An enormous iTunes store – where every song is free?

The Swedish-based Spotify Music Streaming Service was released in Australia this weekend.

Spotify is an free app for Mac/PC or iPhone that allows you to ‘stream’ music from an enormous ‘jukebox in the cloud’. It reallly does contatin just about any song you can think of. And it is a legal service – a proportion of income is returned to the artists.

Once you have downloaded the app (from http://spotify.com or from the App Store), you create a Spotify account by logging in using your Facebook details.

You can then search for an artist or song, choose from a suggested list, or listen to a playlist that one of your Facebook friends has uploaded. You can also share your playlists with them.

You never ‘own’ the songs you play as you do with iTunes – its like a radio station in which you get to request each song.

You’ll need an Internet connection to listen. Unless you have a very big 3G download allowance, the best time to use Spotify is when you are in WiFi range.

Like a radio station, if you listen in ‘free mode’ there are ads between songs.

You can remove the ads by subscribing to Spotify Unlimited at $6.99 per month.

To listen on your mobile, you’ll need to join Spotify premium at $11.99 per month. This has the added feature of allowing you to store up to 3,333 songs on your computer or phone so that you can listen at any time without an internet connection. However, if you stop paying the subscription your access to the songs is all over, baby blue.

When you first download Spotify you have 48 hours in which you can access the Premium Service free of charge. After that, you’ll revert to free mode.

Here’s a cool playlist to get you started,