After a short beta period, Spotify is finally ready for BlackBerry handsets. Be warned though, compatibility is currently limited to the Bold 9780, Bold 9700, Curve 9300, Bold 900, and Curve 8520. No love for CDMA phones nor the Torch 9800 yet. Those are all relatively older devices… Where’s the OS 7 compatibility?
Spotify faces some well-entrenched competition, particularly with Slacker Radio, which has been enjoying a preload on many RIM devices. For $10, Spotify offers you access to millions of tracks streaming to your phone, and plugged into your various social networks. Tunes can be cached locally, and you can drill down into detailed artist, track, and album information. Spotify made its big splash initially on the web, where it offered free, on-demand streaming music.
The precedent set by Pandora in the web music business was that you could never pull up specific tunes, but could still tailor preferences and build stations suited to your taste. I guess with enough traffic, interspersing tracks with ads became a viable option, but it’s too bad the mobile is still a strictly premium feature on Spotify.
To get started, head over to m.spotify.com on your BlackBerry browser. Those of us in Canada are a little screwed since the service still isn’t available up here, but I’ve been using Rdio for awhile, it’s solid alternative. At the very least, Spotify is better than BBM Music.