Today Spotify launched offline mode.  As with the iPhone app which offered offline playlists for when you're on the tube or in the deep countryside (is there anywhere else in the world without WiFi now?), computer-based Spotify will now offer the same.  Similarly to the iPhone app it's only for paid customers.  Click the 'on/off' available online function and your chosen playlist will sync to your computer.  Not only this, but you can now pay via PayPal in the UK.  This is superb for anyone who finds holding a bank card and reading it too strenuous (I know I do.)

So Spotify it seems, is doing pretty well.  So well that it's had to revert back to 'invite only' following the massive success of the iPhone app, albeit temporarily.  Spotify started life like this and there's nothing like an invite-only service to arouse mass interest.

The cry on the digital street is: "Are you getting this Apple?"

With the latest launch of iTunes distinctly not being heralded as groundbreaking and fabulous (hearing complains of clunkiness and dawdling) and Spotify putting itself in a a new arena with offline playing, it would be nice if Apple can pull out funky moves.  That said, they've got a number of products to focus on whilst Spotify has only one.  However, there's still something nicely reassuring about owning your own music that Spotify haven't and perhaps won't get in to.  That said, I've had the disaster of loosing all my iTunes-bought tracks in ownership errors, so perhaps that's not all it's cracked up to be.