The Swedish based music streaming service has finally launched further afield than Europe after almost two years of negotiations with differing record companies.
Spotify may be particularly popular with those of us residing in Europe. However, after intense negotiations with record companies, which created much speculation about the future of the Spotify business model. Now, though the music service has finally announced that it will launch in the US on Thursday.
The launch of the Spotify music service was solely dependent on signing deals with the four largest record labels in the United States. These companies are the likes of
Universal,
Sony,
Warner Music and EMI . However, reports suggest that Warner only completed their deal on Wednesday of this week.
Unlike here in the
UK free accounts will be limited in the US to invitation only. The ad-free version will cost $4.99 (£3.09) per month and the cost of a premium account with
mobile access will cost $9.99 (£6.19).
The US launch was expected with an adjustment in Spotify's terms of use policy for its free account holders, who make up a staggering 8.4million of its 10million users. The adjustment of terms ensured that accounts were limited to 10 hours of streaming per month with a cap of five listens per track.
The founder of Spotify, David Ek commented that the aim of Spotify was to create a simple, compelling service that bettered the convenience of pirated products. However, even though Spotify's aim was to supply a
software designed to offer an unlimited amount of music it has only been released in 8 countries. The release in the US being the most recent and the first outside Europe.
A further issue with the release of Spotify in the US is the concern around low royalty payments to artists. Spotify is declared to be the second largest source of digital revenue for record labels in Europe. However, it incurs fierce competition in the US with the rival likes of
Pandora, Rhaposdy and
Mog having already built rather loyal audiences. In addition, to Spotify imitators there are the cloud based services from
Amazon and
Apple that Spotify will have to compete against. Furthermore,
Google are soon to be entering the scene and will too be competing for consumer attention and spend.
Spotify seem to have the upper hand with
Facebook integration and instant access to Facebooks 750million users Spotify seems to truly be able to handle the competition.
Why not check out the Spotify app review
here.