Spotify have responded to the news of Virgin Media’s team up with Universal Music by announcing that they are planning a whole bunch of new features to add value to its premium service.

Currently users who pay £9.99 a month (or 99p a day) can have ad-free access to the three million tracks that are available in the UK. The premium side of Spotify will be expanded to include:

• Mobile access, as revealed by this very blog last month

• Recommendations and ticketing

• Bundled downloads

• A social networking aspect to the service

• Better quality audio streams than the current 160kb/s ogg vorbis q5 codec

Spotify’s UK MD Paul Brown said: “The idea is to have a service with more features and functionality that will draw people in.”

It isn’t clear yet whether there will be additional subscription packages or whether the new features will be included within the current £9.99 fee. Either way, along with the Virgin/Universal announcement, it’s an exciting time for digital music.

(via NMA)