[ Spotify for iPad concept image courtesy of Cult of Mac. ]

Spotify is reportedly currently working on an iPad app and should be coming out soon, Spotify's UK Media Director Chris Mapes told Pocket-lint in an exclusive interview.

Maples says that the iPad app is "a priority" and "absolutely in the pipeline." He also hinted that Spotify might follow Amazon's lead and manufacture its own hardware for music playback.

"At the moment we're absolutely not a manufacturing business but if consumers demand something cool that we should create ourselves and we think we could do it better than anyone else, who knows?" Mapes says.

The Spotify apps, which were just announced yesterday, are only the beginning of a long line of new features, Mapes says. He also says that while the platform will be open, it will have a high quality threshold.

"We'll be pretty rigorous in making sure that when apps launch, that they will be adding value to our service," Mapes says.

Leading up to the "What's Next for Spotify?" event, many speculated that they would announce an iPad app. But when they didn't, some were left feeling disappointed.

"Since no one from Spotify ever responds to this question asked thousands of times - what is the status of the iPad app," user charliepac wrote on the Spotify blog. "Anyone who uses Pandora really knows the value of a dedicated iPad (or any tablet optimized) app. At least, respond with something.

A few weeks ago, Facebook announced that Spotify had added 4M users overall thanks to Facebook. Sean Parker, of Napster and Facebook fame, is a Spotify investor who has described Spotify as a "hyper-efficient system" and the answer to music piracy. Earlier this month, Spotify announced that they currently have 2.5M paying subscribers.

UK-based Spotify, founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006, released its iPhone and Android apps in 2009.

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