With the launch of Google Music, and iTunes upgrading its solution with a new feature called “Match“, the stream your music vs. buy each track debate rages on.

It’s truly a personal preference, but some artists aren’t interested in having their music streamed just yet. Numbers out of Sweden might have them thinking otherwise though.

According to a report from Swedes And The Internet (PDF), Spotify usage has surpassed that of instant messaging, blog reading, and playing games online in Spotify’s native country. Since Spotify has been available for some time in the country, it could be a tip-off to the type of usage we’ll see in the United States and other countries.

Spotify allows you to pay a premium fee to stream all of the music you like, on any of your devices. The service is built to be social by nature, as it is only available to Facebook users. Tracks are shared on your wall and shown in the Facebook ticker, causing your listening habits to instantly go viral among your friends and family on the service.

Spotify beats IM

Here are some of the stats that Swedes And The Internet unearthed during a survey:

• Just over half (57%) of the Swedish people listen and download music via the Internet.
• The percentage of file sharing (21%) have never been greater.
• But the proportion who listen to streaming music using Spotify is even greater.
• Amongst those aged 16 to 25 years, almost 9 out of 10 (85%) are on Spotify and half (55%) listen daily.
• The older people buy CDs and pay per song, while the younger subscribe, share files or listen to Spotify.
• If we compare file-sharers with those who do not share files, we find that there is no difference in how often they buy CDs. However, a larger percentage of file sharers pay to download individual songs than those who do not share files.
• One in three people (37%) listen to Spotify during a month, which is twice as many as file sharing (18%) and many more than those who buy a CD (9%) or pay per song (4%) during a month.
• In Sweden, Spotify usage is even running ahead of use of community sites, IM, blog reading and game playing.

The past, and the future

Spotify launched in Sweden back in 2008, so it had a three-year head-start on the United States. National music revenue grew by ten percent in Sweden at the end of 2009, showing that Spotify indeed has staying power and could be a good thing for artists and record labels.

Will these trends show themselves in the U.S.? It’s too early to say, but traction on Facebook after the f8 partnership announcement has been massive. The Spotify app on Facebook has risen to the top, and surpasses all other music apps by far.

The key for Spotify, I believe, is that it’s not just a music streaming service. It’s a platform that other developers can build apps on top of. That type of platform has never been witnessed on the Internet before, and could drive huge revenue for bands and labels if they just stick with the service and not turn on it. Apps need music, and musicians need distribution. It’s a match made in heaven.

Do you prefer to buy or stream? Perhaps a mix of both? Personally, I prefer to stream all of my music, and if an album is good enough, I go ahead and purchase it. I also spend a lot of money on concert tickets, and that’s where artists make a huge chunk of their money. Maybe Spotify will start offering streams of live concerts, that’s something I’d pay extra for.

We were impressed by Tap To Chat when it launched late last year, and the new version is even better.

This iOS app concentrated on one element of Facebook – chat. Organised in a grid, it allowed you to keep track of, and participate in, multiple chats with your friends and contacts simultaneously. Now the app’s developers have added Google Talk and thrown a bundle of improvements into version two.

In addition to expanding beyond Facebook to offer Google Talk, the app has been given some beautiful graphical touches. While it’s active, you’ll get Growl-style notifications which pop up in the corner of the screen every time one of your contacts sends you a message or comes online. Tapping these takes you straight to the updated chat, making talking to numerous people at once simple to keep track of. When the app is running in the background, you’ll still get the standard Apple push notifications to keep you in the know.

Meanwhile, a range of colour themes have been added, there are accessibility options for visually impaired users (including VoiceOver support) and the whole experience runs noticeably faster than the original app. As with its predecessor, Tap To Chat 2 is a universal app designed to make the most of both iPhone and iPad-size screens.

Rather than being a free upgrade, the app is a separate purchase for 59p (or local equivalent), replacing the original version in the App Store. You may balk at this idea, but on it’s not exactly expensive and we’re sure many developers would charge for upgrades if Apple would let them. A free, ad-supported version of the original Facebook-only app is also still available.

It would be great to see more IM services added to the app, but if you spend a lot of time running multiple Facebook Chat or Google Talk conversations, Tap To Chat 2 is well worth trying. Find it on the App Store here.

TNW Quick Look

Tap To Facebook Chat for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is an app that allows you to run chats with all your online Facebook friends from one app.

Hits:

• A fast, easy way to run multiple Facebook chats from one screen
• Simple interface with zero learning curve

Misses:

• We spotted occasional crashes
• A couple of online friends didn’t show up in the app during our tests

The Details

Facebook Chat is almost a religion for some people and a good quality mobile client is essential for catching up with friends wherever you are. While there are already a number of apps that allow this on iOS, Tap To Facebook Chat is a little different, allowing what its developers call “Extreme Facebook Chat”. Yes, you can chat to all your friends at once, on one screen.

The interface is as simple and unobtrusive as it’s possible to be. Shunning the conventional ‘list of contacts’ IM client approach, a grid of boxes represent each of your currently online friends. As the name of the app implies, you tap a box to start a chat.

You can have as many chats as you like running concurrently – swapping between boxes with a tap. Like any good chat app should, it can run in the background with pop-up notifications when you get a new message.

We really can see teenagers taking to this app as they juggle multiple plans for the weekend and swap gossip about the girl down the street’s new boyfriend. That said, anyone who is a heavy Facebook user should find value here.

On the downside, the app did crash on us a couple of times during testing and a couple of our friends didn’t show up in the app, despite showing as online in Chat in our browser. UK-based co-developer Nick Kuh, whose other, photo-centric Facebook app Buddies (reviewed by us here) has recently gained Facebook Chat capability, says this should only by an occasional glitch as the app syncs directly with Facebook Chat’s servers.

Priced at an ultra-reasonable 59p (or local equivalent), if you find yourself regularly immersed in multiple Facebook chats, it’s well worth giving Tap To Facebook Chat a go.

Imo.im is a web startup founded and funded by ten of the first Google employees.

Based out of Palo Alto California, its mission is simple, easy and feature packed IM/voice/video communication through your existing social and IM accounts.

It supports all the usual instant messengers such as AIM, Google Talk, Jabber, ICQ, MSN, MySpace, Facebook Chat and Yahoo Messenger, but they also have one other network that is actually quite a surprise, Skype (without a download!).

One of imo.im’s key features is their chat history search, I had a chance to test this feature out earlier today and found it speedier and more efficient then experiences with similar web apps.

This is not the usual Ctrl-F search method, after each letter entered in the search bar, imo.im jumps to the first appearance without having to click that pesky next button, and coupled with a handy month/day calendar on the left for easy date selection imo.im surely has one of the most original chat history search engines around.

Imo.im also includes 2 other different but very functional features, white board and photos. The whiteboard is your usual whiteboard similar to FlockDraw, but a little more barebones and of course has a link that can be shared with friends via IM or email. Photos are now a synch to share with friends using imo.im’s built in photo uploader with 2gb’s of free storage and ability to see your other friends photo feed if they also use imo.im.

Overall imo.im’s UI is one of the simplest that I have ever seen, no large graphics or even ad’s. As imo.im rolls out of alpha I imagine that it will really start to grow on consumers looking for a dead simple solution for their IM and communication needs. This is going to be just one of the many successful startups created by infamous former Google employees.

Meebo’s long overdue iPhone App is live in the App Store.

It promises to bring a shake up in simplicity and elegance to the IM marketplace, whether that is in fact the case, remains to be seen.

Initial comments and reviews have been positive. With the ability to login with your Meebo account, no ads, all the major IM services (Skype aside) available, push notifications, a crisp clean UI and above all else, zero cost – it’s not difficult to see why this should be gain some traction.

My first impressions weren’t quite so positive. After attempting to sign up with Meebo and completing its form, the app crashed on me forcing me to repeat the process. That said, once I was able to login, Meebo’s welcoming UI is indeed an improvement on many of the messenger apps out there. Navigating the app is also notably simple and despite never having been a fan of the Meebo.com UI, it’s evident someone has spent a great deal of time getting this iPhone app right.

Nevertheless, this app is late, very late. Whether the “better late than never” mentality will work in Meebo’s favour, we’ll find out over the coming weeks. Amsterdam based EBuddy is the current app store leader in the multi-messenger IM space followed by IM+ and Beejive. SMS replacement apps What’sApp and Ping have also proven themselves to be very popular and rank high on the App Store rankings.

Download Meebo from the App Store here, it’s free.