glacial electronic sounds of Alex Metric, the Creative Airwave HD's sound is firmly footed in the mid-range. There's a bit of kick to the bass end, but no warmth to the tone, and treble is harsh rather than detailed. It's not a bad sounding speaker by any means, and sits just behind the better portable systems we've heard, but it's overall a bit flat, and not a patch on the best audiophile home hi-fi's you'll hear. In terms of its soundstage, its size and triangular shape allows for a wider dispersal of sound than similar speakers, though it's still lacking the width of a wider stereo speaker set up, meaning pans get lost in the mix. To get overly particular on whether or not the Airwave HD will please audiophiles is sort of missing the point though too - the speaker is intended for outdoor, drunken tunes without hassle, and in one key area its got this totally sewn up: its best feature of all is the incredibly impressive battery life. Though the company state 7 hours of playback on their website, that seems a conservative statistic. Running the speaker constantly, streaming a lengthy Spotify playlist to the Airwave HD, we sailed right past the 8 hour mark with the volume levels fairly loud throughout. We wouldn't be surprised if you could squeeze 9 or more hours out of the speaker from one charge if you dialled the volume down a little lower. Great stuff.

Verdict:

There's lots to like about the Creative Airwave HD. It's got a punchy sound that hits incredibly high volume levels and, in the red version at least, an interesting and eye-catching design that's portable enough to take with you to a picnic or beach party without too much strain. Though its overall sound lacks detail and elegance, it more than makes up for it with a pain-free NFC pairing system and incredible battery life that will see you dancing away into the wee hours.

Last night during the WWDC 2013 keynote Apple revealed their long-awaited music streaming offering, iTunes Music, giving iOS users a new "music discovery" tool, turning tastes and artists into curated stations, offering both ad-funded and an ad-free version for iTunes Match subscribers.

Not everyone was impressed however, most notably Nokia executive Jyrki Rosenberg, who felt Apple were late to the music streaming party.

"We launched our streaming radio service in 2011," said Rosenberg, VP, Nokia Entertainment.

"It's interesting to see Apple react now and it seems they continue to play catch up. Nokia Music will stay true to our mobile-first approach and continue to deliver an extremely simple, personalised and contextual way to discover and enjoy music on the go.

"Our fully automated personalisation and the ability to save your favourite playlists for offline use combined with no requirement for registration, no payment and no ads continues to resonate with listeners around the world."

Certainly, the Nokia Music scheme was really intriguing when it first launched, especially the Comes With Music all-you-can-eat download service.I had it on a Nokia X6 "back in the day" and was totally in love with it. Until it failed to sync my licenses that is, preventing me from accessing my sizeable music library and making me skeptical of all things Nokia Music related for some time to come.

Still Rosenberg's point is valid - Apple are late to the game here. Is iTunes Radio enough to get you to turn your back on Spotify or Pandora, or for that matter Nokia Music? Let us know in the comments section below.


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Apple introduce iOS 7 for iPhone and iPad: Features and release date revealed

Among the list of new features set to launch in the new iOs 7 OS for iPhone and iPad is Apple's long-awaited music streaming service, iTunes Radio.

Integrated directly into the music player app as a "music discovery service", it makes use of a list of featured stations that you can swipe though. Tapping the station name plays it, and stations seem to be based around individual artists as well as genres and curated offerings.

Tapping a star next to a track lets the service know to play more songs that are similar, add it to an iTunes download wishlist, or remove the song from ever playing on iTunes Radio ever again. The "Nickleback button" if you like.

Free with ads, it's completely free to iTunes Match subscribers, coming totally ad-free to those folks. No separate subscription plan then will give Apple a big boost here in the fight against Spotify, though there was no word of offline playlists either, suggesting the company are still trying to get people to splash the cash on tune downloads through iTunes.

Rolling out in the US first, it'll be available through iPhone, iPod touch and iPad and also works in iTunes on the Mac and AppleTV.

Image credit - Engadget

Apple's rumoured "iRadio" Spotify and Pandora music streaming rival is said to have taken one step closer to release, with whispers circulating that the Cupertino company has secured a deal with Warner music.

If true, the news follows rumours of a similar deal having been finalised with Universal Music Group, giving Apple the rights over the libraries of two of the largest music publishing conglomerates in the world.

For Apple to have a comprehensive service however, they'd also need to secure the rights to Sony Music Entertainment's artists, which could prove difficult considering the many business areas that both companies are rivals in. It's apparently already been massively difficult for Apple to get this far.

With these new deals apparently secured however, it's possible that iRadio may be shown off in some form at this month's WWDC event.

It's imperative that Apple get into the music streaming field - though iTunes remains the most popular digital music download service, its market is increasingly being eaten at by services like Spotify and Pandora, which offer access to giant catalogues of millions of tracks for a monthly subscription fee.

BMW is to offer access to British music streaming service Rara, powered by Omnifone, through its connected dashboards across Europe in its new Series 5 cars.

The deal includes a partnership with Vodafone's mobile network across the continent, giving drivers access to Rara's catalogue of millions of songs wherever there's a Vodafone 3G single without any extra charges, and without the need to tether a tablet or smartphone to the dashboard. Each BMW Series 5 will have a Vodafone SIM embedded as a result.

"People listen to music in the car more than anywhere else, yet it's still hard to enjoy digital music in the car," said rara.com CEO Jez Bell.

"With 14 million tracks available on rara.com to stream instantly across five countries, we are looking forward to bringing the rara.com music experience to new BMW 5 Series users across Europe."

BMW will be offering the in-car streaming across UK, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. Pricing given for the German territory is set at €390 for the first year, and €220 for subsequent years. That's substantially more than you'd pay for a year's worth of Spotify, for instance, but the deal here includes the peace of mind that you'll have Europe-wide access to the catalogue, so if you drive across the continent plenty it's likely to appeal.

Spotify have launched a new widget for websites, displaying both the weekly top 50 most-played tracks on the music service and the top 50 "social" tracks, showing which songs were the most shared across services like Twitter and Facebook for the week and previous weeks.

Like a digital top of the pops, you can click back through previous weeks to see just how long a song has been riding high in the Spotify charts, and seems a natural successor to shows like Top of the Pops or the Chart Show, relics of an age where physical sales meant more than digital plays and downloads. Of course, it's only limited to Spotify plays and not other services such as the recently-launched Google Play Music All Access, but gives you a good idea of what's stuck in the ears of the world at present.

Offering localised charts for 28 different territories, all charts will be refreshed each Monday at midday EST. With the launch, Spotify will also be offering exact play counts for individual songs, hitting the desktop client first before rolling out across the service's many platforms.

"What's so powerful about the streaming charts is they let you hear what people are really listening to, right now, and not just what they're buying," says head of content Steve Savoca in a statement.

"We want to be the best artist promotional platform in the world and showing play-counts is a clear step in that direction. Now artists can get immediate feedback from their fans on how their music is performing on Spotify."

You can check out the new chart widget below.

It's been on the cards for months, nay, years even, but Google have finally unveiled its own music streaming service, not-so-snappily titled Google Play Music All Access. Though there's still much to learn about the search giant's new music offering, here's a quick guide to everything revealed about Google Play Music All Access so far:
"Millions" of songs

To take on the mighty Spotify, who've proved that music streaming is a viable business model (and revolutionising the distribution of music in the process), Google have had to amass a gigantic library of tracks for streaming in Google Play Music All Access. Though the company haven't pinpointed a precise figure, they have revealed that "millions" of tracks will be available to playback through the service.

And, having secured licensing deals with major publishers including Sony, Universal and Warner, top artists including everyone from Justin Bieber to Cheatahs will be available to stream.

"This is radio without rules," said Chris Yerga, Google's engineering director. "It's as 'leanback' as you want to, or as interactive as you want to."

Features

The service will support user curated playlists, and can also be used in conjunction with the Google Music locker to access your own personal library of tracks that have been uploaded to Google cloud services. Their will also be a "Radio" feature, mixing together a playlist of songs based on user-set parameters such as genre or favourite artist, and an "Explore" feature that will offer music recommendations based on your taste.

Compatible devices

As you'd expect, Google Play Music All Access will be available to user's of Google own Android operating system across tablets and smartphones, as well as through web browsers on PC and Mac. It's not yet clear yet whether Google will offer app versions of the service to Apple's iOS devices, or to the Windows Phone or BlackBerry 10 platforms.

Pricing

Google's streaming service will cost $9.99 a month (roughly £5.60), giving unlimited access to the millions of songs in the library across all a user's compatible devices. Those who sign up for the service before June 30 will get a reduced monthly rate of $7.99 a month, an attempt by Google to court early adopters away from rival Spotify, whose own Premium service costs $9.99. No pricing however has been revealed outside of the US, but we'd imagine it's just a case of swapping those "$" signs for "£" signs instead. We always have to pay a bit more, right? It's our lot in life.

Free Trial, but no "Freemium" ad-funded option

First-time users of Google Play Music All Access get a 30-day free trial with the service, letting them test all its features before deciding on whether or not to commit to a subscription. However, unlike Spotify, once that's up, you've got to cough up the cash to continue listening - Google will not be offering an ad-funded option for freeloaders.

For a new service like Google Play Music All Access, a "freemium" ad-funded offering is both a blessing and a curse, allowing you to expand the reach of your service and court more potential customers. However, it has its problems too - why pay for the cow when you can have the milk for free? Spotify, for instance, has over 24 million users, but only million of them pay to play.

Launch

Google Play Music All Access is available now in the US, and will roll out to more countries soon. No word yet on a UK launch, but we'll keep you posted.

Robot rocking robots rock! But that's not been enough for Daft Punk to prevent the sneaky web music pirates from leaking their new album 'Random Access Memories' online a week before its official release date, despite it being one of the most closely guarded albums of recent times.

In an attempt to soften the rampant illegal downloads, Daft Punk have made the album available to stream totally free (and totally legally!) through iTunes. You can here it in all its hour-and-fifteen-minutes-odd glory by clicking here.

Featuring guest spots from The Strokes' Julian Casablancas, Pharrell, and uber-producers Giorgio Moroder and Nile Rodgers, it's expected to be a massive summer hit, following in the footsteps of lead single 'Get Lucky', currently enjoying its third week at the top of the UK charts.

Listen here.

French dance music duo Daft Punk have seen their new comeback song Get Lucky break all previous records for a single track on streaming service Spotify.

Though Spotify have yet to reveal the precise number of plays the track attracted, they have confirmed that the uber-cool robot team's new track has overtaken previous record holders Bastille, whose song Pompeii previously held the record for the most streamed track in the UK, while the US record was held by rapper Macklemore for the Thrift Song track.

"There was never any doubt that the first original single from Daft Punk in years was going to be one of the biggest debut singles of 2013," said Spotify's Will Hope, director of label relations.

"We expect the album to become one of the biggest, if not the biggest, on Spotify this year."

Get Lucky, pulled from Daft Punk's forthcoming Random Access Memories album, was so hotly anticipated that it inspired remixers to splice together 15-second teaser clips into complete tracks ahead of the eventual official release.

Keeping with the tech/Daft Punk associated news, N*E*R*D's Pharrell Williams, vocalist on Get Lucky, performed the new Daft Punk single three times in a row at the HTC One launch in Brooklyn over the weekend. You can watch the performance (three times in a row, if you like) in the video below:

Twitter have launched their long-rumoured music discovery app, Twitter #Music.

The app allows users to discover new artists and songs by offering recommendations based on the people the user follows on the social network.

Tracks can then be played directly in the app through built-in partner services including iTunes, Spotify and Rdio. The app will also display songs currently being listened to by friends, as well as those being listened to by relevant artist accounts.

The app, which has been built with help from the team of recently-acquired and now-defunct We Are Hunted music discovery service, is set to launch on the iPhone later today in the UK, Ireland US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. More countries will get the service in the coming weeks.
So far however there is no word of support for Android, Windows Phone or BlackBerry platforms, though one would expect that an Android version at the very least is in the works.

"[#Music] uses Twitter activity, including Tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists," said Twitter's Stephen Philips on the company blog.

"It also brings artists' music-related Twitter activity front and centre: go to their profiles to see which music artists they follow and listen to songs by those artists. And, of course, you can tweet songs right from the app."

Twitter's move can be seen as a response to Facebook's partnership with Spotify, which saw the world's biggest social network offer deep integration with the music streaming service, letting users share and like songs displayed on the network's Timeline. Likewise, Spotify are gradually rolling out an artist following system on their music streaming app, keeping users locked into their platform as opposed to social networks for artist recommendations.

Twitter have confirmed that their purchase of music discovery service We Are Hunted has now been finalised, sparking rumours that a Twitter music service is now on the verge of launching.

First noted back in March, the acquisition will see We Are Hunted shut down in its current form and be integrated into Twitter. It's expected that Twitter will launch a standalone iOS music discovery apps, using the We Are Hunted team's technologies and expertise. It's thought that most of the music will be streamed from artists' SoundCloud pages, and where that's not available, iTunes previews will instead be offered.

Speaking of the acquisition, We Are Hunted posted the following statement on their website:

"While we are shutting down wearehunted.com, we will continue to create services that will delight you, as part of the Twitter team...We wish we could say but we're not yet ready to talk about it. You'll hear more from us when we are."

AllThingsD are reporting that the new Twitter service may be launched as early as today, while US TV personality Ryan Seacrest has seemingly let the cat out of the bag early, revealing on Twitter (of course) that he's already been testing the new service.

Online retail behemoth Amazon are said to be in talks with record labels ahead of a launch of their own digital music streaming service.

It is thought that Amazon would integrate the service into it's cloud music storage and Cloud Player products, perhaps even bundling subscription payments into the company's premium Amazon Prime priority shipping, TV, movie and eBook rental service.

According to The Verge, the subscription-based service would go head-to-head not only with established service Spotify, but also Google and Apple's rumoured services. Apple have apparently been so far unable to cut a deal that fits both their and the record companies' needs, whereas Google are apparently proving more successful off the back of the deals already in place through YouTube, suggesting that YouTube could ultimately also be their music platform.

No word yet on officially launch details, but we'll keep you posted.

Spotify is today set to remove the cap that limits those using the service for free in the UK to only five plays of each track.

According to Musically, as of today, all UK non-paying Spotify users can listen to their favourite tracks over and over again without fear of being locked out of the service.

However, some restrictions still apply. For instance, free users will still have to put up with adverts, while their total playback time each month is limited to just 10 hours.

The UK is one of the latter territories to have the restriction removed: Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Spain had the five-play cap removed in March 2012, while the US, Australia and New Zealand never had a cap to begin with.

It's been a busy month for Spotify, who also recently launched their web-player in beta, a godsend for thsoe using shared computers where administration restrictions prevent them from installing the full Spotify client.

As well as the free service, Spotify offer an unlimited desktop streaming package for £4.99 a month, while a £9.99 Premium account allows users to save tracks for offline playback on a mobile device. The service now has over 6 million paying subscribers.

Spotify continues its charge towards mass-market adoption, revealing that they now serve streaming tunes to over 6 million paying subscribers.

Those subscribers have now brought in over $500 million in revenue for the Stockholm-based company, while ad-funded revenue still keeps streaming in (ahem) from the free users of the service's 24 million overall active users.

Continuos updates to both the Spotify desktop and mobile platforms (including the recent release of an in-browser player) keep attracting new custom, while the services 2011 US launch, tied with a Facebook partnership, also likely boosted the numbers significantly.

However, Spotify face a potentially difficult year. Though they've been long-rumoured, it seems that this year will be the one where Google and Apple launch rival streaming services. With the weight of those giant companies behind any such project, Spotify will be grateful for the solid user base they now have to work with.

Spotify's Web Player has now entered a public beta testing phase, after first being revealed back at the company's major press event in November 2012.

Working from inside any web browser and designed to get more people using the music streaming service, the web player will be a godsend for those looking to listen to Spotify at work or at school, and other places where IT managers frown at the installation of software onto shared PCs.

However, the beta offering still lacks some of the promised features for UK users. Most of the social elements, such as the ability to follow celebrity pages and browse Facebook friends' playlists from the web interface are still missing.

Controls to make your listening session public or private to social networks are available in the web player beta however, meaning you can keep you Engelbert Humperdinck solo parties to yourself.

You also get the What's New tab to browse the latest Spotify releases, a regular search tool for trawling through the entire catalogue of millions of songs, and the Spotify Radio feature that creates a radio station based on a chosen artist.

Google are said to be planning to launch their own music streaming service in Q3 2013 to rival Spotify, according to new reports from both the Financial Times and Bloomberg.

Google may beat both Apple and Amazon to the punch with a streaming service that offers a "library of millions of songs" to subscribers. Both Amazon and Apple have been rumoured to be launching similar services, though none have materialised.

Google's streaming service would be in addition to the Google Play music store already open for business from the Mountain View company, allowing for MP3 downloads, as well as cloud-locker storage for previously-bought songs.

Bloomberg tip the service to launch in Q3 of this year, but do not share any details on pricing, nor cross-platform compatibility. It may be in Google's interests to lock any such streaming service to their Android devices and Chrome OS, though record company's may be less keen to see the already-slim revenue from streams locked into a single platform.

Indeed, Google have been popping out more and more iOS apps in recent months, and the opportunity to further monetize users of a rival platform will likely be tempting.

Apple have revealed that their iTunes digital music storefront has hit another significant milestone, passing 25 billion song sales since it first opened for business a decade ago.

Working out at roughly 15,000 purchases a minute, the 25 billionth purchase was made by Phillip Lüpke in Germany, whose just bagged himself a 10,000 Euro (£8,644) iTunes gift card as a reward. If you're interested, the tune he bought was Monkey Drums (Goksel Vancin Remix) by Chase Buch, which you can listen to here in a poorly recorded live gig video on YouTube.

"We are grateful to our users whose passion for music over the past 10 years has made iTunes the number one music retailer in the world," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.

"Averaging over 15,000 songs downloaded per minute, the iTunes Store connects music fans with their favourite artists, including global sensations like Adele and Coldplay and new artists like The Lumineers, on a scale we never imagined possible."

Even with the forward march of streaming services like Spotify and rival MP3 stores from Google and Amazon, it seems Apple's iTunes is still the storefront of choice when it comes to actual digital purchases of songs.

When compared to streaming services, that's great news for bands and artists - the water surrounding just how much artists get paid by streaming services is still murky, and the money made by sales of songs through iTunes is definitely higher than even many streams of a single tune through Spotify.

Apple also recently revamped the iTunes store for Mac and PC computers, bringing the desktop version up to iTunes 11. We shared our thoughts on the library and storefront in this post.

Nokia's Music app for Lumia phones has been given a boost, with the premium streaming service becoming Music+ as it ups its feature list.

For a measly €3.99/$3.99 a month (less than half the price of a premium Spotify subscription), users can upgrade to Music+ which offers unlimited song skips in the Mix Radio portion and unlimited track downloads for offline playback. Music+ also comes with a browser-based option, making it a decent all-round music package for the price.

The service's 17 million tracks can now also be streamed and downloaded in higher quality, with lyric sheets now included as songs are played.

"Nokia Music is great for discovering new music, and we've found that there's a core of users that want even more of it. This is how Nokia Music+ came about," said Jyrki Rosenberg, VP Entertainment at Nokia.

"By introducing features like infinite skips and unlimited downloads, we're opening the doors for unlimited music discovery at only €3.99 per month."

The service will roll out gradually across US and European territories during the next few months.

Spotify has suspended the purchase and download of tracks through its music streaming service.

As well as offering streaming of its 20 million song library, Spotify had offered iTunes-style MP3 track downloads for a one-off fee. However, this feature has now been removed, regardless of wheter or not you're a free or Premium subscriber.

"We're no longer supporting new download purchases on Spotify," reads the message that greets users now, with a pop up window that re-directs to the Spotify FAQ page.

"We're currently not offering new download purchases on Spotify. You can still use downloads you've already purchased," says Spotify on the FAQ.

"Even though it's not possible to buy downloads using Spotify Desktop, you'll still be able to use your Spotify gift card, as long as it's one of the cards that features 'Downloads' as an option."

However, while there are alternative services available if you still insist on buying MP3s instead of streaming (here's looking at you iTunes, Amazon), what's more troubling is that previous purchases made through Spotify may eventually become unplayable once they meet their expiry date, with no way of reclaiming them. As it stands, older tracks purchased will still appear in your music library and can continue to be played through the service.

No reason has yet been given by Spotify as to why the change was made, but we'll keep you posted once we find out.

Via: Pocket-Lint

Spotify have rounded off their most successful ever year with the announcement of an elusive band bringing their music to the streaming service's catalogue. Heavy metal superstars Metallica, a band with a notoriously icy, skeptical view of digital music and streaming, will be releasing their entire back catalogue through the Swedish music platform.

Building bridges between two warring parties, Spotify also united Napster's Sean Parker and Metallica's Lars Ulrich onstage during their winter press conference. The pair have been at loggerheads for years over Napster's illegal distribution of Metallica tracks, with the band suing Napster back in the year 2000 over copyright infringement. Though the pair still didn't seem entirely comfortable in each others presence, Parker (who now sits on Spotify's board) and Ulrich shared jokes about their bitter feud which had lasted 12 years.

The Metallica announcement somewhat overshadowed Spotify's other announcements, detailing a number of new updates coming to their streaming platform.

Top of the list is a new "Discover" tab in the desktop version of Spotify, which will suggest new music for listeners based on their taste. Rather than existing in a vacuum, these recommendations will come with context showing why they have been suggested. Spotify will offer reviews and artist bios along with track recommendations, detailing which artists that you're a fan of that they are similar with, and often showing bands playing soon in your locality too. Spotify will now even tap into your personal details, such as age, reminding you of songs that you may have enjoyed during your youth.

The update will also introduce new Twitter-style following features, letting Spotify users pick artists, pals or "influencers" whose music or taste they like, and receive updates on their new playlists or new releases. In the case of bands or artists, Spotfiy uses can even sign up to have messages sent directly to their smartphones, informing them of a new release as soon as it hits Spotify's catalogue.

Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek confirmed the service now has more than 5 million paid subscribers worldwide, and has paid out over $500m (£311m) to record labels since its launch. When taking into account users who listen for free via the ad-supported player, Spotify has a grand total of 20 million active users.