We’ve spoken with 3UK, and we now have a better understanding of how the Spotify Premium service will operate on the HTC Hero that we covered last week.  Firstly, if you are streaming the music direct from Spotify over the 3G connection, then yes that data will come out of the Internet Access usage, which is capped at 1GB per month, although we do understand there’s a little leeway on this exact figure, so 3UK shouldn’t cut you off for exceeded it a little (they will if you exceed it a lot though!).  Although 3UK did tell me what that actual limit is, the T&Cs and the promoted set the limit as 1GB, and that’s the number you need to keep within as much as you can.

However, one of the advantages of having a Spotify Premium account and the Spotify Android client is the ability to access music in other ways.  Firstly, it will also work over Wi-Fi and home / work broadband connections, allowing you the ability to listen to music in those places as well as home.  Secondly, the client support offline playlists, which will allow you to preselect music and then have access to it without needing to be streaming all that music whilst out and about.  Personally, I normally preselect playlists when I want to listen to music on whatever device I’m using, so I can understand the advantage that as well as having access to a massive music library, many of those tracks that I want to listen to regularly can be already downloaded.

Having said that, it’s being advertised as “unlimited” Internet access, and unlimited Spotify, which isn’t quite true.  3UK have stated that if you just used the Internet Access for Spotify you would still get roughly 1.5 hours per day of streamed music for the whole month without running out of data usage, and that would easily cover the work commute for many people even without the use of offline playlists.  Of course, every track already downloaded will save some data usage (and will help deal with those little network blackspots such as road and rail tunnels or underground trains), so many people may well end up using a lot less than this in reality.  Given, that in essence you “pay” (if only a portion of your internet access limit) every time you listen to a streamed song, why not download those you want to listen to regularly and save a little?

Let’s also not forget that Orange’s T&Cs forbid accessing streaming music or video at all (although they have stated “popular streaming sites will not be banned for iPhone users”, but will of course still come out of their smaller 750MB 3G data limit per month); at least 3UK have an open policy towards their internet pipe in the first place, else a deal like this with Spotify would never exist.

Although I would like to see 3UK raise this Internet Access limit higher, it seems they are offering a compromise between too much and too little; although whether all networks will need to reconsider their limits over the next year will be interesting to see as more music streaming promotions such as Spotify are offered to mobile users.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Gadgets, Not Unlimited. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.