It has been rumoured for some time that 3, the mobile phone operator in the UK, was working on a mobile phone bundled with access to Spotify and now the rumours have been confirmed. Starting next month 3 will start selling HTC’s Hero smartphone and include Spotify premium access into the subscription.
With a two year contract at £35 a month (plus £99 for the Google Android-powered Hero handset) subscribers get unlimited use of Spotify Premium on both their Hero handset and on their PC for the 2 years of the contract. Also included is 750 minutes to other mobiles, unlimited texts, unlimited data and other usual 3 tariff features such as Skype and Facebook.
Spotify Premium members get unlimited access to the complete Spotify collection without advertising, plus the ability to stream at a higher bit rate of 320kbps. There is no technical details yet on the bit rate that will be available on the phone.
This is the first time that a mobile phone and network provider are being bundled together with a subscription to Spotify. What is interesting is that the head of Hutchison Whampoa (who own 3) recently made an investment in Spotify. Spotify currently has over 1 million subscribers to its paid service that is currently available in the U.K. and some parts of Europe. There are plans for a U.S. version this year.
The HTC Hero is the first Android handset to launch on 3.
Spotify has posted about this on their blog.
Tags: 3, Android, HTC Hero, mobile phone, spotify
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