Spotify have reached the 3 million Premium subscriber mark. 20% of their 15 million users are now opting to pay for the ad-free, unlimited service, showing that the streaming giant are well on their way to hitting the conversion figures they aimed for.

The figures are up from 2.5m in November and 2m in September, showing the fast rate of growth is remaining consistent.

"We have an enormous internal effort to drive conversion and engagement with the service", Ken Parks, chief content officer at Spotify.

Parks also defended the free ad-supported model which some artists and labels have criticised, stating its allowed them the breathing room to build up customer loyalty, a loyalty that will soon pay dividends for the artists featured on the service.

"This is a healthy model. As it scales it gets better for everybody.We are very focused on growing in our existing 12 markets as well as expanding in other markets."

The fact that half of Spotify's paid-for users are under 30 is a superb achievement in itself, considering they are a traditionally difficult demographic to corner.

2011 was a busy year for Spotify; not only did they launch their internal app platform, but also announced a high-profile partnership with Facebook, a deal which undoubtedly helped drive subscriber numbers.

Via: FT

Facebook have announced a new social music feature, rolling out across their network today, called "Listen With Friends".

Music fans on Facebook will now be able to see what their pals are listening to from within the Facebook Chat pane, and jump into playback of a track at the very same point their friends are listening to. Up to 50 people can listen at once, which then opens a group chat window where they can discuss the music being played.

"You can listen to the same song, at the exact same time--so when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you're jamming out at a performance or dance club," said Facebook product designer Alexandre Roche on the Facebook blog.

You'll be able to identify who is listening to music by a small musical note icon that pops up next to their name. However, the service is currently limited to songs being played through Facebook partners Spotify and Rdio. While more services are set to be added, you'll likely be out of luck if you're playing locally stored files through a platform like iTunes.

The service should be rolling out to all users today, so keep an eye open for it when you're browsing the network.

It's been a busy few weeks for Spotify. First they reveal their superb new apps platform, and now they're looking to revamp their radio station and recommendation engines too.

Spotify list the features of the new update as:

·Unlimited stations - picking a track, artist or genre will instantly generate a station full of similar music. The station will play continuously with few or no repeats until you stop it. You can make as many custom stations as you choose.

·Available to all - The new Spotify Radio features will be available to both free and paying customers, worldwide.

"Spotify Radio is an amazing new radio experience, offering unlimited stations and unlimited skips," said Ken Parks, Spotify's Chief Content Officer.

"With our new intelligent recommendation engine and multi-million track library, the new Spotify Radio is a music discovery experience without equal."

The new radio features will be rolling out alongside the final release of the Spotify App Finder platform in the next few days. If you cant wait that long, visit http://www.spotify.com/download/previews for a preview the new player build.

Spotify have announced the next big upgrade for their music streaming platform. Described as the "Spotify revolution" and the "next big step for music". Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek revealed App Finder, set to bring a wealth of apps to the digital music service.

The "best and the brightest" of the music and app industries are lining up to become a part of the re-vamped service, with the likes of Rolling Stone, Last.fm, Songkick, TuneWiki, Pitchfork, The Guardian and Fuse all readying apps for the platform.

All of these apps will be able to tap into and integrate with Spotify's catalogue of 16 million (and growing) tracks. For instance, an editorial piece from Rolling Stone magazine may come with an integrated playlist, letting you listen to an albumwhile simultaneously reading a review of it. Or, in the case of TuneWiki, turn Spotify into the most comprehensive karaoke platform in the world.

Powered by HTML5, it seems as though the App Finder will become part of the desktop Spotify application's left-hand toolbar, with pop-out features sitting on top of the usual Spotify experience.

No word yet on when the update will roll out, but we do know that all apps will be available to both free and Premium users of the service.

Spotify, the world conquering music streaming service, is now available through the Virgin Media Tivo set-top box.

Great news for folks planning on blasting out their favourite tunes in their living rooms (particularly if they've got home cinema set-ups sorted) Virgin will be bundling Spotfiy Premium deals in with their mobile and broadband contracts.

New and existing Virgin Media fibre optic subscribers will nab 6 months worth of the Premium version of the streaming service for free, an offer worth £59.94 if purchased separately.

Virgin Media pay monthly mobile users get 3 months of the Premium service, worth £29.97, and have the added benefit of incurring zero data charges for streaming tracks over 3G while on their network.

Cindy Rose, executive director of digital entertainment at Virgin Media said: "Our goal to deliver a truly unique experience for our customers and we're really excited about bringing Spotify to our TiVo service as part of our ongoing initiatives to develop the platform further with new features, applications and content."

Spotify's Andreas Liffgarden, global head of telecom business development added: "What used to be a big cube is now a flat screen connected to the speakers and surround sound system in your home. Since we like our users to enjoy the world's best music under the best possible conditions, it made perfect sense for us to develop this great Spotify app for Virgin Media TiVo."

You can find the new Spotify app in the games and apps area of your Tivo box menu.

Click here for our Christmas gift guide to the best set-top boxes.

Tech gifts don't have to be about screen sizes or processing capabilities these days. In fact, they don't have to be physical gifts at all. You can put a smile on a loved one's face just by setting them up with one of the many ace online digital services and subscription packages that are tied into apps, download and streaming sites too.

From music packages like Spotify to productivity programs like Dropbox, there's something here for everyone.

When you're done here, be sure to check out the rest of Tech Digest's 2011 Christmas wishlists too.

Ah Spotify; I can remember when you were just a twinkle in Tech Digest's unbelieving eyes. How you've grown. You know you've made it when you're selling gift cards in supermarkets, and that's just what the music-streaming service if preparing to do.

Welcome to the thoughtless "bung an iTunes voucher into the birthday card" gift leagues, Spotify.

Looking to gain further mainstream appeal, Spotfiy gift cards will be on sale in time for Christmas, beginning at Morrisons and rolling out to other retail chains and supermarkets soon afterwards.

Available in three tiers, you'll be able to bag £10, £30, and £50 Spotify cards, giving 1 month, 3 months and 5 months worth of unlimited PC and mobile music streaming access respectively.

Alternatively, the cards can be used to buy mp3's through the service, yours to keep forver. A £10 voucher will bag you 15 tracks.

A fitting end to a year for Spotify that has not only seen a high-profile Facebook partnership, but also mega expansion across the USA.

Godspeed, Spotify!

Some welcome good news for BlackBerry owners today after the recent outage troubles. It's been a long time coming, but BlackBerry users can finally get the superb Spotify music streaming service on their handsets.

Revealed today over on the official Spotify blog, those who favour RIM's smartphones now have a version of the Spotify app tailored to their devices.

However, as it stands it's being listed up as a "preview" release, and as such, comes with a few caveats.

Firstly an obvious one; you'll need a premium Spotify account to take your music out on the go with you.

Secondly, Spotify for BlackBerry only works with GSM phones, meaning US readers are out of luck for the time being at least. The only BlackBerry handsets tested and officially confirmed to be working with the service are the BlackBerry 9780 Bold, 9700 Bold, 9300 Curve, original 9000 Bold and 8520 Curve, while unofficial reports of the Bold 9900 BlackBerry 7 handset also running without a hitch have been made.

For now, those with Torch or Storm touchscreen BlackBerry's are out of luck it would seem.

If you fit into the above criteria however, you'll get all the usual Spotify goodies, including offline playlists, Last.fm scrobbling and all the usual search features, with the added ease of a QWERTY keyboard.

Not yet on the BlackBerry App World store, you can try the preview build by clicking here.

Virgin Media may be preparing a deal that would allow Spotify users on Virgin Mobile handsets to stream unlimited amounts of songs of 3G mobile data connections without incurring any costs, or using up any of a customers data allowance.

It's a potentially massive move that would be very enticing for music fans. Spotify works great over 3G, more-or-less providing stutter-free playback of their massive catalogue on the fly. However, it's a feature hamstrung by the fact that streaming songs can use large qauntities of data and prove costly. As an alternative, Spotify users have to download playlists over a Wi-Fi connection to ensure cost-free playback.

The Virgin Media deal would do away with this time consuming faffing.

If the rumours prove true, it could be another important step in the music streaming revolution, making the Spotify service ever-more accessible, and possible forcing the hand of other network providers to offer similar deals.

We'll keep a close eye on this story as it develops.

Via: One Mobile Ring

We're massive fans of Spotify here at Tech Digest. We've covered it from its first baby-steps up to the world-conquering music streaming service it has become today, with hardly a bad word to say about it.

However, the recent, deep integration with the new look Facebook raised a few eyebrows. Sure, we like sharing our musical tastes, but do we really want everyone to know every single track we're listening to at any given time? Does the world really need to know that Tech Digest are secretly massive BeeGees fans?

No, of course not. Which is why Spotify have sensibly added a new "Private Listening" feature to their service.

A tweet from the official Spotify Twitter account announced the addition:

Now you can temporarily hide your guilty pleasures. We call it "Private listening" and you can find it in the Spotify/File menu.

Thankfully, it's a simple matter of selecting the feature from a drop-down menu in the Spotify desktop app, which makes the service hide your actions in much the same way a web browser's "private browsing" function does.

Which is great, because we all know being caught listening to Justin Bieber is just as bad as being caught watching porn.

Facebook and music streaming service Spotify are expected to announce a partnership through the social network at this week's f8 conference, following the news that Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek is to be a key speaker at the event.

Ek will be part of "The future of digital music" panel at the event where the Facebook team usually reveal coming innovations and features for the world's largest social network.

This year's f8 is set to focus on content and entertainment, with Zuckerberg's empire speaking about how movies, music, magazines, newspapers and TV shows will be brought to the network in the future.

Facebook integration would round off a strong year for Spotify, who've seen a steady rise in Premium subscription sales and the long-awaited launch of the service in the USA. Ek's presence highly suggests that Spotify will become one of the lead music content partnerts for Facebook.

Facebook Music with Spotify seems almost a certainty.

Via: TechCrunch

Onkyo's top-notch range of net-connected home cinema receivers get an update today.

Alongside the addition of the AUPEO! customised radio service that hit the range earlier this week, the receiver's Spotify application gets an overhaul to include much-needed search funtionality. As well as Spotify Premium owners playlists and starred tracks, they'll now be able to use the receivers to search for and directly play any one of the 15 million songs on the music streaming service.

The addition of AUPEO! brings the number of radio and music services available through Onkyo's net-connected receivers up to a grand-total of 5 (Spotify, Napster, last.FM, AUPEO! and VTuner), making them some of the most desirable home cinema receivers around.

Check out our review by clicking here for further proof.

Download the new firmware by clicking here.

It's taken far longer than American music lovers would have liked, but finally Spotify, the world's premier music streaming service, has launched stateside.

We've put this guide together for our readers across the pond as a primer for everything you need to know to get going with Spotify.

What is Spotify?

Spotify is a music streaming service that gives on demand access to approximately 15 million tracks in an instant. Streaming works a little bit like a music-only version of YouTube, but within a dedicated player, buffering tracks and optionally caching music for quick playback and lowered data usage. The lower bandwidth needed to stream music means that there's no delay between hitting play and having your tunes playback.

Spotify uses a desktop application for both PCs and Macs to playback tracks, build playlists and browse the extensive catalogue, as well as interact with friends via social networks. Cough up for the paid for versions and you can make playlists offline, as well as listening to Spotify on the go through a mobile application available on a variety of platforms.

Open vs Unlimited vs Premium

Three different versions of Spotify are available to suit different wallet sizes. If you've got the money, we heartily recommend the Premium monthly subscription version ($9.99/£9.99). It gives unlimited access to the full catalogue of songs in high quality 320kbps bitrate, allows you to store albums and playlists offline, and also lets you take your favourite tracks on the go with you via mobile applications. Unlimited, costing $4.99/£4.99 a month is great value if you only listen to music on your computer, which has all the same features as Premium without the mobile options. Spotify used to offer a desktop-only ad-funded version of Spotify called Free which, as its name suggests, didn't cost a thing, drawing revenue from ads alone and offering unlimited PC playback. This is gradually being phased out in favour the Open version, which will be offered for free in the States; it gives 20 hours of free music every month, but limits tracks to a finite 5 plays each, which means you'll really have to savour playing your favourite songs.

The paid-for versions do offer really good value though; a single physical album purchase would cost the same as a month's worth of access to 15 million songs on Spotify Premium. It's worth noting though that you do not own tracks streamed on Spotify; if it ever shuts down, you lose all your playlists and music. In the UK you can use Spotify to purchase tracks too though; a single MP3 costs £1.15, getting incrementally cheaper if you buy a bundle (£7.99/10 tracks, £9.99/15 tracks, £25/40 tracks, £50/100 tracks).

Browsing Spotify

Spotify's strongest asset, apart from its massive catalogue, is its near flawless user interface. Everything works exactly as you'd hope, and as a result it's a truly excellent music discovery tool. A search bar sits at the top, throwing up your search results far quicker than iTunes ever managed. The magic here is that practically every bit of text acts as a link. This may sound crazy, but it means you can get to exactly what you're looking for nearly instantly; search for the French pop-duo Air and you'll get track names, and album details, as well as the artist name to click on. Double click a track to play it instantly, click the album link to see all other tracks on the album its from, or click the artist name to browse to that artist.

Clicking the artist name and then visiting their "Homepage" can be really illuminating; as well as offering detailed biographies on bands, as well as reviews of their albums, there's also a related artists tab that is compiled based on the tastes of users who also like the same artist, as well as Spotify's editorial team.

Spotify also offer radio stations organised by musical genre and obscure sub-genres, as well as showing the latest releases via the "What's New" tab. The "Top Lists" tab also show what's currently most popular with Spotify's users, split between Tracks and Albums, in various locations around the world.

Organising your library into Playlists

If you find a string of tracks or an album that you like on Spotify, you can turn them into a Playlist so that you can access them quickly. If it's an album you like, it's just a matter of dragging the album name into the left-hand Playlist panel. If you're looking to build a Playlist from a collection of artists, hit the "New Playlist" button in the left-hand panel, Ctrl+N, or from the drop down File bar. It's then a simple matter of dragging individual tracks into that area.

Once you've got a few Playlists built, you can organise them into folders by selecting the option from the File menu, and dragging and dropping them onto each other.

If you're looking to quickly save a track for listening to at a later date, use the "Starred" function. Every song has a small star icon next to it. Click it, and the song will automatically be sent to your Starred folder. It's like an Evernote clipper for Spotify music.

Importing local tracks

In an attempt to truly topple iTunes, Spotify now offers full syncing support of your locally stored tracks, combining your own MP3's with Spotify's streaming catalogue. Simply hit the Edit menu button, scroll down to Preferences, and then check the sources that you want Spotify to scan music from. It's a great way to plug the few holes in Spotify's catalogue. In much the same way, Spotify now also supports iPod syncing, letting you sync your mp3 player's playlists with Spotfy over USB and bypassing iTunes altogether.

Syncing Spotify with the mobile app

If you splash the cash for the Premium version of Spotify, you can take all your tracks on the go with you via mobile apps. The Spotify app is free and features all the same functionality as the desktop version, but requires a Premium account to be really useful. It's available for loads of Android, Symbian and Windows Phone 7 handsets, as well as Palm devices and iPhones and iPods. No Blackberry support yet, though a version is in the works. Click here for a full list, or visit m.spotify.com in your smartphone's browser to see if your handset is compatible.

The app features practically all the same features as the desktop version, squeezed into a clean finger-friendly interface. Best of all, any Playlists you create or tracks you "star" will be automatically updated between both the desktop and mobile versions as you change them. Ahh; the joys of a cloud-based future.

Though you can stream tracks over 3G if you so choose, unless you want to suffer the woes of a massive data bill when using Spotify on the go you should use the feature that allows you to have offline access to Playlists. There are a few different ways to do this, but all are simple.

When in the mobile app, press and hold on the name of a Playlist and a little pop up menu will appear, with a checkbox offering the option to make the Playlist offline-ready. Alternatively, if you have access to the desktop application and your mobile device is connected to the same Wi-Fi connection as your computer, Spotify will automtically recognise your mobile device and allow you to make Playlists offline via a PC using the "Devices" tab in the left hand panel (pictured above).

Keep in mind that offline Playlists will take up storage space on your device, so you may want to consider upgrading your mobile device's storage capabilities where possible. We'd also recommend heading over to the Settings area of the mobile app and choosing the option to only sync playlists for offline playback over a Wi-Fi connection, or you run the risk again of racking up a hefty data bill.

Using social features and sharing tracks

If you're into sharing music with your friends, Spotify makes this incredibly easy. By giving the desktop application permission to scan your Facebook friends, the application will show you all your pals who are also using the music streaming service. They'll be presented in the "People" panel to the right hand side of the program. It's purely optional of course, but allows you to do great things like subscribe to and browse other users' Playlists, make collaborative Playlists and use the "Inbox" feature to send and receive tracks to your friends.

You can also share tracks and playlists directly to Facebook. Right clicking a Playlist or track gives you the option of copying a tracks' Spotify URI or HTTP link, which can then be pasted as you see fit. Far easier though is hitting the "Share To..." button, which lets you send a track to Facebook, Twitter, another Spotify user or Windows Messenger. A link will then appear on your wall, news feed or Twitter page, though anyone who clicks it will also need to be a Spotify user to hear them.

For now that is; Facebook is rumoured to be planning a major partnership deal with Spotify that will allow you to playback shared tracks directly from the Facebook website.

In a similar fashion, you can also head over to the preferences section to add Last.fm scrobbling to Spotify, which will inform the sorts of music that Last.fm will recommend to you in the future.

Have we left anything out that you'd like to know? Leave comments in the section below if you have any questions, or via our Twitter feed @techdigestnews , and we'll update the post with your most wanted info.

Spotify, the music streaming service that has offered millions of tracks at the push of a button to much of Europe for a few years now, is finally getting an official, finalised launch in the USA today.

It's taken two years to get the major US record labels onside, but as of today, US listeners will be able to join the service through subscription of invitiation.

"We were really adamant about bringing the service to the US, which means a really great, free experience," said Ken Parks, chief content officer.

"We wanted to be really careful about the way we did this, and the rights holders felt the same way.

"It took some time, but we're absolutely thrilled that all four major labels and a ton of indies are behind us, and we'll be bringing that Spotify experience to the US tomorrow."

We're still waiting on US price plans, but it seems that prices will be (numerically at least) the same as in the UK. So, you'll get a free, ad-funded option, an add-free desktop only option rumoured to cost $4.99 and a Premium option allowing mobile and desktop use, offline, for $9.99 a month.

Factor in exchange rates however and the US service, if those prices prove true, is markedly cheaper.

They've teased US music fans for years with promises of bringing their music streaming service over the pond, but all things are now pointing towards an American launch for Spotify as soon as next week.

With three of the four major US labels signed up (and execs hovering around Warner Music Group with an inky pen and a contract like ants to a picnic), as well as a ton of indies, it's nearly all systems go for the Swedish maestros.

But what of pricing Stateside? TechCrunch have caught wind of a sign-up flow that suggests US users will get the millions of tracks for cheaper than in the UK and the rest of Europe.

Currently, to use the Premium mobile service in the UK it costs £9.99 a month, with the Unlimited Desktop version costing £4.99 a month. In the US, the Premium version will cost $9.99 and the Unlimited version $4.99, which when converted to pounds equals out to something close to £5.99 for Premium and £2.99 for Unlimited.

The leak also suggested that an ad-funded free service, limited to a set number of track plays and hours a month, will also launch in the US, much like what is currently available to new users in the rest of the world.

Spotify denied the pricing leak with a statement that read: "No details are set for the pricing or details of our US service yet - we're still testing a number of different options. We'll be sure to let you know when we have something to announce."

However these figures sound very believable, and when the time comes will likely mirror Spotify's official numbers. It is thought that Spotify are now delaying the launch only to wait for the massive Facebook partnership that was rumoured earlier this year.

Virgin Media and music streaming service Spotify have announced that they will be entering a partnership that will see the Swedish cloud music player feature in Virgin Media broadband packages, phone deals and set-top boxes.

Rumoured for some time, multiple deals will be offered up to new and exisiting customers, including both the Spotify Unlimited and Spotify Premium packages, the later of which allows for offline playback on devices.

"We are delighted to have united the Virgin Media brand with the world's best music service," said Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media.

"Spotify will help our customers to fill their world with music, whether it's at home or on the go, and provide a unique way to get even more out of Virgin Media's leading digital services."

Andreas Liffgarden, director of business development at Spotify, was equally thrilled: "By teaming up with Virgin Media we're giving millions more people across the UK the chance to enjoy all the world's music at their fingertips, however they choose to listen to it - be that on their computer, mobile, and for the first time through their TV."

Launching in "the coming months" it is currently uncertain how the pricing of the newly added Spotify services will be implemented into Virgin Media's catalogue.

US music fans may finally be getting their hands on the Spotify music streaming service. General manager Jonathan Forster told those gathered at the recent Omnicom advertising conference that license deals were being inked in "as I speak".

However, a different monetisation strategy looks to be agreed stateside, leading to faster payoffs for the labels. This likely means that US users will get a shoter free-to-use period, and less free-to-listen tracks each month than their European equivalents.

Though stating that the service "won't launch before July 5th", it not looks as if we're talking about a matter of weeks before a major announcement.

10 million people currently subscribe to Spotify, with 1 million of those premium users. However since its launch in 2009 competition has heated up in the cloud msuic/storage/digital locker sphere. As well as the Amazon Cloud Player and Music Beta by Google, Spotify now has to fight the mighty Apple and their iTunes Match/iCloud service, revealed at this month's WWDC conference.

Via: Business Insider

Spotify have today announced a major new upgrade to their music streaming service which further puts them into direct competition with Apple's iTunes.

From today, the mobile Spotify app will be available to all users, including Free account subscribers, allowing everyone to sync Spotify MP3 playlists to their mobile devices. Users won't be able to stream tracks, but they will be able to manage their MP3 files using Spotify, meaning they no longer need to transfer downloaded tracks through iTunes.

What's more, a new "Devices" tab in the Spotify control panel means that Spotify playlists can be transferred to Apple devices that don't make use of apps, such as iPod Classic, Nano and Shuffle models. You'll also be able to wirelessly sync downloaded MP3 tracks to iPhones, iPod Touch and Android devices; another feature missing from iTunes.

Daniel Ek, CEO & Founder of Spotify, says: "From today, Spotify really is the only music layer you'll ever need. Our users don't want to have to switch between music players, but they do want to take their playlists with them wherever they go, on a wider range of devices, more simply and at a price they can afford. Now we've made that possible on one of the world's most popular consumer devices."

Spotify have also bolstered their MP3 buying service, slashing prices to as little as 50p a track if you buy in bulk. That Cloud-based iTunes service looks more vital than ever to Apple's plans now.

Spotify have today announced a raft of major changes to their free-to-listen music streaming service that quite drastically cuts back the amount of tracks people will be able to listen to without signing up for a premium price plan.

Free users who have joined Spotify any time before November 1st 2010 will, from May 1st, have their free listening quota cut from 20 hours of music a month to 10 hours, with a 5-play limit on each individual track. Those who signed up after November 1st 2010 have exactly 6 months from the date they joined before the changes will be rolled out to their accounts too.

Users who pay for the Unlimited desktop service or Premium mobile and desktop service will not see any changes made to their boundary-free usage allowance.

If you're a free user, it's a pretty drastic cutback on what was previously available. The Spotify blog which announced the changes has already been hit with reams of messages from users saying they will now abandon the streaming service.

"This smacks of pure greed," said one user going by the name of goodbye_spotify.

"I don't think you could have found a better way to alienate your users even if you had deliberately set out to do so. There's no way I could ever consider upgrading to a premium account now. I'll just stick with my open account until I run out of free plays or further restrictions like these make it completely unusable. Thanks. It was fun while it lasted."

It's an attitude shared by many, but frankly they're missing the point. Spotify has opened the gates for a completely different way of consuming music, not seen since the boom in illegal mp3 downloads and sharing. Spotify of course has the benefit of being completely legal, and with the growing support of record labels who are finally beginning to wake up to the idea that the old business model that they distributed music through is increasingly redundant, Spotify stands on the cusp of a revolution.

For starters, they're increasingly making the desire to pirate albums unnecessary, as the catalogue becomes increasingly comprehensive and the user interface of the software so simple and appealing. With physical record sales declining and increasingly less convenient in the age of the iPod and smartphone, the only major alternatives are iTunes and a return to rampant piracy. iTunes track downloads at roughly 79p a go, when compared to the £9.99 a month cost for unlimited access to over 6 million songs with Spotify, now appears incredibly poor value for money. Piracy, which should never be condoned regardless as it damages the livelihoods of the artists we love, runs with it not only the annoyances of poorly ripped tracks, viruses and fakes, but of course the looming threat of prosecution.

If anything, now is perhaps the best time EVER to sign up for a Premium Spotify account. A recent overhaul of the mobile apps makes editing playlists on the go far more easy, the social/sharing aspects are growing from strength to strength and an increasing number of devices, including Sonos multi-room speaker systems and Onkyo home cinema kits, are adding the music streaming app to their list of built-in features.

Spotify, in reality, has never been a completely free service. Free users have always had to put up with plenty of adverts between tracks, and that, even in the days of unlimited access, was enough to wind some people up. But what do we honestly expect; that a service this good can survive unfunded? It's high time we started paying for Spotify and supporting innovation, especially if we want to see our favourite musical artists begin to make a decent living again in this age of falling record sales.

The Spotify Premium service, allowing you to sync playlists to mobile devices and access an incomprehensibly long list of songs, costs the same as buying just one CD a month. Signing up to the Premium service right now also comes with a 7-day free trial period, while throughout May the Spotify team are planning a generous 30-day free Premium service trial too. If £9.99 a month sounds too much, opt for the £4.99 desktop-only option; half the functionality, half the price.

Call me naive, but that sounds like incredibly good value for money to me. It's time to shake off this cheapskate culture when it comes to digital music consumption and dust off our wallets.

In a world first, Spotify and Onkyo are to team up, putting direct access to the music streaming catalogue in select home cinema receivers.

Spotify Premium subscribers from UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, and Norway will be able to connect directly to the service through the £450 TX-NR609 receiver, with the Spotify catalogue hitting more Onkyo kits in the future.

"This will be an absolute must have for Spotify Premium subscribers who want to hear their music in the highest quality at home," said Nick Hamada, Onkyo's Product And Marketing Manager.

"We're extremely excited to be working with the legendary engineers from Onkyo, who's sound quality and product excellence is renowned,' added Pascal de Mul, Spotify's Global Head of Hardware Partnerships. 'Onkyo makes our vision of effortless access to music a reality which we're sure will impress even the most discerning audio enthusiast."

Spotify is accessed through the onscreen menus of the TX-NR609, giving scrolling access to playlists, starred tracks and the "What's New" tracks. Album artwork will also be displayed.