Spotify Free users now get to sync their bought music to their iPod

The ability to sync your Spotify music to your iPod/iPhone/Android phone has just been extended to Spotify free users. However, users of Free Spotify won’t be able to stream their music on their iPods – they’ll just be able to transfer tracks they’ve already bought.

Announced today on the Spotify blog , the company explained:

“As of today, everyone can download the Spotify Mobile iPhone & Android apps to wirelessly sync your MP3 playlists in Spotify from your computer to your phone. Fire up your mobile app and see your phone appear in the ‘Devices’ section of the Spotify sidebar, ready to rock and roll. No cables required! And did we mention it’s now possible to wirelessly sync these playlists to your iPod touch?”

The change makes it more worthwhile for people to buy tracks on Spotify, but it’s not a very significant alteration to the service.

As blog commenter sdg pointed out: “Premium is still the only way to get music that you don’t own to your mobile devices. This new free addition is just for MP3s people have bought.”

It does show however that the music service is actively pushing its users towards spending money on the site, encourage them to buy the music they usually listen to for free. Spotify offer 50p a song bundles as well.

In reality the change is small one, but it’s been billed as an aggressive move against iTunes, with the Guardian describing it as a “rival”. We’ll explore this in another blog post.

IMHO a bigger recent move was Spotify’s cut to free listening allowances down from 20 hours to 10 hours: You’d better start paying for Spotify soon guys – free listening time halve