The future of Music on your computer?

iTunes competitors come, and iTunes competitors go. The number of startups that promised to overturn Apples enormous advantage in on line music is almost as large as the number of Nigerians that promise to make me a millionaire. The one thing they have all had in common until recently is their singular lack of success.

Generally, the reason for this is held to be Apple unique one, two punch combo of the iTunes store and the iPod. Any service that offers music that is not playable on the mighty iPod is effectively doomed.

Which is why the Amazon store works. The easy to use downloader throws mpeg files (that will happily play on your iPod) dirctly into iTunes. The quality is better that iTunes, the DRM is absent and the choice is huge.

Now, there is another pretender to the iTunes crown. Spotify offers the lure of free music on your computer. OK, there are restrictions. It's streaming not downloading but for home or office based computers the ability to access effectively limitless music for free is a real boon and great for experimenting with new musical discoveries.

I've been listening to spotify for a few days and I must say it works great. Apart from the Beatles, pretty much everything you need is there and the streaming is flawless so far. I can easily se Spotify becoming the default day to day music browsing platform. The service is ad supported, currenly ads are few and unobtrusive but Spotify plan to up the ad content. Hopefully not to a point where it becomes annoying.

On the move on my iPhone (or Touch) last fm offers streaming music too. Again this works well and allows for experimentation. Last fm also gives gig and artist data, which is nice.

Balancing this triple Amazon, lastfm, spotify combo against the iTunes store it's beginning to look like the era of iTunes dominance may be beginning to end.