Spotify offers PC music downloads

The company recently launched an application for the iPhone

The music streaming service Spotify has announced that it will allow users to download music to their computers.

The new service will only be available to premium subscribers, who will have to pay £10 per month for their music.

Spotify already allows users to listen to music offline via an application on their mobile phones.

The Swedish music streaming service is looked on as a rival to Apple's iTunes store because of its wide-ranging, free library of millions of songs.

Apple currently dominates digital music with around 70% of the market.

Digital locks

Spotify recently launched an application for the iPhone that allows users to temporarily download music.

A spokesperson for the firm said the new feature is very similar to the mobile application.

Users can create a playlist whilst connected to the net, but then choose to sync them with a computer and then listen to the songs offline.

The firm has not said whether the music will be protected by digital rights management (DRM) software that allow rights holders to control how their music is used.

However, a spokesperson said that although tracks would be stored within a folder on a hard drive, they would not be able to be played using other music players.

The firm said that if a customer stops paying a subscription, the playlists will continue to exist in the folder, but the ability to listen to them offline will be disabled.

The application allows users to store up to 3,333 tracks offline, on up to three different devices at a time.

Spotify, which launched last year, now has more than two million users in the UK, and more than six million across Europe.

It has not yet launched in the United States but says it intends to do so by the end of the year.