Spotify's web service goes live in the UK – and it works well

Great news for Spotify users in the UK. Its long promised web based service has now gone live. So, on the odd occasion you find yourself using some else’s PC or if you don’t want to download the client based version, you can still listen to you favourite tunes via your web browser.

So how does it work?

Well you simply to go to the website, log in and away you go. As long as you have a recent-ish version of Flash an analog of the desk based client pops up. It is fairly similar to the client. The big cosmetic difference is that the mini player (the bit which shows which track is playing) is on the upper right rather than the bottom left. Other than that the two versions are pretty close.

You don’t however get to access your apps – maybe they will follow when the site moves out of beta later in the year.

Also if you are using someone else’s PC you also don’t get access to any tracks that you may have stored on your home PC’s hard drive.

Spotify isn’t the first streaming service to offer a web -based option. Deezer and others have also used the web browser to access music.

The web streaming market is set to explode this year, The other day we ran a story about how Apple are mulling over an streaming version of iTunes possibly in partnership with Beats.

Microsoft, Nokia and others are also developing services in this space.