Spotify available now for iPhone and Android

Streaming music service takes first fully-approved leap into mobile

Spotify has announced that its hotly-anticipated mobile app is available today for iPhone and iPod touch, but also for Android handsets.

Although it's been known for some time that the streaming music firm was working on an Android app - it was the first to be shown off publicly - attention has been focused lately on the iPhone version, which was approved by Apple earlier this month.

The bonus for Android users is that they can run the app in the background while using other features of their phone. iPhone apps can;t as yet run in the background in this way.

Both versions of the app are free to download, but not free to use. Instead, they will only work for paying customers of Spotify's desktop service - the £9.99-a-month Premium version.

The mobile versions are thus being used as an incentive for Spotify's free customers to upgrade. Key among their selling points is a cacheing feature enabling playlists to be stored offline - thus allowing music to be played even when 3G and/or Wi-Fi reception is unavailable.