Spotify has been a monster success since launching in the US, and one of the best parts about paying for a subscription to the service is being able to listen to music on your mobile devices.

The Spotify app is available on “the big three” mobile platforms; iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Up until today, you’ve had the option for two streaming qualities on the iOS version. Those were low and high. The high being 160 kbps and the low being 96 kbps. If you’re using earbuds, the higher setting probably sounds pretty good, but if you have a better set of headphones, it’s not so great.

The desktop version of Spotify has always streamed at 320 kbps, which is extremely high quality. Today, the iOS version makes the jump to that same quality.

Instead of just low and high as quality settings for streaming, you’re now presented with a third option called “Extreme”, which brings you the 320 kbps quality:

Along with being able to stream the higher quality version of songs, you’re also able to sync them as well. Once you flip the switch over to extreme you’ll be impressed by how great the music sounds, even through your iPhone’s speaker. Be careful when you’re in an area with not great cell signal, as the new highest quality stream probably won’t even start for you.

Along with this mega change, the app now supports one tap login via Facebook, which doesn’t seem to affect me as the app always logs me in automatically. For new users, this is a welcomed feature I’m sure.

➤ Spotify for iOS

With its presence on platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and Mac and PC desktop apps, the service continues to gain popularity globally. This expansion was promised last year, and the company came through with its “early 2012″ launch target.

Users in Australia and New Zealand can start using Rdio with a 7-day trial, and the cost will then be $8.90 each month, or $12.90 with mobile service (Australian).

Rdio sports an impressive database with over 12 million songs, all available ad-free. A small section of users will be happy about Rdio’s continued expansion, as they’ll now be able to keep listening to their music while traveling abroad.

➤ Rdio

TorrentFreak has listed the top 10 most pirated movies of 2011, according to download data from BitTorrent. The site points out that the #1 pirated film of the year wasn’t as popular as last year’s #1, Avatar, which was downloaded over 16 million times. The numbers also show a downward trend over all of the top 10.

Are people pirating less, or did the movies just suck this year?

After taking a look at this list of movies, I have to say that 2011 was a really crappy year for films. And after taking a look at the #1 movie, people who pirate films have no taste for cinema.

All jokes aside, I believe that online streaming has made this dent in download numbers. Downloading movies requires tons of bandwidth, and the quality isn’t always the best. With Netflix streaming pretty great movies and TV shows, I’d venture to say that it had something to do with the download decline. Also, with more people watching movies on iPads, Kindles, and tablets, they don’t have hard drives for huge movie files from BitTorrent. Streaming is the way to go.

Having said that, here are your top 10 most stolen pirated movies of 2011:

Seriously? Fast Five? Regardless, some think that pirating isn’t about stealing, as much as it’s a convenience. However, if you add up all of these downloads there’s a lot of money missing from some very sad bank accounts this holiday season.

This morning, we reported on a lawsuit directed at music streaming site Grooveshark by Universal Music Group, one of the top record labels.

In the lawsuit, Universal claims that top executives at Grooveshark, including the CEO, have uploaded 100,000 tracks to its database illegally.

Grooveshark has fired back, saying Universal is mischaracterizing information it found in a comment on a blog post:

We have reviewed the Complaint that Universal Music Group filed last Friday against Grooveshark in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Universal’s claims rest almost entirely on an anonymous, blatantly false internet blog comment and Universal’s gross mischaracterization of information that Grooveshark itself provided to Universal. While Universal has deliberately engaged the media prior to serving a copy of the Complaint on Grooveshark, Grooveshark intends to fight this battle before the Court, not in the press. Grooveshark welcomes the opportunity to present the facts to the Court and has full confidence that it will prevail in the litigation.

Regards,
Marshall Custer
Grooveshark
General Counsel

The anonymous blog comment that Grooveshark is referring to is this one, found on the Digital Music News blog:

We are assigned a predetermined amount of weekly uploads to the system and get a small extra bonus if we manage to go above that (not easy).The assignments are assumed as direct orders from the top to the bottom, we don’t just volunteer to ‘enhance’ the Grooveshark database.

Since the quote is anonymous, you have to come to your own conclusion on whether it comes from an inside source, perhaps a former or current Grooveshark employee, or was planted to make the service look bad.

Regardless of the he-said, she-said, if Universal can prove that the executive team uploaded tracks illegally to its own service, the music streaming will surely die for Grooveshark.

Universal contends that CEO Samuel Tarantin uploaded more than 1,791 copyrighted songs, SVP Paul Geller 3,453 songs and VP Benjamin Westermann-Clark 4,600 songs, respectively.

As Grooveshark’s General Counsel points out, the company is prepared to fight the court battle and leave the press out of it. Considering that this remark was made to the press, it’s not a good start for Grooveshark’s plan of defense. We’ll keep an eye on this story for you as it continues. I’ve reached out to the company but haven’t gotten a response as of publishing this piece.

UPDATE: Grooveshark responded to me with its initial statement.

In a serious content play, Netflix has announced that it is bringing the wildly popular show Arrested Development back exclusively on its platform.

The exclusivity is the key here, as it shows that Netflix is serious about putting its distribution power into promoting original content, rather than just a catalogue of previously aired content and films.

Ted Sarandos, Netflix Chief Content Officer said this about the news:

Arrested Development is one of the finest American comedies in TV history and its return through Netflix is a perfect example of how we are working closely with studios and networks to provide consumers with entertainment they love.

Cancellation of the show, which first aired in 2003, caused an outcry and became a bit of a touchy subject for Fox.

Even after winning an Emmy award, the show aired its last episode on February 10th, 2006. The series has been a popular DVD purchase and streaming option since its cancellation.

About Netflix’s strong entrance into original content, Sarandos added:

It’s also a perfect example of how broad and successful our relationship has become with Fox as we work together with their film, television, international and digital divisions on several exciting initiatives.

It will be interesting to see if this announcement opens the floodgates on more exclusive content and streaming between Fox and Netflix. When it comes to distribution via streaming, Netflix is most certainly still in the driver’s seat.

I think this is a perfect moment to perform the chicken dance:

Ron Howard, who serves as both producer and narrator of the series said:

After a long hiatus, I’m dying to finally get back to the narrator’s microphone…’It’s Arrested…Development.’

Netflix is also streaming content from CBS, including the non-exclusive rights to show popular shows Medium and Flashpoint.

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.

Using Spotify can be a bit overwhelming. You’re given a huge database of music to surf through with nothing more than a search box. Of course Spotify has made playlists and tracks social, but if you don’t have a lot of Facebook friends using the service, you’ll be hard pressed to find music that you’ll enjoy.

Echofi is a simple web app that uses Spotify’s API to find music that’s more relevant to you.

Simply search for an artist that you like, and Echofi will launch your desktop app with a song by a similar artist. You can then give the song a thumbs up or down using Echofi, and another song will be started for you. It’s kind of a Pandora-esque feature using Spotify.

Echofi uses the Echo Nest API, as does the Twitter Music Trends app I wrote about earlier today. The app was built by developer Andy Smith, who recently confirmed on Twitter that Spotify has hired him.

This is a sure sign that the music streaming company sees itself as a platform, welcoming developers to build on top of its service with open arms.

The Echonest Platform is a music intelligence platform that currently has 220 apps built on top of its API, and has which aggregates data about popular music. The company says that is has collected five million data points on thirty million songs and 1.5 million artists.

Music has gone social, and companies like Spotify are just getting started.

If you’re a Karaoke fan, you know that there’s no feeling like belting out the words to your favorite song as a huge audience watches. Well, maybe a small audience at a bar.

Regardless of the audience, singing is something that’s just fun to do, even if you’re not the best at it. Red Karaoke, an iOS app, wants to let you sing your favorite songs while recording the performance to share with a community of other karaoke lovers who will judge you on said performance.

The app boasts over 45,000 songs in its library, with plenty of them available for free. The app itself costs nothing, but if you’d like access to VIP content, you can pay $8.99 a month. Not having to purchase songs one by one is awesome in and of itself.

Sing like nobody is listening

As soon as you get your account setup, you can start looking for your favorite song. There are a lot of familiar hits here, 45,000 to be exact. Red Karaoke will display songs by free or VIP, genre, and most importantly, by popularity. As of publish time, the top song on Red Karaoke is “Rolling In The Deep” by Adele. It’s a free song, so you should have a go at it. Popular songs definitely cause me to choose them because it makes me more competitive.

Once you’ve chosen your song, you can choose to have your device’s camera recording or not, as well as switch up the tune to make things sound as perfect as they can be. Again, you don’t need to be a professional singer to love karaoke.

The song queues up and you’re shown the lyrics. The colors change on the lyrics to show you what you should be singing, just like a real karaoke bar would have on a big TV display.

It’s kind of like American Idol

In a way, performing a song on Red Karaoke is like being on stage for American Idol. Once you are finished singing, you have a choice to upload the performance or not, and allow the community to vote on it.

Most popular songs are displayed by ranking, and it’s a great way to discover other people’s performances. You can rank the performances and leave comments, making friends with other people in the karaoke community.

Unfortunately, the performances that you’re most proud of are trapped inside of the Red Karaoke app. Sharing on Twitter and Facebook with landing pages and embedded media is a must have for this app. It’s sad that the developers decided not to do this, as I would get way more usage out of it, if I could share to people not using the app. At the very least, an upload to YouTube feature would be handy.

If you like performing, and you’re a fan of karaoke, download Red Karaoke and get your friends on it too. You don’t have to sing, you can serve as a resident judge. Maybe a record label will find the next big star on the platform.

Netflix, which as gotten a lot of grief lately from consumers after the Qwikster open and close, has announced a new streaming partnership with the CW Network owned by CBS Corp. and Warner Bros.

Clearly, the latest Qwikster news hasn’t scared networks away from wanting their content in an on demand streaming format in homes everywhere.

All past seasons of all CW shows, as well as shows in its Current schedule through the 2015 season will be included in the partnership. More than likely, more partners will get involved soon, as the market is waiting to see how streaming will take off and who will be the major player.

The CW claims to have over 700 hours of past season programing, including popular shows such as “Gossip Girl” and “One Tree Hill”. Both of these shows have a heavy female demographic, so a new audience is clearly adopting Netflix streaming. It’s not just for geeks without TVs any more.

The interesting part of this deal is that Netflix is gaining access and rights to shows not even shown on CBS’ own service, Hulu. Those shows include “The Vampire Diaries” and “90210″.

Netflix is keeping its DVD and streaming business as one entity, and it will be interesting to watch what comes in the near future for the company.

This deal comes at the right time for Netflix, as the company just lost Starz as a partner on September 1st, which left a huge hole in its streaming content catalog.