mSpot’s new internet radio service generates playlists based on your songs

Mobiputing.com

A company called mSpot beat Google and Amazon to the punch a few years ago by offering an online music storage locker that allows users to upload songs to the cloud and stream them to any desktop web browser or to mobile devices for Android or iOS. Now mSpot is stepping up its game by combining its music locker service with an internet radio service.

Here’s how it works: You upload your music, fire up the app on your mobile device and start listening to the songs you already own. But when you want to listen to something new you just tap a button and mSpot will create a personalized internet radio station based on the song or artist you’re currently listening to. It’s sort of like Pandora, but you don’t have to manually enter a search term. Just let mSpot you want to hear more songs like the one you’re already enjoying. Of course, you can also search manually if you want.

The mSpot Music service also tracks the playlists of existing internet radio stations and sometimes recommends some of these stations as well as the personalized station. The app can also keep track of songs you’ve played recently to get a sense of your listening habits so that it can recommend additional stations you might like from the primary radio menu.

A new mSpot Music beta is available from the Android Market today. An iOS app will follow later.

While mSpot is probably best known for its music locker service, the company has actually been offering internet radio streams for mobile devices since 2005. You just probably haven’t heard about it because mSpot works as a white box provider. Companies including AT&T offer customers the chance to pay a monthly fee for internet radio, and the service is actually powered by mSpot.

In addition to letting you stream music you already own and create new stations on the fly, mSpot’s new app will let you tune into popular internet radio stations as well as local stations from your region.

At launch there will be a limited number of stations available. Eventually mSpot may roll out a premium service with access to additional stations. Like Pandora, the free version of mSpot will limit the number of times you can skip songs in personalized radio stations each hour. If you try to skip more than 6 you’ll get an error message.

Right now mSpot offers 5GB of online storage for free and charges $3.99 per month for up to 40GB of storage. The company plans to offer additional plans for different storage levels in the future.

May 26, 2011

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