LONDON, UK and STOCKHOLM, Sweden - World-renowned music streaming service Spotify is now available for selected Symbian smartphones. The good news concerns mostly Nokia smartphone-owners, as well as some Samsung and Sony Ericsson smartphone-owners.

Spotify has been available for the Apple iPhone and for smartphones running on Google Android, but Symbian runs on half of the smartphones in the world market, a large audience to which the software did not reach.

The service also allows offline playing of songs, as playlists can be downloaded in case users have no connection, for example on airplanes or underground.

Updates from the desktop app are synchronised online, so any device tied to the account is also subject to changes - a feature which plays towards convergence.

Access to the Premium package is limited to UK, Spain, France, Sweden, Norway and Finland, costing £9.99 (US$16.59) per month. The Free package does not have many restrictions, except for a lower bitrate (reflected slightly in the sound quality) and on-app adverts financing the service.

Spotify plans to launch the music-streaming service next year in China and in the USA, thus widening its consumer base.

[£1 = US$1.66094]