mSpot will soon let Brits store music in the cloud

CNET UK

US company mSpot is launching its music service in Europe. The cloud service gives you 2GB of space in which to store your songs, and then lets you access them from Web-connected devices.

mSpot has been available in the US since last year. After signing up more than one million Americans, it's now crossing the Atlantic to tempt us with its remote-storage charms.

Europeans will get access to mSpot later this month, in beta form. The service will be free, and will provide access to your music from computers, smart phones and other 'connected devices' -- that will certainly mean tablets, and potentially connected TVs too.

mSpot chief executive Daren Tsui promises that the service makes "it just as easy to listen to your own music collections as it is to turn on the radio". The service will launch here with iPhone and Android apps.

What if you've got more than 2GB of music in your collection, which is hardly unusual? mSpot makes its money by charging users for extra storage space. In the US, 40GB of storage costs $3.99 a month, which works out at around £2.50.

mSpot hasn't revealed when it will offer similar premium plans in the UK, other than saying that they will be announced "shortly". Nor has mSpot announced how much they will cost.

mSpot isn't alone in touting cloud storage as the next big thing for music fans. In the US, services like MP3tunes have been going for a long time. Here's a comparison of MP3tunes and mSpot to show how they stack up.

In the UK, Carphone Warehouse last year launched its Music Anywhere service. Another UK firm, Psonar, is working on its own cloudy music service too.

January 21, 2011

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