We caught up with Tim Hadley, Director of Corporate Communications for Omnifone at the recent MEF Connects @ MWC party in Barcelona.

We wondered what Tim thought could be happening in the year ahead and why the MEF is a benefit to those in the mobile industry. Check out his answers here:

Normally that means a quick search on iTunes and then a ‘buy’ click. Then I need to wait a few seconds for it to actually download.

Last night I had done the iTunes search, located the song… and then I thought, ‘I’ll get it quicker, if I use [new music streaming service] Spotify‘.

So I did an Alt-Tab and typed the artist’s name into Spotify. Then I pressed play.

Job done.

The only regret… I can’t take that song with me when I’m out.

So I had a look on Spotify.com … only for Mac OS or Windows… with a Linux hack. No mention of any mobile clients. Then I saw the jobs page:

Right on.

S60? Love it. Android? Nice. iPhone? Now I wonder how nicely Apple’s App Store reviewers will play with that.

I made a switch in my mind last night — from iTunes to Spotify. I’m seriously considering the premium upgrade although I’m not entirely clear what value it gives me — interestingly, I like the ads they play.

But I’ve made a switch — huge surprise. I have always been iTunes-all-the-way. And, in reality, if I want that track to be able to listen to whilst on-the-go, I still need to be.

But it shouldn’t be long until Spotify has a mobile client I can use. And when that’s arrived, just how much of a fan will I be with iTunes?

Spotify is very similar to Omnifone‘s MusicStation music product — simply the best implementation of mobile music I’ve ever seen. I wonder what the launch of Spotify will do to their business, particularly as Spotify are clearly considering launching mobile clients.

And if they’re going to do that, how long before they knock-out some deals with desperate-to-be-cool-and-relevant mobile operators?

I love the fact that my Spotify account works on any machine I’d care to use. When I was in France the other week, I flicked up spotify.com on my Apple Air and downloaded the client, logged in with my username and password — and woosh, there were my playlists from my desktop.

Do this on mobile and it’s going to get very interesting.

At what point does iTunes do similar to Spotify? £9 per month, or similar.

We’ve almost been here before of course. Napster should have nailed it, years ago. They had the opportunity to offer us all £10/month unlimited music on your desktop/mobile/whatever. Sideloaded or over-the-air.

What now for Omnifone though? With Spotify looking like it’s about to eat their lunch?

We shall see…

I was wrong.

MusicStation is quite simply, pretty amazing. What I thought really couldn’t work, or ever be good (especially on a mobile device for so cheap), actually is.

The library available is massive; and originally I was expecting to find that some of the more obscure music I like to listen to wouldn’t actually be available; but it all is.  I searched for a bunch of oldies I love, and even the newer music which isn’t widely known. All there isn’t a genre which isn’t covered, which meant I was happily able to enjoy some Mozart, Candi Staton and even a little Slipknot for when the desire arose.

The one big flaw I was expecting was poor sound quality. There is nothing worse than listening to music being streamed at a mere 96kps, and I have made it a rule that all such music must never reach my ears. So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the quality of the tracks.

Definitely not 96kps.

When played through speakers, admittedly there is a slight lossiness to the quality, and there isn’t as much actually punch in the tracks than say if you had them in a hard copy. But for general listening, and with a good pair of headphones, it shouldn’t be that much of a concern.

The application as a whole is fast, and simple to use. It has simple menus to navigate, and you can even use the rest of your mobile with MusicStation still running.

Quite possibly one of the best things about MusicStation, is the download speeds. I’ve been using a non-3G connection (due to the lack of 3G coverage), and each song on average has taken around 90 seconds. This does depend entirely on the length of the song, but even so it’s still fairly quick.

Some of the downsides to MusicStation have to be the fact you don’t actually have the songs stored on your phone; which means you can’t move them around. This though, is a copyright protective aid more than anything else I think.

Then there is the battery life!
You have to expect that being connected to the internet full time, you will be drowning a few of the mobile’s resources, but in general it’s not practical. I was using it during a certain meeting I had last Wednesday, and after two hours there was barely any life left at all. You certainly cannot expect more than a couple of hours out of a fully charged mobile with MusicStation – but at least you’ll be enjoying some brilliant music though!

The music library isn’t yet fully equipped to my standards, and there are certainly more tracks, albums and artists that should be listed too. For example, Frankie Knuckle’s brilliant song “Your Love”, not there! I admit I was a little disappointed. There were a few others too which I was sad to see, were not available; hopefully more will be added though.

In all though, I’m immensely surprised, MusicStation is nothing other than brilliant. It has a few flaws, which everything has, but I’m sure eventually battery issues will be a thing for the past.

There is though, one final issue with this…
It’s only available for Vodafone customers.

Vodafone, from what I’ve seen of it, is mainly an operator who attracts business customers or adults in general. I don’t know of a single friend who is on Vodafone; and of all the friends that I have told about MusicStation, not a single one has said “oh, that sounds crap” or “I wouldn’t pay that much”. So why then, is a music service, which would have huge custom with the teenagers of today, not, broadening itself to other operators?

I hope that this is changed soon, because I would probably pay for it.