In our office over the past month or so, I have to say the music has improved. The reason it has improved is because our library of songs has massively increased.

We are close to finishing the project thats has given access to the music library however that's a story for another time. It has got me wondering as to why it has taken so long for an alternate to iTunes and to a lesser extent Telstra Bigpond music's download service to arrive in Australia.

Spotify has lead the way in Europe in bringing to market a great model for consumers to listen and manage their music. For those that aren't across Spotify it is a service that allows you to stream as much music as you like and choose from their library of over 8,000,000 songs. Where they have really nailed it is through seamlessly allowing their members to have access to their music online through a web application or while mobile, through native iPhone, android and symbian (Nokia, Sony Ericcson devices predominantly) applications.

The music library is stored managed and delivered via the 'cloud' (so the user never really owns the music) only a few weeks ago spottily announced they have hit over 400,000 subscribers, and what appears to be an evolving subscriber model, from free with advertising to premium paying around AUD$15 per month... Spotify recently credited much of their success to tapping into the growth and demand for rich content within the smartphone market.

The technology for streaming music isn't new by any means, it has been there for years. The first service I recall having placed the streaming music model into market is the leading operator PCCW in Hong Kong, with their 'MOOV on Mobile' triple play, syncing the home, business and mobile devices. They won the GSM award back in 2007 for best mobile music service.

So why has it taken so long for wider adoption of music streaming services to gain wider traction in the market?

In my opinion there have been four core drivers

1. handsets capabilities

2. data costs

3. carrier 'walled gardens' finally being broken down - largely driven by Apple's iPhone / iTunes business model and opening up the opportunity to all forms of business models.

4. consumers education and change of perception/acceptance around not owning a library but 'renting' one.

The central benefits being

1. the music labels can create a new revenue stream and counter the rapid growth in music piracy over the net

2. consumers now have unlimited access to music libraries

3. the price benefit for the consumer seems to good to ignore eg. pay for approx 3 tracks to download from itunes in a month would cost the same as having unlimited music.

So the question is when is it coming to Australia?