Spotify, the online music service will launch in the US this year. This was announced after founder Daniel Ek discussed it at his keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference and Festival.
The service has been available in Europe for more than a year and has proven to be successful, especially in the UK. Already approximately 7 million people across Europe listen to the music using Spotify which provides access to almost 10 million songs.
The launch has been postponed in the US because Spotify is set to offer a free, ad based alternative along with a premium one. However, Ek confirmed in the keynote speech that the premium subscription in the US would most likely cost $10 per month. Licensing deals with publishers and record companies still need to be ironed out before the launch in the US but things do look promising. He explained that due to the immensity of the US music market, it is proving to be a 'huge task'.
A similar online music service, MOG, launched in the US during the SXSW Interactive. The service boasts about 7 million songs and charge $5 per month for computer access and $10 per month for mobile phone accounts.
When MOG was launched, many industry experts saw this as direct competition to Spotify, however Ek explained that Spotify has a different focus to MOG, which focuses on recommending music to users and explained, "we're all about simplicity and managing music, as opposed to music discovery", and when he means "music discovery', he means Spotify allows users to choose specific songs or albums, lets you create playlists of favourite songs and share them with friends via email or social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Are you a European subscriber to Spotify? What do you think of the service? Or are you a MOG subscriber? When Spotify is launched would you opt in moving? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think…
3 thoughts on “Spotify US Launch Coming Soon?”
I live in USA and got my spotify premium from that shop :
http://spotifypremium.bigcartel.com/
Works perfectly , now running my iphone app in NYC , love spotify!
I live in Spain and I do use Spotify. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s awesome ly comprehensive. If you search anything it’ll come out and in such a dpeth that you can be hearing music for days. And that without leaving the computer just for that, because you can be working at the same time. The free service has ads, ok. But it’s like a real personal radio station. Nobody but you chooses what to play and when and in what order.
Now, tell me about something that beats that… Have’nt seen it. And I have been to the States… Things like Pandora are… well, I’ll remain polite ;) Even things like Hulu (I know, it’s video, a different beast) are rather lame: The collection of Spotify is Huge.
Hope they reach the States so that my friends over there can share it.
Best regards